http://exhibitfiles.org/browse/index The most recent activity on ExhibitFiles en-us Fri, 05 Feb 2010 13:44:55 -0800 How do you make an exhibition about minerals, with a challenging budget, interesting for a very varied target audience? With the in house team including and the exhibition's curator, we recognised his unique personality and created his alter ego, Dr Rock. The team developed a storyline that he had been secretly working in a long lost gallery in the museum, only just discovered by the authorities, during building works. Visitors are invited to explore this "recent" find to discover his mineral collections and experiments. http://exhibitfiles.org/dr_rocks_lost_gallery http://exhibitfiles.org/dr_rocks_lost_gallery Wed, 03 Feb 2010 16:09:51 -0800 Having heard much about the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) and the Luce Foundation Center’s museum game “Ghosts of a Chance”, I decided I too wanted to visit the Luce Center at SAAM and play around in the much-talked about interactive collections storage area. The day before my anticipated foray to downtown DC I visited their website and downloaded a PDF of a scavenger hunt from their “Fun Downloads” page. I was very much looking forward to completing the “New Deal” museum scavenger hunt, as it seemed pretty relevant to current political and social climates. When a snowstorm rolled through Washington, my museum plans were unfortunately thwarted. However, I decided Jack Frost wouldn’t stop my afternoon at the Luce Foundation Center, which boasts a comprehensive collection website as part of their museum visit experience and collections exploration experience. I amended my plans and downloaded a scavenger hunt for their website instead and decided I would be a virtual museum visitor. The scavenger hunt itself was easily accessible, and downloaded into a manageable one-page PDF. Though the design and layout of the document seemed lacking in certain aesthetics compared to what I had expected from their sleek and elegant website, I was still excited for my virtual visit via scavenger hunt. Additionally, the picture quality was very low on the PDF, which is often a problem when adding multiple images to a document and compressing it for easy web access. The scavenger hunt consisted of seven questions with corresponding image clips. From the question, one is supposed to be able to search the Luce website and find the artifact in the image clip and examine it and its information to discover the answer and learn a bit about American history and objects at the SAAM. The questions seemed compelling, and the small thumbnails of images were also interesting and I could immediately see the Luce Foundation Center had attempted to include various types of media in the hunt. The instructions seemed direct enough, and even provided a link to the website, however, here is where my technological disappointments began. The link did not access the website. There was a letter or symbol dropped somewhere along the translation of clicking the link and arriving to the web. Luckily, it wasn’t such a mystery, as I’d just been to the website to download the scavenger hunt, so it was easy enough for me to navigate back to search the collection. The questions accompanying the pictured art and artifacts asked me to investigate the captions, the object label, and the object itself. Unfortunately, I became almost immediately frustrated with the limitations of technology and quality, as I found it difficult to zoom in close enough to really examine certain objects and answer the corresponding questions. For one question, I could not even find the particular video clip on the website, and therefore could not answer the question and also missed out on an experience I would have liked. The losses made my scavenger hunt feel less successful and less like a game and more like a chore I felt more and more skeptical about the further I got into it. The hunt also seemed to end abruptly, and would have been more compelling and satisfying if each answer or discovery contributed to a larger overall message or new fact about American history. The Luce Foundation Center would benefit from making sure the quality of their “Fun Downloads” matches the expectations set up by their website and virtual presence. Additionally, more clarity and flexibility with the images, such as producing even higher resolution versions online and allowing for interaction such as virtual pivoting and rotating would greatly enhance the amount of time a scavenger hunter would spend looking at and examining the objects. For all the technological flaws and frustrations I experienced during my virtual visit to the Luce Foundation Center, I did come away with new knowledge about the Center, SAAM, and about American history and art in general. I learned that the Center has many objects of many mediums in their collection, and each object is complete with a bit of history and catalog information. I learned that some artworks from more recent times can adequately represent past times where social and political climates in America were similar, and I learned that Abe Lincoln was a handsome yet spindly youth. http://exhibitfiles.org/american_history_scavenger_hunt http://exhibitfiles.org/american_history_scavenger_hunt Thu, 21 Jan 2010 13:56:22 -0800 The electromagnetic spectrum has always been a tough topic to make accessible to museum visitors. After all, only a small sliver of the EM spectrum can be seen with our eyes. Most of what gets "imaged" across the spectrum, is pictured with high-tech, scientific hardware. The importance of the EM Spectrum in the field of astronomy can't be overstated. For example, six of the ten Nobel prizes (in physics) awarded for astronomical research have been for discoveries related to radio astronomy alone. Research in other areas such as infrared, gamma rays and x-rays have also greatly contributed to our understanding of the Universe. Over the years, strong exhibits have been developed looking at particular wavelengths such infrared and ultraviolet. The challenge here was to develop an exhibit that would allow visitors to actively learn about the entire spectrum. The exhibit is comprised of a multitouch table with a 100" surface (86" viewable area) with a 16:5 ratio aspect. The exhibit software presents a digital representation of the EM spectrum from radio waves to gamma rays. The images change in real-time as they are moved, allowing visitors to see how the object can be perceived differently in each wavelength of the EM spectrum. Visitors (up to eight simultaneously) can move images across the spectrum see how they change. If images are not interacted with they will slowly disappear from the table and new image will appear on the table in random wavelength and with a random orientation. Visitors can also select to close an image, bringing up a new one. The exhibit never looks the same as images appear and disappear dynamically. Visitors can access "drawers" that provide more information about each wavelength. These drawers are symmetric, allowing visitors on either side of the table to access information. Text throughout the exhibit is decidedly short, but as visitors explore more objects and drawers they begin to get more complete picture of the EM Spectrum. The table form factor provides a social space, where visitors can interact with the images, access information about the EM Spectrum and have conversations about what they are interacting with. Unlike traditional kiosks, multiple visitors can simultaneously interact. The multitouch table recognizes up to 50 points, so full hand gestures are supported. Visitors can share images of interest by passing them across the table, as they would objects. The custom EM Spectrum software program was developed with Adobe Flash and uses our own GestureWorks multitouch framework. The table includes both celestial images (mostly from NASA sources) and terrestrial images that were photographed specifically for the exhibit. The inclusion of terrestrial, everyday objects was an important consideration, making the exhibit more accessible and understandable. Ideum conducted a multi-wave form photo shoot in thermal infrared, reflected infrared, visible, ultraviolet light and X-ray. Information about each object can be accessed, this contextual information changes as the image is moved from wavelength to wavelength. The text content was developed by educators at Adventure Science Center and was reviewed by scientific advisors. The exhibit is powered by two custom-built computers and four infrared cameras provide the tracking. The multitouch table uses two projectors with specialized software to seamlessly blend the image. Unlike top projection systems, the table surface is never "shadowed" by visitors hands, and the table is much more responsive due to the number and close placement of the infrared cameras. The table was built for a busy museum environment. We used aircraft-grade aluminum for the frame, steel panels, and the top table surface is made out of micro-etched "haptic" tempered glass. Blue LEDs were added to the bottom of the table to make it appear to float in the gallery space. http://exhibitfiles.org/space_imaging_em_spectrum_multitouch_multiuser_exhibit http://exhibitfiles.org/space_imaging_em_spectrum_multitouch_multiuser_exhibit Sun, 31 Jan 2010 19:04:00 -0800 Review of YOU! at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. Opened fall of 2009. Permanent exhibition. My friend Nancy and I went to see the YOU! exhibition on Jan. 21, 2010. MSI admission is free in January, so we figured it would be a good deal. Still had to pay $16 to park. YOU! is 15,000 square feet. $21 million. 4 years in the planning. How does this compare with Denver Museum of Nature and Science’s Expedition Health? I wondered because I’d worked on that one with Jeff Kenney Associates. (Check out MSI’s website for the YOU! exhibit video. You’ll see many of the same exhibits I’ve discussed and photographed here with my iPhone.) We walked into the balcony space off the elevator. There was no orientation information at all. You just got dumped into the exhibition in the middle. I guess it was the middle only because the parts at the end of the balcony were about being old and The Future. We started there. Overall, there was no theme, coherence, context, or big ideas. Just information, technology, “interactivity,” and “PLEASE PARDON OUR APPEARANCE” (code for “broken exhibit”). The graphics and colors were attractive, readable, not overwhelming for the most part. One of the broken exhibits was a “human hamster wheel” that was used extensively in MSI’s ad campaign when the exhibition first opened in October 2009. It broke soon after (from kids puking in it, I heard), and it’s still down. Nice layout. Bounded by the balcony floor plan. At 15,000 square feet, YOU! is big, but you can mostly see where you are because of the open balcony layout, which makes it actually seem smaller. I don’t know how many exhibit elements there were. We stopped at about 25 and spent a little over an hour. It was the only exhibition we came to see, and we were not in a hurry. There were several things I liked that I had not seen before: • A backlit 3-part panel that let you make a list of things to do before you die. This was in the Future section. 100 Things To Do had 100 suggestions that you could drag and drop onto your own “goals” sheet, after making your own file with your age on it. Supposedly the exhibit kept a tally on the selections and age groups, but obviously people were really being silly. For example, a thing to do was “play soccer,” and it was listed as “most popular” choice of 94-year-olds. I selected “have children” among my five choices. You could insert your exhibit Sci-pass card to record your goals and go to the MSI website to get a printout from home. The slide-drop technology worked well. There were no directions, and it was fairly transparent to me but not to my friend Nancy, who is less exhibit-computer savvy than me (and I’m no whiz). • We sat down to play the Forum group discussion that was empty except for us. It was a little slow (lots of talking heads), but the program was interesting and contained real issues. I came away suspicious of the conclusions because it said that 85% of the users voted for “yes” and 15% said “no” for our discussion session. But it was just me and Nancy playing the game, so it should have said 50-50. The stools had sensors in them so you couldn’t play three screens at once! • Gunther’s body works were there: a male torso, a female torso, the central circulatory system, the basic nerves, and the digestive tract (my personal favorite). And a huge Exploded Man with all the parts, which reminded me of a diagram of a dissembled VW in an old repair manual. The small labels that accompanied these specimens did not identify them as real bodies or give credit to the maker. Hmmm, why not? • I’d read about but never experienced a vision tracker. I watched a video and then saw it again with an orange circle that indicated where my eyes had been focused on the screen. Very cool. It didn’t work for Nancy—because she had contact lenses? I tried to play it a second time, and the computer said it couldn’t calibrate my eyes either. Strange. There were a couple of things I’d seen before that I was glad to see again: • Like we had at Denver, there was Mind Ball. Always a popular exercise. Fun to do and fun to watch. There was a crowd around it. And Vein Viewer. Although in both cases at MSI, I thought the Denver interpretive labels were much better because they were more integrated with the context and experience of the exhibit, not just a panel hung on the wall. • MSI’s fetal development specimens are nicely reinstalled in a special dark room. It is a fabulous, never-to-be-duplicated collection. The Real Thing. People of all ages moved slowly and thoroughly through the displays, gawking and talking. The movie at the end is a glossily animated version of the story, nothing real. • I had to hug one of the exhibits! They saved and reinstalled a couple of the wonderful old body slices. I remember these from the Blue Stairway days. They were old when I first saw them in 1965. One of my all-time favorite exhibits. • I recognized one central piece as a Scott Snibbe installation. Cameras and your movements translated onto a big screen. Very beautiful and engaging. Apparently there are several scenarios—including a tai chi lesson, a hip-hop lesson and an open-ended do-it-yourself time (in photo). Too much text; pseudointeractives There were lots of things that had too much text, and pseudointeractivity to get you to expose yourself to more text to read, e.g., push a button, lift a label, use a computer screen. What is interactive about pushing a button that lights up a fake piece of pizza and a label in a dark box? Miscellaneous…. MSI also had a face-aging station, but I didn’t think it was as effective as Denver’s. This one also took a long time to do it, which created long lines of waiting visitors. MSI had two stations back to back. YOU! had a voice-aging exhibit, but it was not very convincing or clear. There was a video exhibit of laughing faces that were motion sensitive. If you stood still, the people didn’t laugh. You moved, and they laughed. So what was that supposed to mean? I found out later that this was another Scott Snibbe exhibit. It was supposed to inspire infectious laughter. After I thought about it more, I was really disappointed with the disconnect between the exhibit’s objective and my experience. I felt no connection with the faces or their emotions. A connection would be based on my having empathy for the person in the video, but in this case, it was a diverse bunch of strangers with no back story. No more Giant Heart to walk through (boo-hoo). Just a bar to hold onto that read your heart rate and made a giant flat screen video of a heart beating in time with yours. Denver’s heart rate exhibits were more engaging. After I got home I used my Sci-pass to see what information showed up on the MSI website. My list from 100 Things to Do was there, but it was in a generic typeface, totally lacking the fun graphics of the original exhibit. All in all, Nancy and I gave YOU! a “C.” http://exhibitfiles.org/you4 http://exhibitfiles.org/you4 Wed, 06 Jan 2010 07:51:09 -0800 Mass MoCA is about 3 hours from where I live and I travel with three small children, so it takes a compelling show to get me there. You Art What You Eat: Food as Art Material in Kidspace, the museum’s hands-on family gallery, did not disappoint. The show is fun, funny, visually engaging and interesting on enough levels that adults and children can enjoy it together. In addition to being appropriate for its family audience, the show also continues a tradition of Kidspace to take children seriously as museum-goers. It presents materials and themes that younger visitors can appreciate, drawing them into the broader experience of viewing and interacting with artworks in the museum setting. You Art What You Eat is Kidspace’s largest group-show to date, featuring 5 artists who use food as their primary material and inspiration in sculptures, dioramas, photographs, video, paintings, installation, and even in song. There are two children’s book authors in the show: Saxton Freymann whose books have inspired art-making at my own dinner table, and Joan Steiner who works in visual puns in her series Look Alikes. In addition there are Jell-O sculptures of cities and historical monuments by Liz Hickok, candy wrapper curtains by Luisa Caldwell, and two installations by Chandra Bocci. My favorite works were Bocci’s. In Coral Reef ice cream cones and pastel mints mix with plastic sponges and other materials to create a 3-D reef colonizing three large windowsills. The use of man-made materials and processed foods to represent the natural beauty and fragility of reefs underscores just how un-natural many of our foods are, and link that to the environmental impact of our food choices. Her other piece, a 14’ Big Bang made from gummies stretched out on wires extending down and even overhead from a central core, also uses a fabricated material to talk about the most fundamental organic process of creation. Although the artworks have a point the show is not about getting people to change their eating habits. In fact, with the exception of Freymann, all the other artists work with candy. Half the fun is in identifying the food used in the work, a kind of I Spy game that gives visual pleasure while encouraging close attention and visual discrimination. In the art making area visitors had access to fruit loops, pasta, beans, food stickers, and other supplies with which to make their own food art. This was the one area I was slightly disappointed. I would have liked to see more art-making tools such as an animation station, or light board for example. The gallery is big enough to develop a richer creation experience. Visitors were also invited to contribute to a collaborative food mural that hung on one wall. A graphic suggested that this group work referenced the Sol LeWitt show installed elsewhere in the museum. While I didn’t see the specific connection I appreciated the point that visitors to this gallery were invited to explore the museum as a whole and that there were things throughout the exhibits that family audiences would appreciate. I think it is fair to measure the success of Kidspace in large part in its ability to get children to see Mass MoCA as their place too, and adults to see it as a family destination. According to that criteria, You Art What You Eat succeeded in spades. http://exhibitfiles.org/you_art_what_you_eat_food_as_art_material http://exhibitfiles.org/you_art_what_you_eat_food_as_art_material Tue, 22 Dec 2009 05:17:13 -0800 To present a comprehensive treatment of the energy situation in the United States in a way that would improve public understanding of both that situation and its potential solutions http://exhibitfiles.org/united_states_exhibition_ http://exhibitfiles.org/united_states_exhibition_ Tue, 24 Nov 2009 07:26:26 -0800 The ULP offers a new proposal. This is the 'Interactive Science Center', which is located in the Astronomical Park La Punta (Palp). This initiative adds to the park tour, and presents twelve interactive modules with activities that allow you to experience various phenomena directly. The science center can be visited from Monday to Friday from 9 to 19, or Saturday and Sunday from 14 to 20. For this activity we have trained staff offering an explanation of each module. We want to visit us, especially teachers with their students. Especially is a valid alternative to close subjects that were studied during the year. The modules offer experiences with scientific rigor and different branches of science. One of them is related to the chemistry and electrochemistry, and develops in a electrolytic cell. It is the separation of water into oxygen and hydrogen through electricity. This proposal remarks that hydrogen is a fuel of the future, which is very clean, and is used in rockets and cars with advanced technologies. Following that line, there is a place where kids can activate a photoelectric cell to move a motor. Thus, they may know what is a photocell and what are its principles. "If you can see the light causes electricity to be generated and move a machine. The couple has direct experience with that. We say that it is forbidden not to touch. Thus, we encourage the kids to come, play, play, and participate. " The exhibition is the beginning, but soon will expand the horizons of the same. La ULP ofrece una nueva propuesta. Se trata del ‘Centro Interactivo de Ciencias’, que se encuentra emplazado en el Parque Astronómico La Punta (PALP). Esta iniciativa se suma al recorrido por el parque, y presenta doce módulos interactivos, con actividades que permiten experimentar en persona distintos fenómenos. El centro científico se puede visitar de lunes a viernes de 9 a 19, o sábados y domingos de 14 a 20. Para esta actividad tenemos personal capacitado que ofrece una explicación de cada módulo. Queremos que nos visiten, especialmente, docentes con sus alumnos. Sobre todo, en esta época es una alternativa válida para cerrar temas que se estudiaron durante el año. Los módulos ofrecen experiencias con rigor científico y abarcan distintas ramas de la ciencia. Uno de ellos esta relacionado con la química y la electroquímica, y se desarrolla en una cuba electrolítica. Se hace la separación del agua en oxígeno e hidrógeno, a través de electricidad. En esta propuesta se destaca que el hidrógeno es un combustible del futuro, que es muy limpio, y que se usa en cohetes y autos con tecnologías avanzadas. Siguiendo esa línea, hay un lugar donde los chicos pueden activar una célula fotoeléctrica para mover un motor. De ese modo, podrán conocer lo que es una célula fotoeléctrica y cuáles son sus principios. “Si se puede ver que la luz hace que se genere electricidad y que mueva una máquina. El joven tiene una experiencia directa con eso. Decimos que está prohibido no tocar. De este modo, incentivamos para que los chicos vengan, toquen, jueguen, y participen”. La Exhibicion esta sus comienzos, pero pronto ampliaremos los horizontes de la misma. http://exhibitfiles.org/centro_interactivo_de_ciencias http://exhibitfiles.org/centro_interactivo_de_ciencias Thu, 05 Nov 2009 07:32:07 -0800 I'm sure in many people's minds The Sixth Floor Museum is thought of as "the place where Oswald shot Kennedy." It is of course that, but the museum strives to present President Kennedy, his life, his political legacy, and his last few hours in Dallas, in context. This is a tricky job, given that the open space they have to work with is one floor of a fairly mundane warehouse building, and that there are not that many artifacts on view. The "heavy lifting" design-wise is left to a maze of graphic panels and an excellent audio tour produced by Antenna Audio. Along the circuitous route of information panels, the museum provides a bit of history regarding President Kennedy's time in office and the events immediately before and after his assassination. There are also opportunities to pause and watch short video presentations about significant events in Kennedy's presidency and the events leading up to his death in Dallas. I would like to say that the corner window (behind plexiglas panels) that Oswald used to fire on the presidential limousine was not the "highlight" of The Sixth Floor experience, but, inevitably, it was. It was strange to see how the location Oswald chose (directly above a sharp hairpin curve on the motorcade's route) was ideal for his purpose. That all being said, there is a "strength of place" surrounding the whole "Sixth Floor" experience similar to the way I felt standing near the site of the Old North Bridge in Concord, MA --- the realization that this very ordinary place was the site of an extraordinary moment that shifted history in a significant way. http://exhibitfiles.org/the_sixth_floor_museum http://exhibitfiles.org/the_sixth_floor_museum Wed, 03 Feb 2010 16:09:51 -0800 Having heard much about the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) and the Luce Foundation Center’s museum game “Ghosts of a Chance”, I decided I too wanted to visit the Luce Center at SAAM and play around in the much-talked about interactive collections storage area. The day before my anticipated foray to downtown DC I visited their website and downloaded a PDF of a scavenger hunt from their “Fun Downloads” page. I was very much looking forward to completing the “New Deal” museum scavenger hunt, as it seemed pretty relevant to current political and social climates. When a snowstorm rolled through Washington, my museum plans were unfortunately thwarted. However, I decided Jack Frost wouldn’t stop my afternoon at the Luce Foundation Center, which boasts a comprehensive collection website as part of their museum visit experience and collections exploration experience. I amended my plans and downloaded a scavenger hunt for their website instead and decided I would be a virtual museum visitor. The scavenger hunt itself was easily accessible, and downloaded into a manageable one-page PDF. Though the design and layout of the document seemed lacking in certain aesthetics compared to what I had expected from their sleek and elegant website, I was still excited for my virtual visit via scavenger hunt. Additionally, the picture quality was very low on the PDF, which is often a problem when adding multiple images to a document and compressing it for easy web access. The scavenger hunt consisted of seven questions with corresponding image clips. From the question, one is supposed to be able to search the Luce website and find the artifact in the image clip and examine it and its information to discover the answer and learn a bit about American history and objects at the SAAM. The questions seemed compelling, and the small thumbnails of images were also interesting and I could immediately see the Luce Foundation Center had attempted to include various types of media in the hunt. The instructions seemed direct enough, and even provided a link to the website, however, here is where my technological disappointments began. The link did not access the website. There was a letter or symbol dropped somewhere along the translation of clicking the link and arriving to the web. Luckily, it wasn’t such a mystery, as I’d just been to the website to download the scavenger hunt, so it was easy enough for me to navigate back to search the collection. The questions accompanying the pictured art and artifacts asked me to investigate the captions, the object label, and the object itself. Unfortunately, I became almost immediately frustrated with the limitations of technology and quality, as I found it difficult to zoom in close enough to really examine certain objects and answer the corresponding questions. For one question, I could not even find the particular video clip on the website, and therefore could not answer the question and also missed out on an experience I would have liked. The losses made my scavenger hunt feel less successful and less like a game and more like a chore I felt more and more skeptical about the further I got into it. The hunt also seemed to end abruptly, and would have been more compelling and satisfying if each answer or discovery contributed to a larger overall message or new fact about American history. The Luce Foundation Center would benefit from making sure the quality of their “Fun Downloads” matches the expectations set up by their website and virtual presence. Additionally, more clarity and flexibility with the images, such as producing even higher resolution versions online and allowing for interaction such as virtual pivoting and rotating would greatly enhance the amount of time a scavenger hunter would spend looking at and examining the objects. For all the technological flaws and frustrations I experienced during my virtual visit to the Luce Foundation Center, I did come away with new knowledge about the Center, SAAM, and about American history and art in general. I learned that the Center has many objects of many mediums in their collection, and each object is complete with a bit of history and catalog information. I learned that some artworks from more recent times can adequately represent past times where social and political climates in America were similar, and I learned that Abe Lincoln was a handsome yet spindly youth. http://exhibitfiles.org/american_history_scavenger_hunt http://exhibitfiles.org/american_history_scavenger_hunt Sun, 31 Jan 2010 19:04:00 -0800 Review of YOU! at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. Opened fall of 2009. Permanent exhibition. My friend Nancy and I went to see the YOU! exhibition on Jan. 21, 2010. MSI admission is free in January, so we figured it would be a good deal. Still had to pay $16 to park. YOU! is 15,000 square feet. $21 million. 4 years in the planning. How does this compare with Denver Museum of Nature and Science’s Expedition Health? I wondered because I’d worked on that one with Jeff Kenney Associates. (Check out MSI’s website for the YOU! exhibit video. You’ll see many of the same exhibits I’ve discussed and photographed here with my iPhone.) We walked into the balcony space off the elevator. There was no orientation information at all. You just got dumped into the exhibition in the middle. I guess it was the middle only because the parts at the end of the balcony were about being old and The Future. We started there. Overall, there was no theme, coherence, context, or big ideas. Just information, technology, “interactivity,” and “PLEASE PARDON OUR APPEARANCE” (code for “broken exhibit”). The graphics and colors were attractive, readable, not overwhelming for the most part. One of the broken exhibits was a “human hamster wheel” that was used extensively in MSI’s ad campaign when the exhibition first opened in October 2009. It broke soon after (from kids puking in it, I heard), and it’s still down. Nice layout. Bounded by the balcony floor plan. At 15,000 square feet, YOU! is big, but you can mostly see where you are because of the open balcony layout, which makes it actually seem smaller. I don’t know how many exhibit elements there were. We stopped at about 25 and spent a little over an hour. It was the only exhibition we came to see, and we were not in a hurry. There were several things I liked that I had not seen before: • A backlit 3-part panel that let you make a list of things to do before you die. This was in the Future section. 100 Things To Do had 100 suggestions that you could drag and drop onto your own “goals” sheet, after making your own file with your age on it. Supposedly the exhibit kept a tally on the selections and age groups, but obviously people were really being silly. For example, a thing to do was “play soccer,” and it was listed as “most popular” choice of 94-year-olds. I selected “have children” among my five choices. You could insert your exhibit Sci-pass card to record your goals and go to the MSI website to get a printout from home. The slide-drop technology worked well. There were no directions, and it was fairly transparent to me but not to my friend Nancy, who is less exhibit-computer savvy than me (and I’m no whiz). • We sat down to play the Forum group discussion that was empty except for us. It was a little slow (lots of talking heads), but the program was interesting and contained real issues. I came away suspicious of the conclusions because it said that 85% of the users voted for “yes” and 15% said “no” for our discussion session. But it was just me and Nancy playing the game, so it should have said 50-50. The stools had sensors in them so you couldn’t play three screens at once! • Gunther’s body works were there: a male torso, a female torso, the central circulatory system, the basic nerves, and the digestive tract (my personal favorite). And a huge Exploded Man with all the parts, which reminded me of a diagram of a dissembled VW in an old repair manual. The small labels that accompanied these specimens did not identify them as real bodies or give credit to the maker. Hmmm, why not? • I’d read about but never experienced a vision tracker. I watched a video and then saw it again with an orange circle that indicated where my eyes had been focused on the screen. Very cool. It didn’t work for Nancy—because she had contact lenses? I tried to play it a second time, and the computer said it couldn’t calibrate my eyes either. Strange. There were a couple of things I’d seen before that I was glad to see again: • Like we had at Denver, there was Mind Ball. Always a popular exercise. Fun to do and fun to watch. There was a crowd around it. And Vein Viewer. Although in both cases at MSI, I thought the Denver interpretive labels were much better because they were more integrated with the context and experience of the exhibit, not just a panel hung on the wall. • MSI’s fetal development specimens are nicely reinstalled in a special dark room. It is a fabulous, never-to-be-duplicated collection. The Real Thing. People of all ages moved slowly and thoroughly through the displays, gawking and talking. The movie at the end is a glossily animated version of the story, nothing real. • I had to hug one of the exhibits! They saved and reinstalled a couple of the wonderful old body slices. I remember these from the Blue Stairway days. They were old when I first saw them in 1965. One of my all-time favorite exhibits. • I recognized one central piece as a Scott Snibbe installation. Cameras and your movements translated onto a big screen. Very beautiful and engaging. Apparently there are several scenarios—including a tai chi lesson, a hip-hop lesson and an open-ended do-it-yourself time (in photo). Too much text; pseudointeractives There were lots of things that had too much text, and pseudointeractivity to get you to expose yourself to more text to read, e.g., push a button, lift a label, use a computer screen. What is interactive about pushing a button that lights up a fake piece of pizza and a label in a dark box? Miscellaneous…. MSI also had a face-aging station, but I didn’t think it was as effective as Denver’s. This one also took a long time to do it, which created long lines of waiting visitors. MSI had two stations back to back. YOU! had a voice-aging exhibit, but it was not very convincing or clear. There was a video exhibit of laughing faces that were motion sensitive. If you stood still, the people didn’t laugh. You moved, and they laughed. So what was that supposed to mean? I found out later that this was another Scott Snibbe exhibit. It was supposed to inspire infectious laughter. After I thought about it more, I was really disappointed with the disconnect between the exhibit’s objective and my experience. I felt no connection with the faces or their emotions. A connection would be based on my having empathy for the person in the video, but in this case, it was a diverse bunch of strangers with no back story. No more Giant Heart to walk through (boo-hoo). Just a bar to hold onto that read your heart rate and made a giant flat screen video of a heart beating in time with yours. Denver’s heart rate exhibits were more engaging. After I got home I used my Sci-pass to see what information showed up on the MSI website. My list from 100 Things to Do was there, but it was in a generic typeface, totally lacking the fun graphics of the original exhibit. All in all, Nancy and I gave YOU! a “C.” http://exhibitfiles.org/you4 http://exhibitfiles.org/you4 Wed, 06 Jan 2010 07:51:09 -0800 Mass MoCA is about 3 hours from where I live and I travel with three small children, so it takes a compelling show to get me there. You Art What You Eat: Food as Art Material in Kidspace, the museum’s hands-on family gallery, did not disappoint. The show is fun, funny, visually engaging and interesting on enough levels that adults and children can enjoy it together. In addition to being appropriate for its family audience, the show also continues a tradition of Kidspace to take children seriously as museum-goers. It presents materials and themes that younger visitors can appreciate, drawing them into the broader experience of viewing and interacting with artworks in the museum setting. You Art What You Eat is Kidspace’s largest group-show to date, featuring 5 artists who use food as their primary material and inspiration in sculptures, dioramas, photographs, video, paintings, installation, and even in song. There are two children’s book authors in the show: Saxton Freymann whose books have inspired art-making at my own dinner table, and Joan Steiner who works in visual puns in her series Look Alikes. In addition there are Jell-O sculptures of cities and historical monuments by Liz Hickok, candy wrapper curtains by Luisa Caldwell, and two installations by Chandra Bocci. My favorite works were Bocci’s. In Coral Reef ice cream cones and pastel mints mix with plastic sponges and other materials to create a 3-D reef colonizing three large windowsills. The use of man-made materials and processed foods to represent the natural beauty and fragility of reefs underscores just how un-natural many of our foods are, and link that to the environmental impact of our food choices. Her other piece, a 14’ Big Bang made from gummies stretched out on wires extending down and even overhead from a central core, also uses a fabricated material to talk about the most fundamental organic process of creation. Although the artworks have a point the show is not about getting people to change their eating habits. In fact, with the exception of Freymann, all the other artists work with candy. Half the fun is in identifying the food used in the work, a kind of I Spy game that gives visual pleasure while encouraging close attention and visual discrimination. In the art making area visitors had access to fruit loops, pasta, beans, food stickers, and other supplies with which to make their own food art. This was the one area I was slightly disappointed. I would have liked to see more art-making tools such as an animation station, or light board for example. The gallery is big enough to develop a richer creation experience. Visitors were also invited to contribute to a collaborative food mural that hung on one wall. A graphic suggested that this group work referenced the Sol LeWitt show installed elsewhere in the museum. While I didn’t see the specific connection I appreciated the point that visitors to this gallery were invited to explore the museum as a whole and that there were things throughout the exhibits that family audiences would appreciate. I think it is fair to measure the success of Kidspace in large part in its ability to get children to see Mass MoCA as their place too, and adults to see it as a family destination. According to that criteria, You Art What You Eat succeeded in spades. http://exhibitfiles.org/you_art_what_you_eat_food_as_art_material http://exhibitfiles.org/you_art_what_you_eat_food_as_art_material Tue, 24 Nov 2009 07:26:26 -0800 The ULP offers a new proposal. This is the 'Interactive Science Center', which is located in the Astronomical Park La Punta (Palp). This initiative adds to the park tour, and presents twelve interactive modules with activities that allow you to experience various phenomena directly. The science center can be visited from Monday to Friday from 9 to 19, or Saturday and Sunday from 14 to 20. For this activity we have trained staff offering an explanation of each module. We want to visit us, especially teachers with their students. Especially is a valid alternative to close subjects that were studied during the year. The modules offer experiences with scientific rigor and different branches of science. One of them is related to the chemistry and electrochemistry, and develops in a electrolytic cell. It is the separation of water into oxygen and hydrogen through electricity. This proposal remarks that hydrogen is a fuel of the future, which is very clean, and is used in rockets and cars with advanced technologies. Following that line, there is a place where kids can activate a photoelectric cell to move a motor. Thus, they may know what is a photocell and what are its principles. "If you can see the light causes electricity to be generated and move a machine. The couple has direct experience with that. We say that it is forbidden not to touch. Thus, we encourage the kids to come, play, play, and participate. " The exhibition is the beginning, but soon will expand the horizons of the same. La ULP ofrece una nueva propuesta. Se trata del ‘Centro Interactivo de Ciencias’, que se encuentra emplazado en el Parque Astronómico La Punta (PALP). Esta iniciativa se suma al recorrido por el parque, y presenta doce módulos interactivos, con actividades que permiten experimentar en persona distintos fenómenos. El centro científico se puede visitar de lunes a viernes de 9 a 19, o sábados y domingos de 14 a 20. Para esta actividad tenemos personal capacitado que ofrece una explicación de cada módulo. Queremos que nos visiten, especialmente, docentes con sus alumnos. Sobre todo, en esta época es una alternativa válida para cerrar temas que se estudiaron durante el año. Los módulos ofrecen experiencias con rigor científico y abarcan distintas ramas de la ciencia. Uno de ellos esta relacionado con la química y la electroquímica, y se desarrolla en una cuba electrolítica. Se hace la separación del agua en oxígeno e hidrógeno, a través de electricidad. En esta propuesta se destaca que el hidrógeno es un combustible del futuro, que es muy limpio, y que se usa en cohetes y autos con tecnologías avanzadas. Siguiendo esa línea, hay un lugar donde los chicos pueden activar una célula fotoeléctrica para mover un motor. De ese modo, podrán conocer lo que es una célula fotoeléctrica y cuáles son sus principios. “Si se puede ver que la luz hace que se genere electricidad y que mueva una máquina. El joven tiene una experiencia directa con eso. Decimos que está prohibido no tocar. De este modo, incentivamos para que los chicos vengan, toquen, jueguen, y participen”. La Exhibicion esta sus comienzos, pero pronto ampliaremos los horizontes de la misma. http://exhibitfiles.org/centro_interactivo_de_ciencias http://exhibitfiles.org/centro_interactivo_de_ciencias Mon, 08 Feb 2010 13:34:21 -0800 http://exhibitfiles.org/gannon_kashiwa http://exhibitfiles.org/gannon_kashiwa Mon, 08 Feb 2010 12:07:42 -0800 http://exhibitfiles.org/patricia_ward http://exhibitfiles.org/patricia_ward Mon, 08 Feb 2010 07:15:36 -0800 http://exhibitfiles.org/janice_ http://exhibitfiles.org/janice_ Sun, 07 Feb 2010 08:34:20 -0800 http://exhibitfiles.org/dan_bartlett http://exhibitfiles.org/dan_bartlett Mon, 08 Feb 2010 22:09:44 +0000 As Project Director for YOU! The Experience, I feel it’s important to respond to the review posted by Beverly Serrell. The goal of this posting is not to present an overview of YOU! The Experience or its objectives, but rather to respond to several statements in the review article; some of which are factually incorrect and others which reflect either the author’s bias or the superficiality of the conclusions. To clarify specific points from Serrell’s article: YOU! The Experience is located on the Museum’s north balcony; a U-shaped space that has 3 access points due to the configuration of the >100 year-old building. The 8 areas that comprise the exhibit are designed to be explored in any order. The 2 key entry points (used by the majority of guests) have entry panels that serve to orient guests and set the stage for what’s to come. Each area has its own theme, identified by a “signpost” graphic panel and unified by a concise color scheme; for example, the “Your Future” area mentioned in the review article. The author apparently came into the exhibit through the 3rd and lesser-used entry point and did not see the entry panels. The plastinated specimens are indeed from Gunther von Hagens’ Institute for Plastination (IfP) and are presented in 9 display cases integrated throughout the exhibition. The author wondered why the plastinates are not identified as originating from von Hagens. In fact they are—on 2 graphic panels placed at either end of the overall collection. We chose not to incorporate the IfP or von Hagens’ information within each display case as the exhibition is not about Gunther von Hagens or Body Worlds. The exhibition is about personal health and wellbeing; your body, your mind, your choices, your environment and medicine. Museum volunteers are frequently stationed in the YOU! exhibition near the plastinates to answer questions. Through their feedback, we have discovered that many people do not realize the specimens are real and we plan to include labels that make this clear to all of our guests. The Hamster Wheel (part of the area “Your Movement”) was indeed closed down for a period of time, due to a faulty bearing, not as the author stated to “kids puking in the wheel.” The author complained of “pseudointeractivity and too much text.” In this 15,000 square foot exhibition with nearly 50 interactive experiences, there is ONE set of lift panels that interpret research data on the subject of happiness, grounding an obviously challenging area of study in academic research. There isn’t a single computer screen in the entire exhibit that is used to “get people to read more text.” Other statements reflect a superficiality of both observation and conclusion. For example a “push a button to look into a black box” refers to a series of view ports that illustrate the vast changes in portion size of 5 different common food items; comparing 35 years ago to today. Pushing the button illuminates the model inside the view port—representing the food item’s typical portion size from 1975. A brief moment later, the image of today’s portion size is superimposed, using a “pepper’s ghost” lighting trick—a comparison that doesn’t fail to catch people’s attention. The Future Forum does not in fact have “sensors in the stools.” It is designed to tally votes through a series of questions throughout the activity, none of which require yes/no answers, so it’s unclear what the author was thinking from her remarks. As part of a remedial evaluation study, we discovered that all participants in the evaluation found the activity enjoyable and useful and would not change the length. Due to the statistical tallying and nested decisions inherent in the activity, visitors aren’t allowed to join in once the program has started. Instead, they are encouraged to join the next session in a few minutes. We’re glad the author enjoyed 100 Things to Do. The idea of inviting visitors to think about their personal goals and to make selections proved to be immensely popular, even during early paper-based prototyping. We’ve observed families working together, very young children insisting that their parents read all the goals to them so they can make their own selections, and conversations among visitors during the activity. In the end, the goal of the exhibit is to inspire visitors to push the boundaries of their potential, not only inside the museum, but also at home and for a lifetime. We’re also glad the author appreciated the display of prenatal development specimens. Accompanying this display are two other experiences; one is the small theater media piece, Fantastic Journey, a seven-minute computer-generated animation that immerses guests in the story of human prenatal development from conception to birth. The author commented “nothing real there.” The media piece is not “real” in the sense of actual intrauterine cinematography, but it illustrates real biological processes, spanning the scale of the microscopic beginnings to birth. The third piece in this gallery, Make Room For Baby was not mentioned, but has proven to be enormously impactful for our guests. This exhibit visually illustrates the effects of the developing fetus on the mother’s body. To present a perspective on prenatal development not often seen, guests control the progress of gestation, triggering a series of animations along with quotes from pregnant women. While we anticipated Make Room for Baby would resonate most strongly with our adult female audience, we have also found that males, as well as younger visitors are remarkably impacted by it. A young girl (about 8 years old) was overheard by a staff member to say to her mother that she wanted to talk about what she’d seen on the way home in the car, while an adult male teacher who attended an educator’s open house was very impressed with the piece; making a point of telling us that he felt that while boys and men would perhaps be a bit nervous to approach it at first, he believed it was a great experience and felt that others would find it very powerful. The author felt no personal connection with the faces in Laugh Garden. This piece was designed as a social experience— guests engage with each other as well as move vigorously to get the faces to laugh harder. And that is precisely what happens. Groups of kids and families are frequently observed laughing together and interacting with each other as they experience Laugh Garden. We could have taken a very literal approach and presented information about laughter’s positive effect on health, but here and in many other places throughout YOU!, we chose not to do so. The Giant Heart is actually not (as stated in the review) a “giant flat screen video” and the off-hand mention of the >13 ft heart beating in time with your own heart rate is curious as this feature, and the fact that guests can control views of the heart, from the exterior to various interior views have made a huge impact on our audiences. The Giant Heart is actually a 3-dimensional sculpture made of a perforated material that allows for views of both the exterior and the interior, projected from both the front and the rear of the structure. Highly realistic CG animation (produced by XVIVO; creator of some of the most highly regarded medical and biological animation) presents authentic views of the heart and various aspects of its function. Accompanying the heart are two multi-user interactive table experiences that explore the biology of blood and the heart as a metaphorical symbol of love and attachment. Once again, our aim here was to move beyond traditional didactic methods to shed light on the multilayered structure, function and nature of the heart, while connecting to each visitor’s pulse. While we expected children to enjoy making the Giant Heart beat with in time with their own, we’ve been surprised by the way adults have also been drawn to this opportunity—and have drawn conclusions from it. During installation, construction workers frequently took breaks from their work to check their pulse on the Giant Heart. Similarly, during a meeting with the press, a reporter who was winded from climbing MSI’s stairs noted his racing heartbeat and began musing on the importance of exercise. After opening day, a cardiologist spent 40 minutes at the Giant Heart talking with the facilitator and checking out the interactives, which he then pronounced “amazing". Other users have been overheard pointing out which valve they or their family members have had replaced or urging one another to get their cholesterol checked. In short, the Giant Heart serves as a de facto personal health assessment tool that people enjoy using. As hoped, the two accompanying media tables (What’s In Your Blood? and The Chemistry Between Us) serve as informative, experiential complements to the Giant Heart. Children in the Museum’s target age range (ages 8-14) are enthusiastic about the tables and readily express biological processes they’ve observed in their own words—e.g. "Red blood cells carry oxygen to the body!" or "Platelets fix holes in your skin."—to Museum floor staff. Equally important the tables’ playful non-linear interactivity sparks conversations among visitors as they collectively guide the action in the virtual worlds at their fingertips. A few unsolicited comments from guests: “…knocked one out of the park with the new You! exhibit. Very, very well done and as an educator, native of the Chicago area, parent (and grandparent), and medical visualizer, I commend the tremendous effort. The beauty and tastefulness is extraordinary, and as a kid who grew up in the museum (my favorite), this is the brightest and best." Two gentlemen approached a facilitator to ask about the “giant, walk-through heart.” The facilitator explained that it had been replaced with the new interactive heart. The facilitator showed them all the cool things it could do. Later the guests came back to the facilitator to say “this new heart is my favorite heart.” YOU! The Experience, benefited greatly from extensive front end and formative research conducted throughout the project. We worked with advisory committees of more than 30 respected experts, educators and community leaders, a youth advisory group of 10-14 year-olds, focus groups and conducted in-depth prototyping of many of the exhibition’s components with museum visitors, to provide a solid grounding and mechanism for ongoing feedback. While we have not completed summative evaluation as yet, we have amassed considerable feedback from museum members, educators and the general public through a combination of surveys, feedback from floorstaff working in the space and anecdotal remarks and emailed comments from museum guests. The overwhelming majority of guests, whether from the general public or our school audiences have been extraordinarily enthusiastic about YOU! The Experience. Guests have commented frequently how comfortable they feel in the space, the very high degree of interactivity, the uniqueness of the experiences and from our educator’s audiences, how valuable it is as a teaching tool. We look forward to sharing the results of summative evaluation with the community in the coming months. We consider YOU! to be an ongoing, organic exhibition in which we continue to seek and act upon constructive feedback as well as provide updates on content and experience delivery in years to come. We applaud Denver’s new health exhibition and wish them much success. We are also very pleased with the outcome of YOU! for MSI’s audiences. YOU! acknowledges that everything in our lives shapes our health—from our biology and personal behavior to our environment and our medical care. Living well and enhancing our personal wellbeing requires reaching further into ourselves, and recognizing that we each make our own unique pathway toward living better. Our goal was to create meaningful, memorable experiences that appeal to and resonate with a very wide variety of visitors and across age groups; a goal that our guests say has been realized even beyond our expectations. http://www.exhibitfiles.org/bits/1178-response-to-review http://www.exhibitfiles.org/bits/1178-response-to-review Sat, 06 Feb 2010 09:41:23 +0000 Please check out dr.rocks.blogspot.com for Dr Rock's frankly mad experiments. http://www.exhibitfiles.org/bits/1176-dr-rock-rock-s http://www.exhibitfiles.org/bits/1176-dr-rock-rock-s Fri, 05 Feb 2010 20:26:13 +0000 It looks like a lot of these are cast in metal for durability. I wonder how often does this go into consideration for placement in shade from the amount of heat they can build up? I like the comment on this photo, "In the direct sunlight, it was very hot to the touch." In contrast, please don't lick one of these in the Winter. Is there any type of specialized paint that can help reduce heat transfer for those who use these? I suppose paint would be another source of wear and maintenance. http://www.exhibitfiles.org/bits/1173-tactile-maps-in-the-sun http://www.exhibitfiles.org/bits/1173-tactile-maps-in-the-sun Thu, 04 Feb 2010 13:43:48 +0000 I'm so sorry that you had a disappointing experience with our on-line scavenger hunt. In hindsight, I think that we tried to translate an activity from the physical museum onto the Web, without thinking carefully about how the experience would be different. I have pulled the on-line scavenger hunt PDFs from the Luce Foundation Center Web site and will investigate to see if we can create a more satisfying and enjoyable experience. Please do come and check out the scavenger hunts in the actual museum (although it's due to snow again this weekend...) as we'd love to hear what you think. If you wanted to create an on-line activity for us, which works the way that you think it should, that would be awesome! Feel free to e-mail me about that if you're interested :) Georgina Interpretive Programs Manager, Luce Foundation Center GoodlanderG@si.edu http://www.exhibitfiles.org/bits/1170-oh-no http://www.exhibitfiles.org/bits/1170-oh-no