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August 31, 2005
A Fun Life
So Bernie DeKoven asked us to come up with a list of things we do that are fun; that is things that we do for their own sake. I started brainstorming, and in a few minutes my list was enormous. I thought about it some more, and I think most of the activities I engage in are for fun in some way. I always try my hardest to enjoy being HERE NOW, not wishing I were somewhere else doing something else. That's why I am so freaked out by questions about the future, because they require stepping back and making a long-term plan and not asking whether I am having a good time where I am today.
So without further angst and introspection, here are some things I do for fun:
Jump on trampolines, write poetry, sing alone in my car, sprint, blow bubbles in my drink, eat any kind of cheese, ride horses, watch the sun set, go to baseball games, climb on catwalks, go sledding, solve math problems, speak French, ride roller coasters, sing in the car in five-part harmony with my family, go out to a theater performance, dance around my room to the music of Britney Spears, sit on the edge of the dock at my family's cabin in northern Maine, lead Musaf services with my father, downhill ski really fast, go out to a fancy dinner, sew, listen to epic movie soundtracks, watch MST3K with my family, cook, work on a theater production in any capacity, read fantasy novels, ride trains, play with cats, visit historical reenactments, sing in a choir, solve puzzles, ride boats, go camping, chat on IM using Babelfish as a translator, play Ultimate Frisbee, travel...
I'm sure I could keep going, but this is quite a decent start. There's no way this list could ever be comprehensive anyway.
Posted by rosenblj at 09:41 PM | Comments (3)
August 29, 2005
Aquarium brainstorm
After the last class session my thoughts on this project were fairly scattered, and after visiting the Long Beach Aquarium on Friday they are still scattered. So here goes:
1) On a general note, as I mentioned in class I think that involving the ceiling of the exhibit visually is incredibly compelling. The neatest visual experience I had at the aquarium was standing with my face right next to a twenty foot tall tank looking up and seeing tuna fish swim right down towards my head. (Note: The second most visually compelling moment was looking at the darkened tank of fish who have eye spots that glow in the dark.) Here are a couple of pictures of ceiling art:
(From an exhibit by Dale Chilhuly)
(From artwork in a fancy shoe store)
2) One idea I really liked from last class was that of the robotic fish that teams of people would have to work together to get to swim around a tank. I don't know how complicated we can get in this class, but I found a couple cheap remote-control fish.
Second example. Perhaps we could hack these?
3) Along the lines of neat technology to check out, here's a remote-control boat that's supposed to find out where fish are at (so you don't have to go to all that trouble of experience and intuition). I can't tell if it ever made it to retail, but this looks like it could present possibilities...
4) Lastly, it was brought up in last class that it's pretty impossible to compete with fish at an aquarium. To me this means that our exhibit needs to show something that the audience can't already experience. Two ideas that come to mind are immersive tanks of prehistoric or microscopic sea creatures. Here's an article about an exhibit on prehistoric oceans, though it mainly used fossils, skeletons, and concept art. Here are a couple images of plankton:
Posted by rosenblj at 08:02 PM | Comments (1)
August 23, 2005
Aquarium links
A British site with information on exhibit design considerations: http://www.big.uk.com/knowledgebase/exhibits/
Information from the New England Aquarium in Boston:
Virtual tour: http://www.neaq.org/vtour/aqtour.html
Immersive theater: http://www.neaq.org/vtour/immerse.html
Interactive ideas in a children's setting from TheTech Museum of Innovation: http://www.thetech.org/exhibits/online/play/about.html
Posted by rosenblj at 01:08 PM | Comments (1)