January 1, 2012 marked the close of the Bhangra.me: Vancouver’s Bhangra Story exhibition at the Museum of Vancouver.
The web portion of the exhibit was powered by the Drupal framework happily running on IIS 7.5 / Windows Sever 2008, which served as a repository of interactive stories accessible from:
- WebSite for adding & browsing interactive StoryMap built using Silverlight & Drupal GeoTagging
- Touch-screen displays in the exhibit space for browsing stories
- A mobile application for interacting with stories “on-location”
These comprised a powerful platform that not only provided a rich experience for those attending the exhibit, but also those interested in accessing the Bhangra stories via web and mobile devices.
The Drupal framework served as a backbone to bring together the content with the Open Layers and Open Layers Geocoder modules (on the administrative back-end), and exposed via Silverlight map on Bhangra.me using XLM/RSS feeds (on the front-end). With Drupal 7, the bits & pieces to enable this interactivity are being updated, as described by Colin Calnan of Raised Eyebrow in his recent blog post.
The same Silverlight code used for the web-based interactive map was used to power a Silverlight Out of Browser application (right click on the Silverlight map –> Install…), and a Windows Phone 7 mobile application built by RedBit Development – all leveraging the same XML/RSS feed for content and geo-location of Bhangra.me stories. 
Together these delivered Bhangra programming in a unique, multi-functional way that helped the museum capture & communicate the stories about intercultural relations, hybrid identities, and strengthen community ties with(in) the South Asian community in Vancouver.
No comments yet.