In front of the fabrication shop inside of the Exploratorium
After entering the Exploratorium, I immediately saw why it was a recommended visiting location for desma 9. The entire museum was filled with visually spectacular examples of art + science. In this blog I will touch on a few of my favorite exhibits from the Exploratorium.
The most philosophically intriguing piece, for me, was the two perspective mirrors.
Both of these pictures were taken in the same way. By angling the mirrors at particular angles, one mirror will show your reflection no matter where you stand, whereas the other will never show your reflection. This was an extremely interesting use of the knowledge of geometry and refraction, as it not only visually demonstrated scientific principles in an interesting way, but was thought provoking as well.
One could interpret the first mirror which does not show one's reflection as the distorted self-image of someone with very low or almost no sense esteem, whereas the second mirror would represent one with an inflated ego. I think it would be interesting philosophically to see different individual's preferences for each mirror.
The most creative use of mathematics, I found to be "machine with concrete".
The art piece is a series of gears which produces an extremely slow turning drill bit drilling itself into a block of stationary concrete. While this piece may seem mundane on its own, what I found to be interesting about it was that the artist used mathematics to determine the precise drill rate of the drill bit, and from this calculated it would take exactly 102 billion years per 1 degree of drill bit rotation. What an innovative use of mathematics!
Another interesting exhibit was a representation of the different way our brains interpret visual input. It was a variety of screens which each represented the brains interpretation of motion, color, and faces.
The work used interesting artistic representations in order to give people a feel for how each part of the brain works and recognizes objects. Above is the brains representation of myself in color as well as in motion. I found this work to be a fantastic use of neuroscience and art that not only simply explained how the brain functioned, but also left an impressive visual impression.
The Exploratorium was my favorite event that I attended for the class. I cannot recommend the Exploratorium enough. What I presented in this blog was only a small taste of what it has to offer. If you are interested at all in the fields of art or science, the museum will open your eyes to interesting examples of everyday science that you would never have previously appreciated. Just a few examples of what was not presented in this blog includes a display showing how refraction and mirrors function, a display showing how your brain filters out the blood vessels in the back of your eye, and even a miniature tornado generator.
If you have not been to the Exploratorium and are in San Francisco, it is a must-see!
Display showing 3D displays and how they work
The refraction of light and angle of refraction!
No comments:
Post a Comment