When you visit the heritage city of Georgetown in Penang, you can spot different murals across its busy streets and lots of art museums of different concepts. And, one of these art museums is the Dark Mansion – 3D Glow in the Dark Museum that offers a unique interactive art experience.

Dark Mansion has a series of interactive 3D exhibits that allows its visitors to be immersed in the games-and-movie-inspired artworks. On its first floor, you can find interactive 3D exhibits inspired by 80’s and 90’s popular games like Snakes and Ladders, Super Mario, Tamagotchi, arcade game “Street Fighter” and Barbie doll.

Then, on the second floor of the Dark Mansion, you’ll experience the movie-inspired interactive 3D artworks with day-to-night transition light effects. It is similar to a trick eye museum but integrated with glow-in-the-dark effect.

Here are the highlights of our visit to the 3D Glow in the Dark Museum:

1. Paint yourself with glow-in-the-dark paint

Our preschool teacher mode worked here. Upon entering the museum, you’ll get access to a booth where washable fluorescent paints are free to use. Different colors are available and they had really cool effects. They can get easily washed off from your skin. But, be careful with the use of paint. Since it can easily be rubbed off, it can get easily spread all over your clothes too.

We put paint all over our arms. So, while we were making poses and taking pictures, I accidentally put paint on Kay’s and Tina’s shirts. Well, they got my shirt rubbed with paint too. We realized we need to go back to the hotel to wash our clothes a bit and dry them.

If you find this a hassle going back to your home or to bring an extra shirt, maybe you can just put a small amount of paint on your hand. That’s easier!

2.Staff members can walk you through the Dark Mansion

During our tour, the staff members walk us through the 3D Glow in the Dark Museum. They gave us some insights about the artworks. They explained to us what poses we can do. They know from which angle to take the photos. I’d say that the staff members were very helpful and insightful.

3.The Museum features day-to-night transition lighting effect

On the second floor of the Museum, you’ll find the actual 3D glow-in-the-dark artworks. Most of the main 3D glow-in-the-dark attractions are inspired by the movie “Avatar”. Super cool actually.

If you’re going to ask, I’d say my favorite artworks are the Stars and Moonlight, Infinity Room, Sunflower Pathway, and “Fire and Water: Tribute to Darwin”.

          A.Fire and Water: Tribute to Darwin

“Fire and Water: Tribute to Darwin” by Edgar Mueller is truly one of the main attractions in the Museum. This is a wall and pavement painting of waterfalls when using a daylight. Once the lights are turned into blacklight, the artwork will become a lava fall. It was like it brought us to two places at once.

            B. Sunflower Pathway

This pathway is covered with full arches of sunflowers. I love how the sunflowers glowed with the blacklight effect. I don’t want to sound cheesy but it reminded me of why the sunflowers are called “sunflower”.

             C.Infinity Room

The Infinity Room has jellyfish-like objects hanging on the ceiling. Its mirrors on the wall made it seemed like the glow-in-the-dark jellyfishes were uncountable and the room appeared like it was boundless.

             D.Stars and Moonlight

At the Stars and Moonlight, I love the backdrop of constellations. Here, you can make it appear like you’re only sitting quietly on the moon. Or, you can strike a pose like Stars Wars “Jedi Knights”.

The Dark Mansion Experience Review

The Museum is a bit small for the price of RMB 15 ( Php 430) that we only spent like 30 minutes going around it. But, we were lucky it wasn’t a busy day for the Museum. We were able to maximize our time inside it.

We really liked the concept of the Dark Mansion, its featured artworks, its glow-in-the-dark effect, and its insightful in-house tour guides. The day-to-night transition light effects with the help of insightful tour guides really made our short but unique interactive artwork tour fun and memorable experience.