On April 6th, International Mine Awareness Day, we staged an exhibition by photographer Marco Grob in The New Museum, New York City. The exhibition was a combination of photography, physical design, mobile guidance and audio design. Visitors were guided using a mobile app called Sweeper, utilizing both visual and audio cues. What the viewer didn’t know was that we had rigged the exhibition with “Digital Mines” using iBeacons. When triggered, the viewer was surprised with an audio replication of an explosion, leading to an educational component explaining what had been triggered and what the consequences were. Finally, viewers were encouraged to donate via text message.

The experience was digital – but the emotions were real. After the New Museum exhibition, UNMAS saw a 152% increase in donations over the previous year, and a 250% increase in traffic to the UNMAS website. The piece was widely discussed on social media with over 150 million impressions, and over $2,500,000 of earned media. Contagious wrote about the experience as having brought a level of emotion to technology that they had never seen before.