We are happy to share our collaboration with the Museum of International Folk Art (MOIFA) that allowed Ideum to create an elegant digital interactive for MOIFA’s Appearances Deceive: Embroideries by Policarpio Valencia exhibit. The exhibit showcases the beautiful and complex textile pieces of Policarpio Valencia (1853-1931), a Nuevomexicano artist from Santa Cruz who explored ideas such as spirituality, morality, and mortality within his work. The digital interactive that Ideum created for this exhibition allows visitors to engage more deeply with these intricate textiles via a combination of touch and projection.
Visitors are able to pan and zoom throughout the textiles, explore the reverse side of the textiles, see animations of the text and poems that Valencia stitched into some of the pieces, and read and hear transcripts of these texts in both English and Spanish. All of these features foster clear and accessible interpretation.
The application runs on a 65” open-frame Inline display from Ideum that is housed in a custom table that MOIFA constructed. The touch screen is also connected to a projection that displays what the user is seeing and doing on the touch screen on a larger scale. The projection gives users another vantage point of the work and allows visitors of the gallery who are not directly interacting with the application to experience its interpretation.
Ideum is always thrilled to work with local organizations such as MOIFA, which is based in Santa Fe. Being located and operated in Corrales, New Mexico, Ideum takes great pride in showcasing the rich and meaningful stories of our unique state. One of the most sentimental aspects of this interactive is that for each textile that includes text, MOIFA was able to record various descendants of Policarpio Valencia reading the text in both English and Spanish. Ideum then incorporated these recordings into the interactive, bringing the art to life and grounding it in a sense of place and lineage. These recordings were paired with the text animations Ideum produced, causing each word to glow on the textile as it is read, making it possible for a broad audience to engage with the messaging within the textiles.
Valencia stitched the text into the textiles in formations that range from straightforward lines to fragments scattered around the textile. The text is also stitched in a colloquial New Mexican Spanish dialect that is not as widely spoken today. Because of the dialect and the unconventional word organization, some of the text can be difficult to follow and fully understand. This hurdle is addressed by the relationship between the transcript readings and text animation that Ideum was able to create in this interactive, enabling this hyper-local art to be appreciated in its totality.
In order to achieve this sophisticated and intuitive design, Ideum had to experiment with and create design methods that were new to our team. Ideum’s visual effects (VFX) team was able to translate each textile into a 3D model to use for rigged cloth simulations, making it possible for the digital version of the textiles to behave like fabric as users flip and manipulate them. Our VFX team also worked very meticulously to digitally cut out each letter of the embroidered text to achieve the glowing animation that highlights each word as the text is being read.
On the software development side, our software team was able to incorporate an X-ray-like feature that allows the user to see the stitching on the reverse side of whatever area of the textile they are viewing. These design elements are part of what takes an interactive touch screen software project from good to great, and Ideum is always looking for such opportunities to bring our applications to the highest caliber.
Appearances Deceive: Embroideries by Policarpio Valencia will be on view in MOIFA’s Hispanic Heritage Wing from now until July 27, 2026.
