- Case study
For a minute's effort, free refreshment: Installation educates on water management
How to show festival-goers the value of drinking water in a way they will truly remember? The interactive Water Journey installation connects movement, play and education. Visitors must use their own energy to „transport“ water across the landscape so that they can draw a glass of drinking water as a reward. The project was created for the Pop Messe festival and has since refreshed and educated thousands of people at events across the country.
Customer
Make More
Region
education, festivals, interactive installations
Year
2022
Turnaround time
12 weeks
When water doesn't flow by itself
Most of us turn on a tap and have drinking water available within a few seconds. Yet very few of us realise how much energy, infrastructure and natural resources it takes before water reaches our homes. It is precisely this fact that the Water's Journey installation highlights.
Refreshment you have to earn
The visitor becomes part of the whole process. To get a free glass of water, they first have to pedal on a specially adapted exercise bike and „transport“ the water through the entire installation using their own energy. The reward is not only refreshment, but also a new perspective on a seemingly taken-for-granted part of everyday life.
Technology in the service of education
The project combines electronics, digital fabrication, interactive elements and game mechanics. The aim was not merely to convey information, but to create an experience that draws visitors into the narrative and prompts them to think about the topic.
Festival attraction with a deeper meaning
The installation was created for the Pop Messe festival, but thanks to its versatility, it continued its life even after the event ended. To this day, it appears at festivals, public events and educational programmes, where it continues to connect entertainment with awareness-raising.
How The Way of Water was created
The Make More initiative is backed by a group of enthusiasts who have long supported the maker movement and the popularisation of technology in the Czech Republic. Alongside organising Maker Faire festivals, they are also involved in projects that connect creativity, education and technology.
An impulse has just come from the organisers of the Pop Messe festival to create an interactive element that would reflect certain current social issues. One of them was the question of the availability of drinking water.
Visitors to the first year of the festival complained about a lack of freely available drinking water. Instead of a simple technical solution, the idea was therefore born to turn this problem into an educational experience.
From problem to experience
The aim was not to moralise to visitors or overwhelm them with statistics. We were looking for a way to present the topic in a playful and comprehensible form.
The resulting concept is based on a simple idea: if we want to get water, we have to do something for it.
The visitor sits on a gold-painted exercise bike and begins to peddle. Their energy then sets the entire installation in motion and visually depicts the journey of water from its source to the tap.
Only after successfully completing this journey will they receive the reward of a free glass of drinking water.
How does the installation work
The installation consists of two main parts.
The first of these is a specially modified exercise bike that serves as a control element. The second part consists of a large-format animated wall depicting the journey of water.
We integrated an LED strip system into the wall that creates a light animation reacting to the visitor's performance. Blue light symbolises flowing water, while red alerts to insufficient peddling pace.
When nobody is sitting on the bike, the installation switches to an attractive light animation mode that naturally entices passers-by to get involved.
The entire system is controlled by electronics built on the Arduino Uno platform, supplemented by custom control elements, power supplies, and a pair of peristaltic pumps developed specifically for this project.
An eye-catching design
The festival environment places specific demands on similar installations.
It is not enough to be functional. You need to captivate visitors at first glance and make them stop amidst dozens of other stimuli.
That is precisely why a striking gold exercise bike, complemented by a colour-animated wall, was created. The combination of movement, light and the anticipated reward creates a situation that naturally attracts attention and invites interaction.
Technology that entertains
A large part of the work involved not only the technical solution itself, but also the user experience design.
It was necessary to correctly set the interaction length, difficulty and moment of reward so that the installation was fun while also conveying the intended message.
„At first, we only had a vague idea of how to realise the concept for an interactive installation reacting to the loss of water in the landscape. In PrusaLab, they helped us to devise a functional and entertaining concept, which they also technically realised, says Vojtěch Kolařík, Programme Manager of the Make More initiative.
Result
The premiere of the installation at the Pop Messe festival showed that the combination of education, movement and entertainment works.
During the event, more than 800 visitors actively participated in the interaction and over 300 litres of drinking water flowed through the system.
Even more important than the numbers themselves, however, were the reactions of the people. The installation managed to attract attention, spark discussion and make visitors reflect on a topic that most of us take for granted.
For us at PrusaLab, the Path of Water represents a fine example of a project where technology is not an end in itself. It serves as a means to create an experience that holds meaning long after the visitor dismounts their bike and finishes their glass of water.
