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Field Notes

Permanent install · San Jose, CA

IBM and NASA at The Tech Interactive

Photo log

Head-on view of the alcove, three 65-inch touchscreens inside running one continuous landscape view, lit IBM logo above the entrance
Three screens, one surface. The alcove puts you inside the image.
The alcove from the right, its outer wall a checkerboard of icon tiles: a satellite orbiting Earth, a bee, a seedling, a figure, a signal
The outer wall does the advertising. The inside does the work.
The alcove from the left, screens showing a blue map view, the museum floor and a neighboring exhibit beyond
On the public floor in San Jose, next to everything else competing for attention.

An IBM and NASA activation we programmed and supplied the A/V for. Three 65-inch touchscreens wrap the inside of a walk-in alcove, with a sound dome overhead to keep the audio in the room. It toured IBM's 2025 show season and now lives permanently at The Tech Interactive.

The piece started on IBM’s 2025 show floor at Think and travelled the season with them. What you are looking at is the last stop, which is also the first permanent one. It now sits on the public floor at The Tech Interactive in San Jose.

Inside the alcove, three 65-inch 4K touchscreens on telescopic mounts wrap the visitor on three sides and run as one continuous surface off a single PC. Overhead is a 32-inch localizer dome, a directional speaker that drops the audio straight down into the alcove instead of spilling it across the gallery. In a booth that is a nicety. In a museum, where every exhibit in the room is competing for the same air, it is the difference between something you can hear and something you cannot.

We wrote the touchscreen software, and it runs in two languages, which a public museum needs and a show floor usually does not. We were on site for the November install and went back into the code afterward for the changes the room asked for. It carries a year of warranty with remote support, so most of what it needs from here we can do without getting on a plane.

Next field note

Insulet at ADA 2025