Einstein in Japan – A Travelogue

Picture: Gesa von Grote

Client Federal Ministry of Education and Research / Germany Embassy in Japan

Location Tokyo International Forum, Mitsuo Aida Museum, Tokyo, Japan

Duration December 2005 – February 2006

Tasks Conception, design and production of the special exhibition (all HOAI phases, s.a.). Concepts for the exhibition graphics and for light and media design. Planning of the audio guide. Editing and design of the printed material and the accompanying publication

Entitled “Einstein in Japan – A Travelogue”, the exhibition in Tokyo was the first to be concerned with an extremely important period in the life of Albert Einstein: his journey to Japan in 1922. The presentation concentrated on Einstein’s encounter with a country that he experienced intensely but was only able to visit for a few weeks, on one single occasion. Einstein’s diary entries provided a leading thread for the dramaturgy of the exhibition: first of all, Einstein’s life and work were represented using a calendar. In the main part of the exhibition, Einstein’s experiences in Japan and the public’s reaction to them were then depicted – in a walk-in, three-dimensional diary.

Ten thematic cabinets incorporated into the chronology of the diary showed the decisive events of the journey as dramatic visual-spatial productions – stages for Einstein, his theories and his contemporaries. The stages of the journey were linked by means of a fictive radio series – this radio drama helped visitors to navigate their way through the exhibition. All printed media and the catalogue appeared in Japanese.

Organisers:
the daily newspaper Asahi Shimbun / TV channel TV-Asahi / office of Iglhaut+Partner