Art, design, and technology move fast. All it took for the National Communication Museum to keep up was the right AI platform and the guts to open it to the public.
Not Your Typical Museum
Nothing says ‘don’t touch’ like a museum. Except this one. The National Communication Museum (NCM) opened in late 2024, and it’s already one of the most interactive and innovative in Australia.
Filled with retro devices and nostalgia, NCM knew it needed to step into the future and celebrate new technologies without forgetting the old. So, under the direction of multidisciplinary interactive designer Melanie Huang, NCM invited the public to be part of the exhibit.
Breaking the Rules
Huang opted to play with the past as much as preserve it – and the Future Collection Generator was born. This exhibit posed a question to visitors: what would a communication device of the future even look like?
Part design lab, part retro arcade cabinet, the Future Collection Generator was powered by Leonardo.Ai and open to the public’s imagination.
Visitors got hands-on with the installation to build their own prompts. These included choosing an object from NCM’s main collection, an era, a material, a style, and a type of message they wanted it to deliver.
The Generator explored the back-and-forth relationship between people and technology and struck a chord with everyone who entered. Kids, designers, even grandparents got to play with Leonardo.Ai using their imagination – the most useful tool of all.
Owning the Algorithm
“When I saw the potential of being able to train your own models and have curatorial and creative control of these Gen AI systems, that’s when I really started to explore what was possible.”
– Melanie Huang, Interactive Designer, NCM
Powered by Leonardo’s API in the backend, Huang used Image Guidance, training it on a curated selection of NCM’s vintage collection to generate posters of objects that felt both strange and familiar. She built the entire experience by combining code, hardware, and human imagination into a single machine.
What makes the exhibit work is Huang’s refreshing approach to AI – treating it less like a generator and more like a collaborator. Turns out, people pay more attention when they hear ‘what if?’ instead of ‘don’t touch.’
Since the launch, 3000 unique ‘future devices’ have been dreamed up by the public. Not bad for a brand new museum.
Keep Disrupting Tradition
“I can’t wait for code to be seen as an art medium in itself just like I’ve always seen it. I’m excited about the unknown and all the inspiring AI and art things to come. I want to see a world where we are learning to create software, not just learning to use software.”
– Melanie Huang, Interactive Designer, NCM
Huang, part of the Leonardo Creator Program, uses the platform across everything from commercial activations to personal data visualizations. She credits Leonardo’s backend magic for the success of the exhibition.
Between the National Gallery of Victoria, ACMI, and now NCM, Victoria is truly punching above its weight. Huang’s work with Leonardo has helped put NCM exactly where it belongs: on the map where tech and culture intersect.
While the main collection dates back to the ‘50s – the 1850s, that is – it’s integrated tech like Leonardo.Ai that’s enabling new ideas, conversations and audiences around the past, present and future technologies that connect us all.