The Exploding Optic Incredible was an experiment in expanding the boundaries of art and music with science and technology. Ostensibly a multi-media rock concert as a fund raiser for Marshall Barnes' drug free creativity efforts, it took Andy Warhol's Exploding Plastic Inevitable concept of the 1960s into unchartered territory driven by Marshall's inspiration through discussions with Omni magazine's Dick Teresi and Pamela Weintraub and Gene Youngblood's book, Expanded Cinema. Marshall incorporated 1970s era slide and film projection light show effects, with dance lights, massive strobes, spotlights, and big screen video projection that showed customized and original video special effects while bands performed, and music videos in-between accompanied by lighting effects. The first multi-media rock concert of the 1990s, the January 18, 1990 event at the Newport Music Hall was also a test for the public's reaction to over stimulation through sight and sound, the results leading to exploration and ultimate creation of psychoactive entertainment technology later that year and the formation of new technological architectures for entertainment and learning that have yet to be presented but exist in design form.
Saturday, March 6, 2010, Marshall Barnes did an experiment in blending art and science. At an art opening at the Ekklesia Gallery in Columbus, OH, he showcased, for the first time, the original video footage from an experiment in physics that conducted during New Year's eve of that year. The experiment was to determine what would happen if an attempt were made to produce a "wall of light" that would stand in free space and consist of a number particular properties produced by a proprietary technology that Marshall had developed. Small experiments had already been conducted that produced the visible effect of an area of free standing light produced by the reflection of a strobe from a wall. The New Year's Eve test was to see if a wall of light could be produced that would fill a space in a room and have a number of particular "interesting" attributes.
Marshall Barnes was chosen by Larry Bock, founder of the USA Science and Engineering Festival as a late addition to the USASEF after viewing Marshall's impressive SuperScience for High School Physics activities for National Lab Day and his emphasis on advanced concept science and technologies. Marshall was given free booth space to set-up an exhibit that featured what is now being called "STEAM" or Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, Math and was fairly interactive. Marshall's booth emphasized his actual research that the visitors could take part in or analyze themselves. He had a VCR, TV, CD player, MacBookPro laptop and his own invention - the Visual Reduction Window. There were four elements to the exhibit. There was a TV monitor that showed a scene from a movie that you could view with 3D glasses for TV that Marshall invented that work even with one eye closed. At different times that same monitor would feature footage from an experiment that Marshall conducted to produce one of Nikola Tesla's ideas that Tesla never accomplished - a wall of light. This same footage could be analyzed by the visitors - frame by frame, on the Mac computer to see exactly how the principle of resonance produced the wall of light from the build-up of reflections off a physical wall created by strobe lights. Visitors could also listen to hyperdimensional music that Marshall produced that takes any kind of music to a new listening experience. Based on the concept that music is a coded language with cues and instructions that are cognitively recognizable when translated, Marshall invented techniques and technologies that allow such translations and brought examples for visitors to listen to. They included an upcoming radio show theme and the soundtrack to a documentary on the reality behind Fox TV's FRINGE. The music featured song elements that move around between the speakers and make you feel like the music is alive. The most dramatic of all was the Visual Reduction Window, again invented by Marshall, that made kids look transparent and at times, almost completely invisible. Based on his famous research into invisibility, which is documented at the Santa Maria Experiment exhibit in the Santa Maria Education Visitor's Center in Columbus, Ohio, the effect of real life transparency is stunning and Marshall, the world's leading expert on invisibility research was able to describe the physics behind what he was doing and its applications in the real world. His approach to invisibility is superior to those methods pursued by Duke University and others, trying to do the same with metamaterials, and is based on a completely different model of invisibility that he calls, Visual Density Reduction or VDR. Using VDR techniques, Marshall can make attack helicopters, small gun boats, tanks and many other things invisible, which is why he doesn't reveal the current level of his research, due to National Security reasons. Overall, the exhibit was a wild success and serves as a model for a traveling exhibit for informal science at malls, fairs, science centers, and other festivals.
This project was an early example of STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, Math) and was produced for the 2004 BLD Studios art exhibition, Time Machines, in Columbus, OH. This project included a chair and a desk made of drawers, on top of which was a audio/video work station where visitors sat and interacted with the technology by using the headphones and listening to one tape deck for instructions and then listening to music on the other while watching the TV screen with special HyperSpeks(tm). There was also a panel of photos above the TV designed to simulate time travel. The instructions explained the purpose of the exhibit and how to use the TV to tune into various channels to pick-up a variety of video static on empty UHF frequencies. The music was designed to put the visitor into a certain frame of mind. It was futuristic sounding and created using DEMI sampling, a proprietary sampling technique also created by Marshall Barnes. The intent was to set the mood. Training Session was supposed to simulate training prospective transdimensional travelers in the cognitive exercises required to deal with the psychological rigors of time/parallel universe travel. The HyperSpeks(tm) allowed the visitors to search for various shapes in the TV static on a number of selcted channels which would resemble such cosmological constructs as black holes and wormholes. The static was live and not prerecorded and so the interaction on all levels was live and in real time. Visitors were to write their observations down on paper which was provided via a note pad and pen at the exhibit. In this way, a record of their experiences existed for subsequent visitors to review. The visitors were also told to view the photo panel, which consisted of pictures taken in 1977, but not developed until 2004. As a result, the pictures were somewhat faded and all tinted pink, however, when the visitors viewed them with the HyperSpeks(tm) they appeared not only normal color, but almost as if the scenes they depicted were views outside a window. Thus, the visitor was able to travel optically back in time and see the images the way they looked when they were originally photographed.
Children feed alphabet letters to a talking baby dragon, drive a New York City fire truck, paint on a six-foot art wall, and crawl through a challenge course in PlayWorks™ at the Children's Museum of Manhattan (CMOM) in New York. Manhattan’s largest public play and learning center for early childhood marries the skills that children need to succeed in kindergarten with fun stuff that kids love. The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) funded the project through a 2006 Museums for America grant to support the museum as a center of community engagement and lifelong learning. “PlayWorks™ is a joyful place for learning science, math, reading and other things. We incorporate fun and learning into the whole design to create a scaffold of learning. Families come to the museum to supplement preschool experiences,” said Andy S. Ackerman, CMOM’s executive director. The museum also offers parents, sitters, and other care-providers guidance on engaging their children with the exhibit. Based on the concept that children’s learning and personal growth is rooted in play, the 4,000-square-foot space is divided into five learning areas: Language, Math and Physics, Arts and Science, Imagination and Dramatic Play, and Practice Play (for infants and crawlers).
This report presents findings from a joint study carried out by the Museum of Science, Boston Research and Evaluation Department (MOS) and Art Beyond Sight (ABS, formerly Art Education for the Blind) with museum visitors who are blind or have low vision. The purpose of this study was to gather information that can inform the development of pilot museum programs that meet the needs and interests of visitors who are blind or have low vision and to provide professional development for museum professionals. Focus groups were used as the primary data collection method, as they enable idea sharing
Goodman Research Group, Inc., (GRG), Cambridge, MA, conducted the formative evaluation of The Music Instinct project. The NSF-funded project aims to bring to PBS viewers the strong evidence of the connections between music and science, as well as to facilitate a deeper understanding of both fields. The Music Instinct project, presented by WNET/Thirteen, in collaboration with Mannes Productions, includes a two-hour television program, a website, and ancillary educational materials. The purpose of the formative evaluation is to obtain timely information to support and guide the producers as they
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Rucha LondheMiriam KochmanNivedita RanadeIrene F GoodmanWNET/ThirteenMannes Productions Inc.
The Civilians, Inc., a theatre company in Brooklyn, NY, is producing The Great Immensity, a touring play with songs and video that explores our relationship to the environment, with a focus on critical issues of climate change and biodiversity conservation. The play has been created with a network of partners including the Princeton Environmental Institute and Princeton Atelier Program/Lewis Arts Center, which will maintain an ongoing relationship with the project. The play uses real places and stories drawn from interviews conducted by the artists to create an experience that is part investigative journalism and part inventive theater. Attendance at the performances is projected to be about 75,000. A major goal of the project is to help the public better appreciate how science studies the Earth's biosphere and to promote an inquisitive curiosity about our place in the natural world. The initiative also intends to create and evaluate a new model for how theater can increase public awareness, knowledge, and engagement with important science-related societal issues. Project deliverables include the development and testing of online content, podcasts, and videos as well as special community education and outreach efforts in each community where the play is staged. Performances will be accompanied by post-performance panel discussions with the artists, local scientists and policy makers. After the completion of the initial tour, the play will be published, licensed, and made available to other theaters to produce independently.
The youth-based ITEST proposal, Invention, Design, Engineering and Art Cooperative (IDEA), will provide 100 students in grades 8-12 from the East Side of St. Paul, Minnesota with IT experiences in engineering and design. The content focus is mechanical and electrical engineering, such as product design, electronics, and robotics with an emphasis on 21st century job skills, including skills in advanced areas of microcontrollers, sensors, 3-D modeling software, and web software development for sharing iterative engineering product design ideas and maintaining progress on student product development. These technologies are practical and specific to careers in engineering and standards for technological literacy. During the three-year project period, a scaffolding process will be used to move students from exploratory activities in Design Teams in the 8th and 9th grades to paid employment experiences in grades 10-12 as part of Invention Crews. All design and product invention work will be directly connected to solving problems for local communities, including families and local businesses. For grades 8 and 9, students will receive 170 total contact hours per year and for grades 10-12, 280 contact hours per year. The participant target goal is 75% participation by girls, and African-American and Latino youth. Students participating in this project are situated within the country's most diverse urban districts with students speaking more than 103 languages and dialects. The schools targeted by this project average 84% of students receiving free or reduced price lunches, and have a population with 81% falling below proficiency in the Grade 8/11 Math MCA-II Test. To achieve the project goals of recruiting underrepresented students, and supporting academic transitions from middle and high school to college and university, the project team aggregated an impressive group of project partners that include schools, colleges, universities, and highly experienced youth and community groups, technology businesses that will provide mentoring of students and extensive involvement by parent and family services. Every partner committed to the project has a longstanding and abiding commitment to serving students from economically challenged areas.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Anika WardKristen MurrayRachel GatesDavid Gundale
Researching Visual Arts Education in Museums and Galleries brings together case studies from Europe, Asia and North America, in a way that will lay a foundation for international co-operation in the future development and communication of practice-based research. The research in each of the cases directly stems from educational practice in very particular contexts, indicating at once the variety and detail of practitioners' concerns and their common interests.
In this article, we use two studies conducted in art museum settings as a means to discuss some of the opportunities and challenges for the field of informal art education. The first study explores artmaking processes that take place in a children’s museum, highlighting the need to consider the social nature of learning in informal environments. Second, a study with families in an art museum explores art appreciation and interpretation. Taken together—the creating and the responding—these two studies are used to point out how we might trace disciplinary processes in art beyond schools into the
Based upon the findings of hundreds of long-term interviews with museum visitors, Falk observes that museum visits generate complex, personally rich meanings for people. He hypothesizes that visitors have a working model of what an art museum affords and self-select to use the museum based on a limited set of identity-related self-aspects--traits, roles, attitudes, and group memberships associated with self-identification. He further hypothesizes that visitors utilize these self-aspects both prospectively in justifying their visit, revealed through self-defined visit motivations, and again