Today we visited the Franklin institute. This museum is an example of an interactivity museum. The exhibit we got to experience was Electricity; Kristen who was the designer and manager of the exhibit gave us a talk about the use of artifacts and history; they are an important part of the exhibit. She claimed that the people wanted to see artifacts of Ben Franklin. I agree with her, maybe because I am bit bias since I study archaeology or because looking at the artifacts can give people an idea on how Ben Franklin lived his life. This is the one of the first exhibits to have touch screen monitor in the country. The touch screen lets the audience read the book written by Franklin himself. It also gives a better view of the artifacts that are displayed in the cases. She talked about the importance of the artifacts and it made me think of what Hilde Hein said ‘that by using everyday things and examples drawn from day to day experiences,…the wonders of the world are everywhere, directly under our noses and go unnoticed,’( 1986:30; Henning ,86).
We got to venture through the exhibit looking at all of the different activities. My least favorite was the light bulb where the person had to turn the crank to light the light bulb. None of them lit up, so I’m guessing it takes a lot of energy to light a light bulb. The display about how much energy a city uses was my one of my favorites beside the telephone screen and the dance floor. The city displayed made people work together to “build” a greener society and the color changed green when there was least energy was being used and red when the most was being used; yellow indicated a medium. The telephone screen was neat. I think it lights up more when an AT&T costumer is calling someone because the lights go crazy and they didn’t do that with a different cell phone provider. The dance floor was interesting because the more people that dance on it the more it lit up. Kristen was telling us that the main messages being conveyed through this exhibit was everyday messages. An example is that people need to work together, and the dance floor is a prime example of that. This made me think of this week’s readings and how the Exploratorium. How the creator of it wanted to show that science can be fun but it was also dangerous. That message can be seen in the display with the key and how when the key was touch people felt a shock. This display surrounds the myth of Ben Franklin and the key, but it teaches people don’t touch metal objects in a storm because you can get zapped.
The whole process of how an exhibit is interesting to look at especially how everything gets displayed. Kristen touched based on this a little bit, and she explained to us how much work it is to create a display. I’m glad we got the opportunity before class to looks at all the design plans. For example in the 2008 plans there was an exhibit or displayed that show people the electricity in their brains. That wasn’t displayed in the exhibit, but instead one about electricity in the muscles which was pretty fascinating, this was a good experience and the museum was interesting to see. Allison, Alex, and I got a sneak peek of the heart exhibit. It was cool to listen to all of the different animals heart beats; we didn’t go through the art though. I guess I will save that for another trip.
This is a terrible picture that I took of the Telephone screen.
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