The Silent Museum
530 BCE ~ Present
The Silent Museum
530 BCE ~ Present
From Look, Read, and Listen...
Today’s museum visitor is passively guided by static maps, audio tours, labels, and texts.
Without a voice of their own, how can the artifacts, paintings, sculptures, and statues, tell their true story, while crafting new stories of their own?
The Bubbles
530 BCE ~ Present
The Bubbles
530 BCE ~ Present
Museum Structure
Contemporary
Museum Structure
Contemporary
The Project
The Embodied Museum is a research and design project that reimagines the museum experience through emerging technology. It seeks to weave visitors’ stories and reflections into the artworks, co-creating a living, evolving narrative. The Asian Art Museum in San Francisco served as a key stakeholder and site for exploration.
The Museum
A repository of both ancient and contemporary artifacts, museum is often a curated experience; a controlled environment of predestined programs that mould to a particular narrative.
The curator’s position of authority affords them the opportunity to construct worlds of their own in between the white walls of the gallery, worlds of artifacts that are at times looted, stolen, and held hostage within these spaces.
For best experience, please visit on desktop or tablet.
Embodied Museum
The Causal Loop of Embodied Museum
2025
The Causal Loop of Embodied Museum
2025
To Speak, Share, and Shape.
The human wearing the Embodied Adornment device experiences the the museum, a space where histories, cultures, and stories collide, through a new framework.
It gathers human-generated ideas, thoughts, and conversations through the form of spoken audio, and holds those pieces of data within as digital cultural narratives.
Pace Layers of Artworks
2025
Pace Layers of Artworks
2025
The Embodied Adornment Device
2025
The Embodied Adornment Device
2025
Inros and Embodied Museum Adornment
Muromachi Period, 2025
Inros and Embodied Museum Adornment
Muromachi Period, 2025
Inspiration:
Asian Adornment Culture
Throughout Asia, the adornment of portable containers located on the body of its owner have acted as devices of utility, identity, spirituality, and healing.
These highly crafted containers mimic both the cultures they are representative of, and the ideals and values of the objects, prayers, and medicine that are stored inside.
Each of these string-based, ornamented objects represent stories and histories in regards to the place, space, and time they originate from.
Adornments Across Asia
Warring States Period ~ Contemporary
Adornments Across Asia
Warring States Period ~ Contemporary
Crafting New Stories
2025
Crafting New Stories
2025
From Silence to Dialogue
2025
From Silence to Dialogue
2025
Technology
The device facilitates connections with history and community through RFID and AI.
Data that would otherwise be ephemeral is processed to generate a digital narrative, choreographing a novel, cultural, and co-curated museum experience.
Connect with History and Community
2025
Connect with History and Community
2025
Functional Prototype
2025
Functional Prototype
2025
Showcase
Apr. 2025
Showcase
Apr. 2025
Asian Art Museum
Showcase
The Embodied Adornment becomes an extension of the spirit of Asian Adornments, a device that gathers, stores, and shares the stories and cultures shaped by everyone.
The team showcased the project to the public at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco on Apr.24th 2025.
Team
Abdi Ambari, Jiawen Chen, Nile Tan, Omar Mohammad
Developed in the Designing Emerging Technologies Class at UC Berkeley, 2025 Spring
Reference
Butler, Shelley Ruth. Museum Frictions: Public Cultures. Museum Anthropology Review.
Davies, Stephen. Adornment: What Self-Decoration Tells Us about Who We Are. Bloomsbury Academic, 2020.
“Designing the Pen: Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum.” Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, 4 June 2020, www.cooperhewitt.org/new-experience/designing-pen/. Accessed 12 May 2025.
Heyde, Neil, et al. Digital Memory and the Archive. New Focus Recordings, 2023.
Remix Culture and Amateur Creativity: A Copyright Dilemma. World Intellectual Property Organization, 2015.
Simon, Norma, and Simon, Nina. The Participatory Museum. Museum 2.0, 2010.
In response to each artifact, whether a memory, a moment of resonance, a critique, or even a fleeting emotional thought, the Embodied Adornment listens.
These spoken reflections become new layers within the artifacts, allowing old stories to evolve and be reborn through new meaning. They also serve as personal markers within the museum journey, guiding each wearer through a uniquely co-created curation.
Hover over the photos to explore the experience.
Please be mindful of the volume.
The Silent Museum
530 BCE ~ Present
From Look, Read, and Listen...
Today’s museum visitor is passively guided by static maps, audio tours, labels, and texts.
Without a voice of their own, how can the artifacts, paintings, sculptures, and statues, tell their true story, while crafting new stories of their own?
The Bubbles
530 BCE ~ Present
Museum Structure
Contemporary
The Project
The Embodied Museum is a research and design project that reimagines the museum experience through emerging technology. It seeks to weave visitors’ stories and reflections into the artworks, co-creating a living, evolving narrative. The Asian Art Museum in San Francisco served as a key stakeholder and site for exploration.
The Museum
A repository of both ancient and contemporary artifacts, museum is often a curated experience; a controlled environment of predestined programs that mould to a particular narrative.
The curator’s position of authority affords them the opportunity to construct worlds of their own in between the white walls of the gallery, worlds of artifacts that are at times looted, stolen, and held hostage within these spaces.
For best experience, please visit on desktop or tablet.
Embodied Museum
The Causal Loop of Embodied Museum
2025
To Speak, Share, and Shape.
The human wearing the Embodied Adornment device experiences the the museum, a space where histories, cultures, and stories collide, through a new framework.
It gathers human-generated ideas, thoughts, and conversations through the form of spoken audio, and holds those pieces of data within as digital cultural narratives.
Pace Layers of Artworks
2025
The Embodied Adornment Device
2025
Inros and Embodied Museum Adornment
Muromachi Period, 2025
Inspiration:
Asian Adornment Culture
Throughout Asia, the adornment of portable containers located on the body of its owner have acted as devices of utility, identity, spirituality, and healing.
These highly crafted containers mimic both the cultures they are representative of, and the ideals and values of the objects, prayers, and medicine that are stored inside.
Each of these string-based, ornamented objects represent stories and histories in regards to the place, space, and time they originate from.
Adornments Across Asia
Warring States Period ~ Contemporary
Crafting New Stories
2025
From Silence to Dialogue
2025
Technology
The device facilitates connections with history and community through RFID and AI.
Data that would otherwise be ephemeral is processed to generate a digital narrative, choreographing a novel, cultural, and co-curated museum experience.
Connect with History and Community
2025
Functional Prototype
2025
Showcase
Apr. 2025
Asian Art Museum
Showcase
The Embodied Adornment becomes an extension of the spirit of Asian Adornments, a device that gathers, stores, and shares the stories and cultures shaped by everyone.
The team showcased the project to the public at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco on Apr.24th 2025.
Team
Abdi Ambari, Jiawen Chen, Nile Tan, Omar Mohammad
Developed in the Designing Emerging Technologies Class at UC Berkeley, 2025 Spring
Reference
Butler, Shelley Ruth. Museum Frictions: Public Cultures. Museum Anthropology Review.
Davies, Stephen. Adornment: What Self-Decoration Tells Us about Who We Are. Bloomsbury Academic, 2020.
“Designing the Pen: Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum.” Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, 4 June 2020, www.cooperhewitt.org/new-experience/designing-pen/. Accessed 12 May 2025.
Heyde, Neil, et al. Digital Memory and the Archive. New Focus Recordings, 2023.
Remix Culture and Amateur Creativity: A Copyright Dilemma. World Intellectual Property Organization, 2015.
Simon, Norma, and Simon, Nina. The Participatory Museum. Museum 2.0, 2010.
In response to each artifact, whether a memory, a moment of resonance, a critique, or even a fleeting emotional thought, the Embodied Adornment listens.
These spoken reflections become new layers within the artifacts, allowing old stories to evolve and be reborn through new meaning. They also serve as personal markers within the museum journey, guiding each wearer through a uniquely co-created curation.
Hover over the photos to explore the experience.
Please be mindful of the volume.