MathsCity commissioned us to design a permanent ‘WOW’ installation for their National Mathematics Discovery Centre in Leeds. The aim of the installation was to portray an aspect of mathematics in a fun and engaging way whilst supporting efforts to attract new and returning visitors into the space.
Focusing on the theme of code breaking, we designed a large-scale digital totem with a grid of ever-changing letters, inviting visitors to decode predefined secret messages through a 3-level game: The Caesar Cipher, the Multiplicative ‘X’ Cipher, and a Combination of both!
The challenge is to see how a garbled message changes as participants shift the index of the cipher via a touch interface. At each attempt, the message on the totem dynamically updates, reflecting their chosen index. Multiple attempts are required before the message can be deciphered. Once that happens, the message is playfully revealed ase a riddle, inviting participants to guess the answer before moving onto the next level. Currently, there are 6 riddles built in, which are chosen at random at the start of each game, all pertaining to the animal kingdom.
As an evergreen installation, the totem was designed to be adaptable: It can display letters and numbers and is controlled via a touchscreen interface, allowing the riddles to change over time and different types of ciphers to be showcased.
Video by: Pavillion Works
