The first was the Imaginary Museum of Revolution by Tjebbe van Tijen en Jeffrey Shaw. In Mediamatic vol 2, issue 4 of june 1988, we published their plan for this enormous multi media exhibition of 200 revolutionary moments in modern history. The plan was a competition entry for Parc La Villette in Paris. It contained all kinds of fancy interactive video (using Laser Disk(!) and life size roproductions of revolution monuments.
The thing that I liked the most however were the vending machines (sponsored by Wurlizer). The vending machines contained little toy reproductions of the monuments. For a couple of french francs, you'd buy a statue and take it into the exhibition. The laserdisk machines would have sensors to read the code and play the appropriate AV material to your statuette. This idea to use a meaningful object as your key to the exhibit immediately got stuck in my mind! A brilliant way of avoiding the unattractive area of interactive screens, pointing devices, buttons and what have you to communicate with a machine.
