A Curious Alliance: The Role of Art in a Science Museum

Among the many things that distinguish the Exploratorium from most other

science museums is its Artist-in-Residence Program, and its use of art pieces

on the exhibit floor. This publication provides a historical and practical view of

how this alliance between art and science came about at the Exploratorium,

and describes the values derived by both the artists and the institution and

the philosophical underpinnings that give the program its strength.

This book is a component of a larger project partially funded by the

National Science Foundation. Recognizing the importance of the arts at the

Exploratorium arid the potential for similar programs at other museums, we

have explored the subject of how art can be incorporated into a science

museum from a variety of perspectives.

We hope that this publication will become a tool for other science museums

who want to include artists in their exhibit development process, a tool that

can help establish a conceptual base for using the insights and methods of

artists in their programs.

Goery Delacote, Executive Director

(ONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

PETER RICHARDS

3

THE ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE PROGRAM AT THE EXPLORATORIUM: 4

HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY

MARK BARTLETT

CATALOG OF ARTWORKS 6

PRODUCED IN THE A. I.R . PROGRAM, 1974 - 1994

THE ENVIRONMENTAL ART AT THE EXPLORATORIUM PROJECT 15

MARK BARTLETT

GROWING ART IN A SCIENCE CULTURE 19

ELLEN KLAGES

ART AS A TEACHING TOOL

PAT MURPHY

PRACTICAL INFORMATION

FOR MUSEUMS WANTING TO INTEGRATE ARTISTS

INTO THEIR PROGRAMS

OTHER RESIDENCY PROGRAMS AT THE EXPLORATORIUM

Cover: Two Opposing Streams of Water (proposal/prototype), Bruce Miner, 1975.

25

29

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A (URIOUS ALLIANtE:

THE ROLE OF ART IN

A HIENtE MUSEUM

BY PETER RICHARDS

DIR ECTOR OF ARTS PROGRAMS,

EXPLORATORIUM

an Francisco's Exploratorium is a

museum housing over 650 interactive

exhibits and artworks that provide

learning experiences about natural phe­

nomena and human perception. It is a

creative environment where visitors can

explore on their own terms, linger where they

choose, and experiment as they please.

Perception is the underlying theme of the

Exploratorium because how we see, hear, feel,

smell, and otherwise sense the universe deter­

mines what we know about it. The tools avail­

able to visitors at the Exploratorium include

scientific instruments and experiments, mathe­

matics, language, music, and art. Developing

exhibits from a variety of disciplines sustains a

creative atmosphere, an interactive setting that

is the perfect place to make discoveries and

realize new ideas.

Frank Oppenheimer, the museum's

founder, did not intend the Exploratorium to

be unconventional, but he wanted to start a

museum that reflected his notion that people's

perceptions and feelings were as much a part of

the scientific process as were the physical

aspects of the discipline. He also wanted to cre­

ate a place where people could learn through

personal experience. It was this humanistic and,

at the time, unconventional philosophy that also

provided an environment where artists could

have a significant impact on the development of

a science museum.

By basing the core exhibitry on perception,

and by linking broadly diverse disciplines, the

Exploratorium provides fertile ground for peo-'

pie to learn about the natural world. At the

same time, the exhibits demonstrate that

human perception is a logical and rich meeting

place for science and art. Since 1969, we have

pioneered the role of the museum as an active

learning center, developing interactive exhibits,

training teachers, presenting performances,

films, lectures, demonstrations, and workshops,

and creating publications and videotapes to bet­

ter communicate the issues that affect society.

We have a long and effective tradition of bring­

ing together people from different disciplines.

Artists who work here are trained in the

use of analogy and metaphor, deftly applying

their skills of whimsy, humor, and visual associ-

ations to make fundamental ideas, and in partic­

ular ideas concerning natural phenomena,

accessible and compelling to a broad range of

people. The,ir art forms and media range from

poetry and writing to multimedia performances

and theatrical productions, from animated film­

making to dance productions and performances

exploring cultural connections. They screen

non-commercial films, present national and

international film festivals, and display paintings,

installations, and exhibits.

The Exploratorium's Artist-In-Residence

Programs provide a place for artists to work

within the museum. Each year we commission a

number of artists whose

interests complement ours.

They participate in a col­

laborative research and

development process result­

ing in the creation of new

works for the exhibit floor,

and new film and perfor­

mance experiences for the

public. Working in our

shops with our creative

staff, these artists add to

and enhance the creative

atmosphere of the place.

"Exploration, experimentation and discov­

ery" have been touchstones since the Explora­

torium opened its doors in 1969. These are

words that best describe the activities of the

staff and the artists who have built the more

than 650 exhibits now on display. The ongoing

scientific process of inquiry and the ongoing

artistic process of inquiry at the Exploratorium

provide the possibility of new personal discov­

eries from many different viewpoints. We have

found that the synthesis of these processes fos­

ters the development of artworks and exhibits

that lead to a personal sense of how each indi­

vidual is connected to the whole.

A Curious Alliance provides a historical and

practical view of how this syntheSiS between art

and science came about at the Exploratorium. It

describes the values derived by both the artists

and the institution and the philosophical under­

pinnings that give the Artist-in-Residence

Program its strength.

Peter Richards is a public artist and has been

Director of the Arts Programs at the Exploratorium

since 1974. He has created numerous works in col­

laboration with other artists, including the San

Francisco Marina's renowned Wave Organ, with

George Gonzales.

J

THE ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE PROGRAM AT THE EXPLORATORIUM

BY MARK BARTLETT

The History of the Program

doors opened at the

Exploratorium in August of 1969

because Frank Oppenheimer

neglected to lock them after he

entered one morning. When a curi­

ous visitor aCcidentally wandered in and

began looking at the (then) very sparse

exhibits, Frank commented, "I guess we're

open."

Frank began the experiment in the Palace

of Fine Arts building as a collaboration of

three-himself, his wife Jackie, and his son

Michael. He needed to conquer this vast inte­

rior quickly and make it at least appear to be

a science museum to attract a public and fun­

ders. The very first interactive exhibits were

produced with donated shop equipment and

included models that occupied a lot of floor

space-like the rocket capsules that Frank

convinced NASA to contribute. This accom­

plished, he gained the momentum to create

the real museum-filled with hands-on

exhibits-that within a few years would

become the archetype for interactive science

museums.

Faced with the task of drawing attention

to an architectural relic in an outlying neigh­

borhood of San Francisco, he used tactics as

ingenious as the Pope's invention of religious

parades to call attention to the Vatican when

it lay outside the walls of central Rome-he

devised the scientific equivalent of the

pageant.

In 1969, Frank agreed to exhibit

Cybernetic Serendipity. Originating in London,

this was a show of technologically generated

art curiosities. It was the first public exhibi­

tion to link art, science, and electronic tech-

nology. Frank then joined forces with partici­

pants of the Experiments in Art and

Technology (E.AT.) Program and with mem­

bers of the San Francisco Music

Conservatory, who produced experimental

sound- and light-works at night. These per­

formances were intentionally designed to

make a lot of noise and draw a crowd, and

they worked beautifully. The Exploratorium

qUickly gained a reputation for experimental

work and became a magnet for local artists.

From the beginning, Frank Oppenheimer

believed that art needed to be an integral

part of the Exploratorium's exhibitry. Within

a year of the Exploratorium's "opening,"

artist Bob Miller came to demonstrate his

experiments with light and shadows. Out of

his conversation with Frank came the first

artwork to be commissioned by the

Exploratorium-Sun Painting (described on

page 13). Twenty-five years later, Bob's piece

remains one of the most successful ever cre­

ated at the museum. It accomplishes the diffi­

cult task of being both a model science ex­

hibit and a consummate work of art.

In 1971, artist Peter Richards was hired

as an exhibit builder, one of the first artists

to navigate a shop culture dominated by an

anarchic and challenging group of physicists,

engineers, electricians, woodworkers, and

machinists. In 1974, Brian O'Dougherty at the

National Endowment for the Arts (N.E.A)

suggested that Frank write a proposal to fund

an Artist-in-Residence (AI.R.) Program, and

Pete became the new program's director.

When Pete began administering the

AI.R. Program, a rather feisty shop tech and

avowed art skeptic named Joe Ansel was

asked to take over the position of artists'

mentor. Fortunately for the history of the

program, he accepted. Just as fortunate for

the program was that Doug Hollis, then a

young, unknown artist from Berkeley,

became one of the earliest official resident

artists.

Doug worked closely with Frank Oppen­

heimer on a project to build an Aeolian harp,

learning the investigative tools of working

through problems in a scientific way. Joe and

Doug also developed a close working rela­

tionship; Doug's artistic sensibilities influ­

enced Joe's nuts-and-bolts, task-oriented

approach, and Joe taught the artist skills like

welding and precision metalworking. The

relationship between these three was hand­

and-glove, becoming a paradigm for the suc­

cessful artist-scientist collaboration. It legit­

imized the program and more importantly,

further integrated the Exploratorium's art

and science cultures.

As with every activity in the museum,

the AI.R. Program was the result of many

influences, and because of this collaborative

process, was born almost complete in the

museum's first years. Since 1974, Pete

Richards has qUietly given a home to that

rare artist who, like Bob Miller and Doug

Hollis, actively seeks out the rigors and tech­

nicalities of science rather than recoiling from

them. Pete invites four to six artists a year to

come to the Exploratorium and produce

works of art which inspire the discovery of

subtle connections that can be made between

the nature of art and science. The artists

have the opportunity to use a sophisticated

electronics and machine shop, and to work

with a staff that is fascinated by both aes­

thetic and technical problem solving.

The relationship between mentor and

artist has, from the beginning, been sponta­

neously determined by the mix of the individ­

uals involved. The process for developing

each project is a little more well defined,

although it, too, varies with each

individual artist. After the artist has

presented existing work and ideas for

a project to various oversight commit­

tees, there is an experimental phase,

resulting in a working prototype of the

piece. The artist may discuss concepts

with staff scientists, explore methods, tech­

niques, and materials with technicians in the

shop, and test and sometimes radically trans­

form or even abandon his or her original

idea.

The collaborative process with the staff

continues during the construction phase, in

which the full-size artwork is built. The public

joins the mix during the shakedown phase,

when the finished piece is installed on the

museum floor. As Pete Richards points out,

the criteria for a successful Exploratorium

exhibit includes "whether it will work,

whether it will last, and whether it will stand

up to heavy use by children."

The AI.R. Program functions not so

much as a studio, but as a laboratory for

artistic investigations. The program has

evolved as new types of problems have been

attempted and personnel has changed. But

the main goal is identical to the mission set

out in the museum's first days: to provide

artists with the chance to use the shop with

its rich human and mechanical resources; to

explore the unique opportunity for expert

scientific instruction, construction, and the

collaborative investigation of the artist's

vision; and to provide new exhibits for the

museum's collection.

Frank Oppenheimer compared both the

museum as a whole and an individual exhibit

to a play or a musical composition. He

wrote: "A tension is built up by something in

the exhibit that elicits curiosity or an inter­

esting task or a lovely effect, then the tension

is resolved as the result of an aesthetic or

intellectual payoff." It is this aesthetic philoso­

phy that in fact presides over every exhibit,

over every note struck in the scientific and

artistic symphony that reverberates in the

cavernous space of the Palace of Fine Arts.

It is important to remember that the

Exploratorium is a very public place, and that

its artworks occupy a unique niche of public

art. As a fully defined genre, public art had its

beginnings in the seventies, evolving

through the eighties, and

has entered yet another phase in recent

years. From the beginning, public art has been

driven by the dual impulses of urban renewal

and artists' separation from the art-for-art's­

sake dogmatism that had alienated the gen­

eral public for decades. This type of techno­

logical and science-related experimentation

has remained largely tangential to the main

course of the art world, and only recently is

it beginning to receive widespread attention.

The Exploratorium's Artist-in-Residence

Program has evolved, meanwhile, on its own

independent and somewhat idiosyncratic

track. It has often seemed virtually invisible to

some of the art world because its works

have been "camouflaged" as science exhibits.

Only in today's climate of technological

explosion and acknowledged scientific influ­

ence in the cultural sphere are the works of

Exploratorium artists coming to the attention

of the art world, and gaining the long over­

due recognition they deserve.

The Exploratorium's artists practice an

art/science synthesis that avoids the limited

A BRIEF SUMMARY OF ARTlST·IN·RESIDENCE PROJECTS AT THE EXPLORATORIUM

[P] indicates that this project is a

permanent exhibit on the floor of the

ExploralOrium. The other projects are

either in storage, have been dismantled,

or were temporary installations.

TACTILE TREE RICHARD REGISTER (1974) Tactile 'l1'ee was a study in tactile sensations-texture, hot and cold, cool and moist , mists, moving air and radiant heat-presented as components of a large ferro­cement tree with truncated branches.

I QUIET LIGHTNING BILL PARKER (1974) [PJ Quiet Ugbln ing uses high voltage to produce a violent (but quiet) li ghtning storm in a glass sphere. Its co lors are those of fire-mostly reds and oranges-with violets for contrast. The gas discharge is modi ­fied by the hands and produces an almost X-ray- like pattern.

2 A.M. LIGHTNING P.L.B.B. BILL PARKER (1974) [PJ A.M. Ligbtning, P.L.B.B. is a sculp­tured fiberglass and wood base which supports blue lightning in a glass tube. The lightning "bolt" is com­posed of slowly moving beads of blue li ght; touching the tube causes dis­tinct changes and interruptions of the flow of li ghtning.

II CASTLE RUTH ASAWA (1974) Ruth Asawa conducted several day­and week-long sessions in the Exploratorium during which she and groups of young people made complex geometric structu res with empty milk cartons. In addition, she made two beautiful panels of folded paper with black-and-white patterns .

... JUPITER FLY·BY GEORGE BOLLING (1974) Video artist George Bolling presented a real-time broadcast for the five days that the Piol/eel' XI satel lite approached and orbited the planet Jupiter. As events unfolded , the artist, who was located at NASA's command center, fed information to the Exp lorato rium via a special micro­wave link, where it was presented on large-screen video monitors.

FOREFRONT READINGS: THE LANGUAGE OF POETRY AND SCIENCE MURIEL RUCKEYSER (1975) Poet Muriel Ruckeyser spent two months at the Exploratorium,

perspective endemic to much of today's tech­

nomania. These creators are using low-tech

as well as high-tech mechanical and computer

means to make art that concerns music, wea­

ther systems, erosion patterns, mathematics,

water currents, wave motion, light, and color.

The pedagogical orientation, far from being too

didactic, enriches the works, adding another

layer of interest and cultural significance.

Although most of the AI.R. Program's

art has been out of the mainstream of the art

world, Doug Hollis points out that the

AI.R.'s artists have served as emissaries to

the community at large. They have caused a

ripple effect over the years, disseminating the

Exploratorium's attitudes, interests, methods,

and philosophies wherever they go. The

museum itself has been one of the strongest

influences on artmaking in the Bay Area,

equal to any of the private or public art

schools. It has become as much a resource

for the arts as for the science commu­

nity- locally, nationally, even

internationally.

This dual nature is at the core

of the history of the AI.R. Program.

It is a unique cultural and public

program-one that sets out to

reveal the inexplicable, the

metaphoric, and the symbolic won­

ders that bridge the extraordinary

space between art and science.

The Philosophy of the Program

In anthropology, the term "going

native" is applied to an anthropologist

who abandons all pretense to objective

investigation into a culture other than his

own, and instead becomes indistinguishable

from the "native" population he came to

study. The anthropologist who has gone

native is judged a failure by the scientific

community and is shorn of all credibility.

By exactly the opposite logic, the more

an Exploratorium artist "goes native," the

more he or she is considered a successful

resident. As the artist becomes immersed in

the Exploratorium's culture, he or she is

judged a genuine member of the museum's

society. Jim Pomeroy, an early resident, once

said, "by becoming a resident at the

Exploratorium, one belongs for life."

Artist Anna Murch described her resi­

dency as recreating the "pure" experience of

artmaking normally encountered only while

studying art in school. It provided discussion

for its own sake, and in that sense, generated

interest, excitement, curiosity, and a willing­

ness to engage, free of the normal day-to-day

business that commonly inhibits extensive

dialog about the artist's ideas and work.

Anna compared her time at the

Exploratorium to the time of a traveler who

is free of commitments, free from preconcep­

tions of the foreign places she is traveling

through, and open to simply experiencing for

experience's sake. It was a time to play, a

time for development and for ideas to con­

dense. For her that was the greatest gift of

the program.

The Exploratorium's Artist-in-Residence

Program is unique among the many types of

residencies artists have to choose from. Over

the years, the program has defined a philoso­

phy that closely links art to science in a num-

ber of ways. Because of its

museum setting, the pro­

gram has forged close

ties with the practices

and problems of pub­

lic art. Framed by

the philosophy of

science, and by

the require­

ments of

effectively

communicating with the pub­

lic, the AI.R. Program has developed an

unusual set of methods and goals:

• The creation of every piece is a collab­

orative venture, closer to the team method

of designing buildings than to the solitary

working style typical of most artists.

• Artists within the program assume a

scientific attitude by adopting the methods

and standards of science. They investigate

their problems by developing hypotheses,

building prototypes, and testing them.

• The museum context requires that

each work produced by these artists commu­

nicates successfully to as large a cross-section

of the general public as possible, and that

each relates, in a significant way, to current

interests.

contributing to our graphics, and for­mulating plans for an exhibit section dealing with the perception of mean­ing in language. She also organized a series of twelve readings in which both a poet and a scientist read their work, which was followed by very pen­etrating discussions about the ways in which language can convey imagery, experience, and message.

I FORMS IN MOTION DIANNE STOCKLER (1976)

This animated film is composed of moving geometric fig­

ures, lines, and fluidly evolving shapes which are projected into a large, smoke-filled

glass chamber. The two­dimensional images of the

film are seen as moving three­dimensional figures , thus integrating cinema and sculpture.

!I DRUM STEPHAN VON HUENE AND JAMES TENNEY (1976) This 5-foot-diameter Plexiglas drum has 32 pneumatically actuated ham­mers mounted around its rim . They are controlled by a microcomputer which receives its instructions from a large rotating disc that contains musical compositions which are read by a light sensor. Composer James Tenney wrote three percussion pieces for the project.

II AEOLIAN HARP DOUGLAS HOLLIS (1977) [Pj Named after Aeolis, the Greek goddess of wind, this wind-activated acoustic sculpture is mounted on the roof of the Exploratorium. The sounds pro­duced by the wind blowing across the choir of strin gs are transmitted mechano-acoustically to speakers located just above the north entrance of the building .

• PROFESSOR PULFRICH'S UNIVERSE GERALD MARKS (1977) [Pj This piece is a whimsical shadow environment which houses several motorized mobiles and a large metronome. With a dimming glass over one eye, visitors can observe the rotating shadows which seem-quite arbitrarily- to reverse their motion.

5 PAINTING IN PROGRESS GUSTAVO RIVERA AND GRADY MCDONALD (1978) These two painters used the Exploratorium as a studio to demon­strate to the public how the work of a painter evolves over an extended period of time. The concl usion of this project was celebrated with a large showing of paintings in our special exhibition area.

J-

I .

Producing works of art for the AI.R.

Program, like producing scier:lce exhibits, is a

collective process. Some of the staff have

been involved with the museum since its

beginning, that is, for almost twenty-five

years. The reservoir of experience accumu­

lated during a quarter of a century runs deep,

and stores the lessons learned from both the

failed and successful projects. Individual

artists bring their own experiences to the

mix, and the AI.R. Program recruits those

from whom it can learn as well as those it

can teach. As Nick Bertoni, a former artist­

in-residence and the current project manager

for the AI.R. Program says, "we are growing

ourselves as we encourage the artists to

grow."

A word one hears often at the museum

to describe the interaction between the artist

and the rest of the staff is "co-creation." It is

a process, not a product, and as intangible

and shifting as cloud formations . Its medium

consists of dialogs among many people and

extensive experimentation. Nick describes

the development of a project as the interac­

tion between two opposing types of thought

processes-the more goal-oriented, or linear,

step-by-step approach, typical of engineering,

and the more open, nonlinear, associative and

intuitive approach common to the artistic

process.

Each approach puts demands for quality

on the other. The knowledge taken for

granted by the scientist or engineer may

assume a very different meaning in the mind

of the artist; the artist's working style may

reveal something that the scientist had not

considered before and lead to a new line of

inquiry.

The artist at the Exploratorium does not

conform to the cliche of the genius, striving

alone; he or she bows to the pragmatic con­

ditions of museum life and to attaining the

' highest possible clarity in the work. This type

of artist learns to take the scientific attitude

completely to heart and must continually

monitor the work against the demands of

the 'public.

Artist as Experimenter

The Exploratorium artist is a unique

blend of the experimental investigator and

maker of well-crafted objects. This artist fol­

lows a two-fold path. The first path leads

toward playful expression of natural phenom­

ena, such as the way light reflects or diffracts.

Perhaps the investigator is fascinated by the

chaotic patterns of fluid motion in water or

cloud formations. Or perhaps inspiration

leads toward bending the science of sound

toward a whimsical musical performance

using, for instance, blow torches against metal

sheets.

The second path then leads to discus­

sions between the artist and members of the

Exploratorium staff. What is the best way to

harness these phenomena? What are the

technical skills necessary to build a work that

is interactive, and yet retains its autonomy as

a work of art? The piece that results is less of

an object-a sculpture or painting-than a

site meant to orchestrate a particular experi­

ence or event.

The works developed and exhibited in

the AI.R, Program are an intersection

between art and science; the two are

not easily separated, especially during the

conceptual stage. Artists, physicists, and engi­

neers come to share both scientific and artis­

tic methods, attitudes, and vocabulary. Both

types of inquiry are sources of inspiration

here, and people work together to focus

their efforts on bringing to light the beauty,

mystery, simplicity, or complexity of the nat­

ural world. As they work, the bOl}ndaries

between art and science blur.

A ~ t " a s, Pro tot y pi n 9

What, makes the AI.R. process unique is

its ,close similarity to the protocol of scientific

inquiry-each step along the path to the

completed work is a hypothesis to be tested,

accepted, rejected, or reformulated. It is the

raising of this formal testing procedure to

the level of a deliberately conscious activity

that distinguishes the art process at the

Exploratorium from the ways in ~hich art is

usually made.

Just as the sharing of ideas and skills gov­

erns the successful collaboration between

artist and scientist, the process of prototyp­

ing governs the actual making of the artwork.

A wonderful presentation of the philosophy

and practice of prototyping is contained in

another Exploratorium publication, Working

Prototypes, a collection of Frank Oppenheimer's

writing.

I LIGHTWEIGHT PHANTOMS JIM POMEROY (1978) Using a home-built stereoscope based on the 1832 invention by physicist Charles Wheatstone, coupled with a series of double-image slide projec-tions, the artist's images are cast upon a screen by a carousel projector. Viewed with Polaroid glasses (Pomeroy's own modification to Wheatstone's original system), one is presented with the illusion of solid three-dimensional images.

2 CLASSROOM WINDOW: DREAM CHART OF FOUR GONE CONCLUSIONS RICHARD POSNER (1978) [P] This work consists of four leaded glass panels installed in the northeast sec-tion of the classroom building. The windows are a surreal juxtaposition of dream imagery, cu ltural history, and scientific phenomena, which refer to and complement exhibits on the museum floor . While looking at the images, the viewer can simultaneously see into the classroom (through large sections of clear glass) as well as see his or her own reflection (through the use of mirrors).

PERFORMANCES KIRK ROBERTS (1978 -79) Kirk Roberts used theatrical tech-niques to present his unique ideas and observations about perception and natural phenomena. 71le Search Jar Shcldowman, a shadow play, and other performances were shown to students in our School- In-The-Exploratorium (SITE) program. After each performance the students experi -mented with the props and staged their own versions of the show.

i VORTEX DOUGLAS HOLLIS (1979) [PJ This se lf-renewing vortex is formed by water pumped from the bottom of a 6-foot-high , 2-foot-diameter PleXiglas cylinder and then returned to the top at a high rate of speed. The resu lting swi rl forms a beautiful whirlpool which can reach all the way to the bottom of the cyl inder or disappear completely at the whim of the visitor.

THE MUSICAL JET PATRICK READY (1979) This project was based on a book by C. V. Boys, who wrote about late 19th-

I

, -":("1 ". 't',

'\1 ct- J concern­ing trans-

~ .. , \~."~" ," ," ,ft ' :::::z:::

water. An installation was created consisting of a large pool of water, speaker horns, and jets of water through which visi tors transm i tted thei I' voices.

As Frank showed, a prototype is a

first rough draft of an exhibit, usually made

from inexpensive, readily acquired materials,

assembled in qUick-and-easy fashion simply to

test an idea with the least amount of effort.

Prototypes usually evolve toward more and

more refined stages, until the bugs and kinks

have been worked out-or the idea is aban­

doned. The exhibits that become part of the

museum's permanent collection are the most

refined and successful prototypes.

Not all prototypes work-at least

not the way the artist may have originally

intended. But science is rife with anecdotes

about "accidental discoveries," and artistic

"errors" have often been as enlightening as

successes. It is in the ability to recognize

when accidents and errors are significant-an

ability that no method or principle or tech­

nique guarantees-that aesthetic decision­

making is most apparent. It is a kind of judg­

ment, an ability to make decisions and

choices based on intuition.

While everybody "knows" what

intuition is, it is difficult to define. It has

something to do with refined observation,

long experience with the subject, a facile han­

dling of theory and practice, a gift for being in

the right place at the right time, an accep­

tance of failures, and a knack for being provi­

dentially accident prone. The most successful

AI.R. pieces are a result of the artist and sci­

entist working together, following their intu­

ition about what will work, and then trying it

out.

During the prototyping phase, artist and

scientist engage in a dynamic interchange

between theory and practice. This inter­

change is governed by what many scientists

would call experimentation, and many artists,

free imaginative play. In either field, it is an

aesthetic process. When art and science

come together, new findings emerge that

would never appear if one or the other were

absent.

The Science Exhibit and the

Artwork in Context

At the Exploratorium, the artworks

and scientific exhibits collaborate in the task

of engaging the audience. While many of the

art pieces cannot be completely explained

scientifically, they draw the museum-goer

into an inquisitive frame of mind. In a similar

way, the science exhibits prepare the partici­

pant for a deeper understanding of the art­

works by creating a curious attitude that

bridges the gap between rigorous inquiry and

playful exploration. Rather than explaining the

phenomena, the scientific component deep­

ens the visitor's experience of the often hid­

den dimensions of the natural world. The

artistic frames the scientific with delight, cul­

tural commentary, or metaphor.

Though some visitors may have a

different experience of the art at the

Exploratorium than they do of the science,

the two disciplines are tightly interwoven; in

some cases the differences dissolve com­

pletely. Together, they create an environment

in which nature's exquisite poetry is revealed

and can be understood. It is just this alliance

of art and science that makes the works pro­

duced by the AI.R. Program such effective

means of education. The Exploratorium's

teacher development programs use both sci­

entists and artists to demonstrate concepts,

and many of the classroom exhibits are

scaled-down versions of works developed by

AI.R. artists.

The coherence of the museum's many

exhibits is modeled on the unity of nature

itself. While exhibits are loosely organized

under the categories of Electricity and

Magnetism, Color and Light, Waves and

Motion, etc., paths organized by a common

theme can be traced from section to section.

Artworks are not in a section by themselves,

but are distributed through each area. Such

interrelationship and unity demonstrates the

museum's mission statement:

Both art and science are needed to fully

understand nature and its effeas On people.

The inclusion of art is, therefore, not a

whim, nor simply the interest of an eccentric

breed of artist, but a necessity.

The claim is a strong one: that art and

science do indeed form an inseparable paral­

lelism, each extending and elucidating the

meaning of the other.

Art Content-Science Content

Both the science exhibits and artworks

take the visitor on an excursion through per­

ceptual, conceptual, and aesthetic experi­

ences. In this very interactive environment,

visitors may read texts, manipulate exhibit

apparatus, concentrate on the phenomena,

and assimilate new concepts and ways of

understanding them.

In this setting, the artworks can provide

a change of pace, a change of perspective, or

a different kind of sensory experience meant

to evoke amazement, delight, and curiosity.

The artworks do not try to explain the nat-

I

!l

J

•

PIN SCREEN WARD flEMING (1980) [P] Pin Screen is a tactile sculpture which consists of special straight pins hung through a four-foot square of finely perforated metal screen. The pins reflect light from colored lamps mounted overhead. As visitors move their hands across the dangling pins, the path changes colors as the pins reflect the light from the lamps.

DISCERNIBILITY EO TANNENBAUM (19BD) [P] Discernibility is an interactive video sculpture that allows people to manip-ulate images of themselves. By alter-ing the gray levels, or by stretching their own video portraits, they can do experi ments to find out how much information is needed to discern an image.

SOUND COLUMN DANIEL W. SCHMIDT (19BD) [Pj Sound Cotumn is a musical instru-ment whose resonatin g chamber is a 60-foo t-hi gh room in a column of the rotunda of the Palace of Fine Arts. Six polished aluminum bars are mounted on a stand in the room. When struck with a mallet, the bars vibrate, inter-actin g with the air column to create a se ri es of deep resonatin g sounds of specific pitch. A ramp inside the col -umn lets visitors experience the changes in the resonating sounds at various heights .

THE SEA AS SCULPTRESS RUTH WALLEN (19BO) Ruth Wall en placed wooden sculptures consisting of blocks of wood sur-rounded by a frame in three sites in San vranci sco Bay. Us ing macropho-tography, these blocks we re examined photographically at monthly intervals to provide a detailed history of the intricate changes in the li fe forms on small areas of each piece of wood over time. Four perfo rmances included multi-im age slide pro jections of the evolving anim al and pl ant life, a nar-rati ve, and the recorded sounds of Wave Organ (see page 20).

VIDEO PILOT PROJECT MYA SHONE AND RICK SMITH (1980) A seri es of short videos were made relatin g the themes and exhibits of the Exploratorium to people's every­day life experiences. The bas ic proper­ti es of wave motion were examined­ducks movin g th rough a pond, boats in the ocean, waves created by rocks in a stream, etc. Three pilots were produced with the .intention of devel­oping a full thirteen-week se ri es of educati onal science videos entitled "Frames of Reference." The artists were princi pally invo lved in the setup of the fac ility and initi al experimen­tation with the concept and format of the first tape.

".

ural world as much as to foster an apprecia­

tion of it. They often reflect back on our

human condition and its significance, provid­

ing a balance between observing and partici­

pa~ing in the ext.raordinary world of physical

events.

One of the best examples of this type of

work is Sun Painting, by Bob Miller, which

sup rises in a number of ways. A visitor walks

right into the piece without realizing it, sud­

denly caught by rainbow colors dancing over

his or her body. The colors of the spectrum

are cast on white hanging panels-not in

their usual strict geometric pattern of vertical

bars, but like the patterns of leaf shadows

that shift as the branches move in the wind.

As the viewer changes position, the patterns

also shift. In searching for the source of this

effect, the visitor discovers a vertical arrange­

ment of prisms that fracture sunlight directed

to them by a series of mirrors-a path that

begins on the museum's roof. Unwittingly,

the spectator becomes an actor in this

drama, and is engaged in a playful investiga­

tion of this exquisitely beautiful event.

Other works commissioned by

the Exploratorium could be

described similarly; but in each case,

the difference between a "science

exhibit" and an "artwork" depends

largely on the visitor's active participa­

tion in the experience. The visitor can

play with one piece to produce the

highest projection of a cloud ring. A few

steps farther on, this same visitor might

arrange sand to observe and test erosion

patterns or direct water-comets as they

snake over an inclined glass plane.

Beauty and the element of surprise are

the hooks that lead the participant to ques­

tion what's going on. Art, in many cases,

simply takes a different point of view from

that taken by science. Rather than explaining

the spectrum of a rainbow in terms of

physics, an artwork might consider how peo­

ple perceive the same phenomenon. The sci­

ence exhibits and the artworks complement

and complete each other.

It is important to remember that this

synthesis between artwork and science

exhibit takes place in a science museum-an

institution that frames its exhibits and their

contents within its philosophical orientation.

Both the exhibits and the artworks are insep­

arable from their context. Take a piece out

of one museum and put it in another with a

different philosophy, and the piece will take

on new meaning.

Many Exploratorium artworks are

thought-poems wrought of earthly materials,

earthly dimensions. They are aesthetic expe­

riences, but also foundations for scientific

study. They provide the visitor with the

opportunity for a type of scientific reading

between the lines, a wondering at the order

in nature. They provide the pleasure and the

excitement of discovery that, once experi­

enced and understood, bind us more closely

to the inner workings of the physical world.

The Exploratorium was founded in order

to make scientific knowledge available to

everyone. Frank Oppenheimer meant,

through an educational process, to put the

non-scientist in an informed position to bet­

ter make decisions about everyday life. His

hope was to invest everyone with an under­

standing of science on the one hand, and on

the other, to provide a basis for

a deep

commitment to the

phenomena of the natural world, to

the environment, and to human life.

Against this background, art plays no

small role in the Exploratorium's mission. In

Frank Oppenheimer's mind, at least, it played

a role equal and parallel to that of science. It

was this understanding he most wanted to

promote--that all facets of the natural world,

like the exhibits themselves, interconnect in a

unified scheme.

Mark Bartlett was a Writer-in-Residence

at the Exploratorium in 1993. His writing has

appeared in Artweek, Cameraworks Quarterly,

and Art Issues. He curated a show, Color in

the Shadows: Bay Area Cyberart, exhibited at

Oliver Art Center in Oakland, January-March, 1994.

LIGHTWEIGHT PHANTOMS JIM POMEROY (1981) [P] The ori ginal work (see page 10) was displ aced during the constructi on of the Exploratorium 's mezzanine, pro­viding an opportunity for the artist to reconfi gure the optics and projec tion system and to add a se ri es of new images.

I PERCEPTUAL PARADIGM TOM PETRILLO (1981) [P] These 18 color photographs toy with our assumptions and expectations of the wo rld. One qUickly accepts the fac ts presented in the photographs and then becomes aston ished to fi nd a paradox ical situation of vis ion or color. The museum's exhibits were the basis for the photographs and are the lin k between the phenomena and the poeti cs of the artist's wo rk.

2 MUSIC ROOM PAUL DEMARINIS (1981) [P] Music Room is a unique multi -pl ayer computer music system which enables visitors with no previous musical training to participate in an ensemble experience and to compose toge ther.

Each person is responsible for a distinct musical part and performs on one of the five touch-sensitive guitars. One controls rhythm, meter and tempo, pl aying percus­sion sounds. A second pl ays bass lines and coordin ates harmonic movement, while two others di rect harm ony, voicing, orchestration, and

melodic figurations. The fifth instru­ment is capable of pure melodic inve nti on.

J RECOLLECTIONS EO TANNENBAUM (1981) [P] Th is wo rk addresses the poeti cs of moti on, time and color. A video cam­era picks up head-to-toe movements of a viewer/participant. A sequence of these im ages is stored and displayed on co lor monitors or projected in con­trolled modes based on ti me and space. The visitor can expl ore ani ­mated effec ts-how sequences of im ages create movement. By displ ay­in g sequences Simultaneously, Duchamp-li ke forms are created .

• KINETIC LIGHT SCULPTURE CHRI STIAN SCHIESS (1981) [P] Killel ic Ligbl SClltptll l'e consist of two thin , clear glass tubes, one pum ped with mercury argon and the other with neon, producing bo th radi ant blue and orange-red li ghts. The sealed gas tubes are indepen­de ntly connected to the shaft of two variable-speed elec tric motors. Visito rs manipul ate three controls th at vary the rotati onal speed, intensity, and frequency of the moving light sources, crea tin g infinite and subtle visual effects.

THE ENVIRONMENTAL ART AT THE EXPLORATORIUM PROJECT

BY MARK BARTLETT

National

Science Foundation awarded the

A.I.R. Program a grant to

support four

artists working

with environmental sys­

tems, resulting in an exhibi­

tion that opened at the

Exploratorium in the sum­

mer of 1993. Each of the

artists-sculptors Ned Kahn

and Michael Brown, film­

makers Andrej Zdravic and

AI Jarnow-built a piece

that captured the pheno­

mena of chaotic, indetermi­

nate fluid systems. The art­

works allow the visitor to

experience exquisitely

arranged performances of

water in motion-water

eroding sandy slopes, a

donut-shaped steam ring

projected fifty feet into the air, water

meandering over its own shadows.

Ned Kahn's Cloud Rings

Ned Kahn is an exhibit builder for

the Exploratorium and a sort of permanent

artist-in-residence. He has completed a num­

ber of public art projects and been exhibited

all over the United States. His works are

Merlin-like forays into immensely instructive

play- visitors can leap into a steam tornado,

turn a crank to direct wind against dunes, or

spin sediment-filled globes to produce spec­

tacular, swirling results. Each of these "sculp­

tures" has the feel of an Oz-like magic ball

that provides a window onto stunning,

unknown worlds. Through these elegant

miniaturizations, Kahn gives the museum visi-

tor experiences of awesome forces that in

reality would never be so benign.

For the Environmental Art show Ned

built an ingenious exhibit, Cloud Rings, a five­

foot-diameter concave aluminum dish that

sits horizontally at about waist level. Riveted

to its top, with a circular opening in its cen­

ter, is a rubber membrane stretched taut

over a flexible skeletal frame. The cavity

below fills with mist pumped into it from a

humidifier. As the visitor pushes the rubber

membrane downward, the mist is com­

pressed, forced to escape through the hole in

an eighteen-inch-diameter donut shape, and

hurled fifty feet into the shadowy heights

above the Exploratorium floor.

Michael Brown's Meanderings

Michael Brown is able to bring the out­

side inside, and

scale, bring our

attention to what

usually goes

unnoticed.

Meanderings,

consists of an elegant shallow

box about 3 x 5 feet by 3 inches deep,

mounted horizontally between metal A-frame

legs. Spanning the width at one end of the

box is a transparent tube drilled with small

holes. Water pumped into the tube seeps

out onto an inclined, water-repellent glass

surface.

The visitor is able to vary the incline of

the plane, controlling changes of momentum,

size, and duration of the water droplets as

they stream comet-like into a pool of water

at the box's opposite end. Lights focused on

the surface create high contrast shadows on

the white plane beneath the glass. The con­

trast of real streamlet to shadow streamlet is

a compelling detail , transforming a gleeful

physical phenomenon into a resonant shadow

play.

I SEEN CLEARLY IN HAZY CONDITIONS DIANNE STOCKLER (1981) Anyone watching a film in a movie theater has turned toward the projec­tor and seen the multicolored beams of li ght that shoot across space and eventually land on the screen. Dianne Stockier works with li ght beams such as these to shape, structure, and choreograph her films. The fi lm loop is projected through a large glass chamber filled wi th smoke, which acts as a three-dimensional screen for the geometric and abstract imagery on the film. The forms seem solid, as though they possess mass and weight, yet they behave in ways that are impos­sible fo r solid objects. (See page 8.)

2 UNSUNG VOICES JOHN DRI SCOLL (1982) Each of these four related sound sculptures employs ul trasonic Signals to create instruments that play in response to subtle movements of museum visitors. The phys ical distur­bances caused by the visitors' move­ments transl ate inaudible ultrasonic signals into distinct and melodic tones that are within the range of human hearing.

~ MAGNETIC FIELD PATTERNS ("PUMPING IRON") HEATHER MCGILL AND STAN AXELROD (1983) [Pj The beauty of magnetic fields is cap­tu red by magnetic fl uids that are excited by a seri es of electromagnets. The dark, oily fl uid assumes "impos­sible" shapes in response to the manipu lation of the magnets .

• LUMEN ILLUSION SCULPTUR E CHRIS TI AN SCH IESS (1983) [Pj This work is a companion piece to Kinetic Ligbt (see page 14) . Lumen

Illusion explores the illusion of circu­I ar motion created by an array of neon and argon tubes. Apparent motion is created by the sequential

li ghting of the tubes, arranged in a large

circle. The duration of each light flas h, the du ra­tion of the apparent motion (clockwise and

counter-clock­wise), the interval of

time between each fl ash, and the fl ashes (red neon on blue argon fi eld and vice-versa) are con­trolled by the visitor.

AI Jarnow's Terralorms

AI Jarnow brings the sensibility

and technical skills of a seasoned film­

maker and a landscape painter to his

exhibit about erosion processes,

Terraforms. The work combines real-time

video, computer interface, erosion phe­

nomena, and the participant, in an assem­

blage that bridges the gap between rigor­

ous investigation and naive play.

A video camera mounted overhead

aims at an inclined, sand-filled box. Water

pools at the high end, oversaturating the

sand. As it moves to the lower end, it sim­

ulates a variety of familiar erosion pro­

cesses such as canyon carving, river mean­

dering, and delta and alluvial fan construc­

tion. The event is displayed live in the mon­

itor inset and recorded at the computer

terminal. The user can then replay any por­

tion of the event. AI provided the comput­

er with a library containing easily accessed

explanations of geological principles,

processes, and examples like the Grand

Canyon. The participant can browse

though this information to understand the

event he or she has just created, or investi­

gate subjects of related interest.

An open-ended work, Terraforms might

best be described as a work site, an experi­

mental laboratory in its own right. The

powerful visualization capabilities of film

are here used to full advantage; the visitor

can freeze the erosion-events at any point,

replay them, speed them up, slow them

down, zoom in, zoom out. Processes that

actually take hours, months, years, or

decades are compressed into a timeframe

that we can witness in a few moments.

Long-term geologic history is translated

into the range of human memory. In

Jarnow's work, the catastrophic forces that

have sculpted the surface of our planet are

brought under the control and observation

of each visitor, personalizing an awareness

of environmental forces.

Andrei Zdravic's

Waler Waves

Andrej Zdravic is a filmmaker who has

for years made films about environmental

phenomena such as wind, water, and light.

During his reSidency at the Exploratorium,

he built a video installation entitled Water

Waves that consists of ten high-resolution

monitors. Arranged horizontally in a shal­

low arc against a black backdrop, they pre­

sent an examination of all varieties of water

waves. The monitors are not large, but

when multiplied by ten, arranged in a dark­

ened setting, separated by half-foot incre­

ments and spanning a range beyond the

sixty-degree cone of vision, they give the

effect of a full-scale cinema screen.

Andrej is able to transform the video

installation into a complete experience

through a manipulation of scale-enlarging

and cropping phenomenal events outside

our usual perceptual frame of reference. As

the waves appear to flow serially across

the screens, rhythmically freezing, slowing,

reversing and leaping ahead, they metamor­

phose-pond becomes river becomes

ocean becomes sky.

The power of wave movement, from

the ripples caused by rain delicately falling

on a river's surface to the Pacific waves

crashing against the shore, actively engages

the visitor in an expectant, heightened

awareness. It arouses responses that are

both emotional and analytic. The effect is

that the setting erases the technology, and

what comes forward are the phenomena in

all their sensuality and symbolic power.

I VIDEO FEEDBACK SKIP SWEENEY (1983) Video Feedback presents images cre-ated by a video camera that is aimed at an angle into a video monitor. The system allows the viewer to control and manipulate the camera's rela-tionship to the monitor as wel l as the f-stop, zoom, and focus of the cam-era's lens. The black-and-white images pulsate and evo lve as the camera responds to the images that it sends to the mon i tor.

t TRIPLE-AYE LlGHTSTICK BILL BELL (1983) [P] The Ligbtstick is an array of blinking li ght-em itting diodes that flash in computer-controlled sequences. The sequences, taken all together, make up whole images, but at any given instant on ly one ve rtical slice of an image is present. These slices follow each other in such rapid success ion that the visitor's eye cannot perceive the blinking images when looking directly at the Ligbtstick. But when his or her eye scans across the Ligblstick, it sees the whole image flash across the room- a strong and surprisi ng effect. When the visi tor looks back, it 's just a bar of li ght again .

11 FLAME SPEAKER NICK BERTONI AND MAGGI PAYNE (1984) Fiame Speaker is a sound scu lp ture whose IO-inch-high gas flame becomes the medium through which one can speak or play music. lis one approaches the piece, remarkab ly hi gh fidelity music can be heard com-ing from the flame itself, as the ion-ized gas of the flam e vibrates to the electrical impulses provided by an enclosed amplifier. By speaking into a microphone or pl aying on a small keyboard, one can control the sounds comin g from the fl ame, and explore the seq uences and dynam ic ranges .

... INTERACTIVE ROBOT CLAYTON BAILEY (1984) This robot is a hand-shaking copper humanoid constructed of found objects and hand-fabri -cated metalwork. It rewards dona-tions with a display of static electri ci-ty, fl ashing li ghts, and thunder-clapS- With the intensity of the dis-play proportional to the amount of money donated.

5 PENTAPHONE JONATHAN GLASER (1984) [P] Pelltapbone is a five-sided marimba-like inst rument that is comprised of five sets of bars tuned to different reg-isters of the same pentatonic scale. :-The bars are made of paduk wood, aluminum, magneSium, flame-treated bamboo, and glass. The characteristic timbres of each type of bar and the constant pentatonic scale to which they are tuned allow even untrai ned

GROWING ART IN A SCIENCE CULTURE

BY ELLEN KLAGE S

nlike Minerva, the artworks on

the Exploratorium's exhibit floo r

do not spring full-grown from the

minds of their creators. Each

piece undergoes a remarkable

process of evolution, from idea to prototype

to an exhibit on the museum floor.

The Environmental Art exhibition

opened at the museum in 1993. It featured

four works created by artists working in the

Exploratorium's Artist-in-Residence Program.

Although the pieces themselves are very dif­

ferent- two involve video and computer

technology, the others are wholly mechani­

cal- each underwent a similar process of

evolution and co-creation. This process is

illustrated by a detailed examination of the

creation of Michael Brown's Meanderings and

brief examples from the work of the other

Environmental Artists.

Meanderings by Michael Brown

The growth of Michael Brown's artwork

is very much like its title-Meanderings. From

his original idea, the project flowed, branched

off, and changed directions as various forces

came into play. Before he came to the

Exploratorium, Michael said he had been:

... doing these fountains, playing with water. I

was making wall hangings with water run­

ning down, trickling, doing this meandering

thing. I had a sheet of copper- highly pol­

ished-and the water meandered beauti­

fully. But people wanted to play with it, stick

their fingers in it, and the copper patina'd.

That was when I started to use glass,

because it's so much easier to keep clean.

The Arts Program at the Exploratorium

offered Michael a residency to build a piece

that was originally conceived as water, fed by

copper pipes, running down a sheet of glass.

He began constructing a prototype, and dis­

covered that working in the Machine Shop

fostered the growth of the piece in directions

he hadn't imagined.

I started with a vertical piece of glass, then

people in the shop came over and kicked

around ideas. What happens if you tilt it?

What happens if you use lights? What shad­

ows does it make? We discovered, among

other things, that if you placed a piece of light-colored material below the surface of the glass and added a pinpoint light source,

the water acted as a lens. We played with it

and got these beautiful optical effects.

Within a few months, Michael 's sheet of

glass had become a glass-topped table with an

elaborate t ilting mechanism, a pump, and a fil­

ter. Construction cont inued, but sometimes

pushed the limits of Michael's experience.

I thought: Oh no. I've never worked in a

machine shop. I've never used that tool. I've

never welded before. So I got the chance to

learn to weld. I'd go up to someone and say,

"How do I do this?" and they'd teach me. All

I had to do was ask questions. It was a

totally open environment to learn in.

Michael Brown and visitor.

One of the strengths of the A.I.R.

Program is that artists have full use of the

resources of the Exploratorium-tools,

space, and staff expertise. Like many artists

who are used to working on their own,

Michael sometimes found the process of co­

creation to have its drawbacks as well.

In the shop, when I'd start to experiment with

something, people would stop by and take a

look. Everyone felt free to interject their ideas.

It was great, because everyone had good

ideas, but it was also weird for me. I was

making decisions about what I wanted the

piece to be, and at the same time I had to fig­

ure out what advice to accept, and whether

it was okay to reject someone's idea. There's

only so much I could do, or it would turn

into someone else's piece. A good piece, real

interesting, but not mine.

Meanderings

by Michael Brown, 1993

The patterns water makes as it

flows down an incline are demon­

strated by Meanderings, a 3-foot

by 5-foot glass-topped box.

Visitors can change the course of

the trickles of water with their

fingers and watch both the

streams and the shadows cast on

the white surface below the glass.

players to conduct engaging musical conversations without fear of playing "wrong notes."

I FICKLE ORACLE LEWIS ALQUIST (1986) Fickle Oracle has a va ri able focal length parabolic mi rror created by spinning a circular basin of mercury on a turntable. People can vary the mirror's foca l length by making the device sp in faster or slower, watching their own image or images of people walking pas t go through a remarkable range of distortions. Its sculptured housing is made from vent cowli ngs found at a shipyard.

2 WAVE ORGAN PETER RICHARDS AND GEORGE GONZALES (1986) [PJ Wave Organ , a wave-activated sound sculp­ture, is located on a nearby jet­ty and utilizes wave action from the bay to create a sym­phony of sound that emanates from a series of pipes that reach down into the water. A wo nderfu l co llection of granite build­ing materi al th at existed on the site was utili zed to create a se ri es of sculp­tured terraces and seating areas. The listening pipes, made of PVC and con­crete plaster, extend from the seating areas to the water. The intensity and complexity of the wave music is di ­rectly related to the tides and weather.

;J FRIENDSHIP ACROBATIC TROUPE CARL CHENG (1987) [PJ p,.iendsbip Acrobatic Troupe consists of a large acry lic water tank with air jets mounted in a geometric array at the bottom. Programmed bursts of air create an array of different-shaped bubbles that slowly travel in forma­tion to the surface of the tank. Some of the bubbles are spherical in shape, others look like mushroom caps, and still others are shaped like doughnuts or miniature UFO 's .

• LIGHT STROKES RICHARD GREENE (1987) [PJ Ligb/ Strokes is a graphic input device which allows visitors to create a full ­co lor image on a computer screen. The image, which can be printed wi th the help of an Exp lainer, is created by "painting" on a flat Plex iglas surface using only ordinary water and tools (brushes, fingers , etc.). The Plexiglas acts as one face of a transparent prism. A video camera views that sur­face from an angle that lets it record the image as it's being created on the screen . These images are digitized and processed in real time to build up a drawing as th e tools are moved along the su rface.

Over the year that Michael worked on

Meanderings, it grew and changed, first in his

concept, then in successive approximations,

experiments, and prototypes in the shop, and

finally as a "working prototype" on the exhi­

bit floor.

I was surprised at how much the piece

changed once it was out on the floor.

Physically, the first thing we had to do was

make it lower, because it was too tall for a

lot of kids to reach. But it also grew concep­

tually, which blew me away. Paul Doherty [a

staff physicist] walked up and watched it for

a few minutes, then said, "Do you know why

it does this? Or this?" He spent an hour

explaining why all these things were happen­

ing, and it was amazing. I'd thought about

the physics of resistance and cohesion, but

Paul kept showing me so many other ways

to look at the same trickle of water.

Throughout their residencies, the artists

in the AI.R. Program work in collaboration

with staff scientists, craftspeople, and techni­

cians. Once a piece is out on the exhibit

floor, this collaboration extends to the public.

Visitors walk by, stop, and play with

the piece, or pass it by, uninterested.

Some spend a minute or two, others

spend hours discovering aspects of

the piece the artist may not have

planned.

I'd worked with it for months and

months, and I thought I knew every­

thing it could do. But within a week,

people on the floor were playing

with it in ways that never even

occurred to me. That's the way

things work here. You create some­

thing, and even when you think it's

"done," it keeps going from there. I

made it originally, so I can claim it as mine,

but other people are continually reinventing

what it can do.

Meanderings spent a month out on the

floor, back in the shop for fine-tuning and

changes, then on the floor again before it

went on display in the two-month-Iong

Environmental Art show. The installation in

the museum's special exhibition area came

with a new set of problems to solve.

Meanderings was set up near Terraforms,

and just outside the entrance to the show

was the Bubble Tray exhibit. Every day there

were dozens, hundreds, of kids with sand or

soap all over their hands. It was a real logical

thing-they rinsed their hands in the nearest

running water, which was Meanderings. But

the sand clogged the filter, and the soap scum

made it almost impossible to keep the glass

clean.

Meanderings is now on display in a sec­

tion of the museum far away from soap and

sand. Every day, visitors walk by the water

that flows steadily down the glass. Some of

them stop and look, some of them dip a fin­

ger into the stream and watch as the path of

the water and the shadows change. Most of

them learn something about water, about

rivers, about the natural world.

Like the stream of water, the process of

building Meanderings was not a straight line. It

zigged and zagged, took some unproductive

turns, and a few surprising detours. That is

how artists in the AI.R. Program work. The

unexpected is part of the process.

Terralorms by AI Jarnow

One of the main design problems that AI

Jarnow had to solve in building Terraforms

was the unlikely juxtaposition of loose, wet

sand and computer equipment. After weeks

of having to dismantle and clean the trackball

mechanism (which controlled the computer)

when it ground to a sandy halt, he replaced it

with a more durable joystick, and covered

the computer's buttons with plastic shields.

The video monitor on the piece was

designed to allow visitors to observe the

process of erosion, but some people found that

it could be used for other entertainment.

One group of teenagers discovered the

automatic timing and recording sequence, and

they were able to move the rocks in the

sandbox in between shots. They pulled their

hands away during each shot, and kept at it

long enough to produce a flawless animation

of the rocks taking an apparently unassisted

walk.

Terraforms

by AI Jarnow, 1990, 1993

An unlikely juxtapositioning of

a sandbox, video camera, and

computer, Terraforms allows

the visitor to simulate erosion.

Processes that normally occur

over months, years, or even

decades can be slowed down,

speeded up, replayed, and

observed in minute detail.

I SILAGE BEACH MOWRY BADEN (19B7) [P] Based upon experiments by Richard Gregory, Silage Beach induces the illusion of self motion. One or more persons enter a revolving cylinder whose walls are made of vertical stripes. After staring at the stripes moving past, soon the stripes seem to slow down and stop while at the same time the viewer has the sensation of revolving in the opposite direction.

2 LARIAT CHAIN NORMAN TUCK (1987) [P] Lariat Chain consists of a motor­driven bicycle-wheel rim mounted approximately 10 feet above the floor on a tripod with a continuous loop of light chain that fits over the rim. As the wheel turns, the chain runs with it. Left undisturbed, the chain loop revolves in a smooth and flowi ng manner. By tapping or touching the chain, beautiful standing waves and serpentine convolutions can be created along its circuitous flow .

iJ LlGHTSHIFT M-2 PETER TEN EAU (1987) [P] Ugblsbifl M-2 consists of a series of perforated metal screens with holes of different sizes and spacing. By super­imposing these screens over each other in various ways, they filter and interfere with the light coming from behind, creating shimmering effects called moire patterns. Taking the form of our architectural frieze , the piece is mounted over the main entrance into the building from the lobby. As people pass by, the images created by the shapes of the screen and their overlapping relationships change, evo lve into new shapes, and sometimes disappear.

• PANDORA Bill MAXWEll (1988) Pandora was both a fountain and water sculpture located in the lagoon at the Palace of Fine Arts. By means of a time-sequenced display, the foun ­tain literally "carved" romantic visual images in the water, then displayed these images on , and eventually below, the su rface of the lagoon. As visitors watched, the water began to ripple, and from it emerged graphic watery visions of weeping maidens­like those located at the top of the Palace of Fine Arts colonnade. As the fountain 'S ten-minute cycle contin­ued, the moving water formed a series of terraced planes, which stepped down from the surface of the water to form the interior of the box into which the maidens gazed. From the bottom terraces appeared a staircase of water which seemed to continue down to the bOllom of the lagoon. This residency was a joint effort with Capp Street Project in San Francisco.

·1 t

Water Waves by Andrei ldravic

Andrej Zdravic's multi-monitor video dis­

play is the most technologically complex of

the four Environmental Art show pieces. For

him, a lot of the exhibit-development process

involved experimenting with videotape,

laserdiscs, and computer synchronization and

programming-areas familiar to him in his

work as a filmmaker. It was his intent to use

the technology as a tool to present the phe­

nomena in an interactive way, but his first

installation took him back to the drawing

board.

Initially, I thought the exhibit would be inter­

active in the sense of allowing visitors to sit

in the "editor's chair" and manipulate the

playback of the waves. There were three

buttons-stop, reverse, and a frame-by­

frame step. I found that, invariably, everyone

just plunged for the buttons, not paying

much attention to the images on the screen.

They'd tweak the buttons for a while, and

leave. Meanwhile, everyone who was watch­

ing was frustrated because the images were

always being interrupted.

The presence of the buttons led to an infat­

uation with the technology itself, negating

the learning process I'd hoped the technolo­

gy would foster. So I removed the controls,

and most people-even small children­

began to intently observe the waves.

Without the buttons, Water Waves became

mentally interactive, compelling attention

and arousing a curiosity and an appreciation

for the energy and beauty of the water.

Cloud Rings by Ned Kahn

Ned Kahn's interest in atmospheric

physics and vortices led him to experiment

with the creation of vortex rings. He began

with a coffee can, a hole punched in its bot­

tom and a rubber membrane stretched over

its open end. When he filled it with smoke

and thumped on the rubber, a small, perfect

smoke ring issued from the hole.

The scale of the exhibit grew, from coffee

can to garbage can to the five-foot diameter

aluminum and rubber structure that now

sits on the floor of the Exploratorium. But

size was not the only element that evolved

during the process of creation. Kahn devel­

oped, prototyped, and ultimately discarded

one mechanism that produced the rings, and

found that his second attempt came with

unexpected benefits.

At first I had an elaborate system of cams.

When visitors turned a large crank, the

cams would slowly lift a heavy metal plate

with a hole in the top over a basin of fog,

then let it fall. The impulse drove a fog ring

up to the ceiling of the museum. It worked

fairly well, except that if people turned the

crank too fast the mechanism would make

an annoying clunking sound. If they turned it

really fast, it didn't work well at all.

It dawned on me that I could simply support

the metal plate on strong springs, and let

people push down on it directly. I built a

model that way, and all the technical prob­

lems vanished. The human interaction also

became much more direct and tactile. The

springs allow visitors the opportunity to be

more creative and open-ended in the way

they use the piece. I've watched people cre­

ate a slowly rolling ring by pressing gently,

then follow it with a quicker, harder push to

send another ring up to interact with the

first, way up in the heights of the museum.

Each of the four pieces in the

Environmental Arts show presented a set of

unique problems to be solved by the artists,

but all four shared in the process of collabo­

ration and co-creation that characterizes the

Exploratorium's Artist-in-Residence Program.

Working with scientists, technicians, and

craftspeople in the setting of a science mu­

seum, the artists create pieces that are the

result of free, creative inqUiry- the border

where art and science meet.

Ellen Klages is a writer and editor at the

Exploratorium. She is the author of Harbin Hot

Springs: Healing Waters, Sacred Land.

Cloud Rings

by Ned Kahn, 1993

An aluminum dish filled with

mist produces an 18-inch diam­

eter donut shape that floats up

toward the ceiling of the

Exploratorium when a visitor

presses on the rubber covering.

Water Waves

by Andrej ldravic, 1993

Water Waves is a video installa­

tion that consists of ten high­

resolution monitors showing

sequential images of waves and

water movement in oceans,

rivers, and ponds.

I

2

II

THE GHOST OF AMELIA EARHART BERNI E ZUBROWSK I (1988) [P] A carefully lit swath of di aphanous ye llow cloth undulates slowly in a large tank of clear water. Steady streams of bubbles rising from the bottom intercept and interact with the waving cloth enhancing the medita­tive mood of the wo rk. It is located in a quiet, dark area and has seating fo r people to sit and watch.

ALIEN VOICES PAUL DEMAR INIS (1989) [P] Alien Voices initi ally looks and sounds famili ar, but these two side­by-side oak and glass structures, like old-fashioned telephone booths, con­ta in telephones with a difference. Each phone has a touch-control panel with sixteen different options fo r changing one's speech with the help of a computer control. Visitors hold­ing a conversation wi th someone in the neighboring booth can suddenly vary their vo ice from a monotone to a th roaty whisper or add a Gregori an Chant line to what they say. By letting us exaggerate or eliminate the nuances that are present in each of ou r individual speech patterns, Alien Voices demonstrates how, despite the meaning of wo rds, the "music" of our speech can change the intent of what we say.

CHAOTIC CHAINS ANNA VALENTINA MURCH (1989) This work desc ribes light, motion, rhythm, resonance, order, and chaos in fo ur dimensions. Chains of mir-rored balls are suspended from the ceiling and attached at the fl oor to motor shafts. The turning shafts cause the chains to sweep and undul ate through space. Their beautiful and often chao tic moti on is captured by a fl ashing strobe. Cbaotic Cbains is dependent upon feedback from its own ebb and fl ow to transform and evolve its movement from the regul ar into unpredictable patterns.

SUCH RUINS GIVE THE MIND A SENSE OF SADNESS ELLEN ZWEIG (1989) [P] Drawin g from a quote of architect Bern ard Maybeck for the title of her piece and usi ng turn-of-the-century technology, the artist created a series of camera obscuras that captures real-ti me images of Maybeck's Palace of Fine Arts and projects them into the Ex ploratorium 's exhi bi t hall. This livin g cinema, with Wide-angle views and soft lenses, provides a ) 9th-century view of the world.

A PENDULUM CLOCK NOR MAN TUCK (19 89 ) [P] At fi rst glance, the giant see-through erector-set-like structure seems to be a rea li zation of one of Leonardo da Vinci's mechanical inven ti ons. Totally open and exposed, it is constructed of

ART AS A TEACHING TOOL

BY PAT MURPHY

rank Oppenheimer, the founding

director of the Exploratorium, began

building exhibits while teaching

physics at the University of

Colorado. Rather than having stu­

dents do a different experiment in the labora­

tory each week, Frank created a "Library of

Experiments." Throughout the semester, stu­

dents could use the exhibits that made up

this "library," experimenting independently

with a minimum of instruction.

The Exploratorium reflects Frank's desire

to create an environment in which people

can learn and discover on their own. The

Exploratorium is a teaching laboratory where

visitors wander freely among exhibits and art­

works, experimenting, observing, playing, and

learning by making their own dis-

coveries.

Frank Oppenhelme, In the Sound Column.

The staff uses the museum's exhibits and art­

works to train teachers to use hands-on and

inqUiry-based techniques in their classrooms.

Teachers also bring their classes to the mu­

seum to learn and discover.

Artworks created through the museum's

Artist-In-Residence Program are a vital part

of the museum's library of teaching tools. In

Rift Zone, an art piece created by Ned Kahn,

jets of air bubble through loose white sand,

creating patterns that are reminiscent of vol­

canic cinder cones, bubbling mud pots, and

other geological formations associated with

geothermal activity. The patterns are con­

stantly changing; the sand is always in motion.

In the summer of 1993, a group of half a

dozen elementary school teachers sat and

watched the bubbling sand for half an hour,

observing the changes over time. The intent,

according to Exploratorium teacher and

physicist Barry Kluger-Bell, was to capture

the teachers' imagination and encourage

them to notice things that they might ordi­

narily overlook.

After just a few minutes of observation,

the teachers were enthralled. ' 'They saw one

thing after another after another," Barry

recalled. ''They noticed how the sand would

pile up and then at a certain point there

would be a little avalanche. They noticed

there were ridges being built up. They

noticed particular patterns that were devel­

oping and they tried to predict what would

happen. They tried to figure out why

avalanches occurred at a certain point, why

the sand took the shape it did. There were a

couple of teachers who came away from that

experience saying 'That's my favorite exhibit

in the whole museum now.' "

These teachers were attending the

School in the Exploratorium (SITE), a pro­

gram that trains elementary school teachers

to use inquiry-based learning in their class­

rooms. To help these teachers learn to

observe natural phenomena, the SITE staff

had them observe a number of the muse­

um's artworks, including Michael Brown's

Meanderings , Bob Miller's Sun Painting, and

Ned Kahn's Cloud Rings.

Barry felt that the artworks were

particularly useful for calling the teachers'

attention to details that they might ordi­

narily ignore. "Working with artists at

the Exploratorium, I've learned that one

of the things artists do is take things

that you don't normally notice and sort

of grab you by the head and make you

look at them," Barry explained. "The art­

works tend to bring interesting phenomena

up to the surface, so that you can make bet­

ter observations."

Physicist Paul Doherty shares Barry's

enthusiasm for teaching with the museum's

art pieces. Paul teaches in the Explorator­

ium's Teacher Institute, a program that

works with middle school and high school

steel, ropes, bicycle cha ins and a bowl in g ba ll , and stands 24 fee t tall. The clock has gear-like teeth protrud­in g from it, markin g off the sixty minutes of the hour, as well as a large and a small hand. It is powered by the weight of a large metal basket fill ed with artifacts which in turn acts on the crown wheel: the key to the clock 's turnin g.

TERRAFORMS AL JAR NOW (1990 PHASE I) (PHASE II , 1993) [P] See detailed description, page 17.

I VIBRATING PIN SCREEN WARD FLE MING (1991) [P] The pin screen has a ro und table- like fo rm, and consists of a perforated metal sc reen stretched li ke a drum­head wi th in a metal frame. The screen has 97 pe rforations per squ are inch. Each perfo rati on is fill ed with one hi ghly refl ecti ve, nickel-pl ated pin , whi ch swings li ke a tiny pendu­lum. A vibrator attached to the under­side of the screen's frame causes the pins to move in unison through sequenti ally vary ing wave pa tterns. This vibration resu lts in a display similar to a digi ti zation of the refl ec­tion of li ght off movin g water. Changin g colors are added by three overhead li ghts, with ro tatin g gels shining on the surface of the screen.

'I REFLECTION ON AN INCIDENT IN THE OFFICE­MARLOWE BILL CULBERT (1991) [P] A depiction of the comb inant proper­ti es of li ght and a light-object colli­sion, Marlowe consists of a set of offi ce furniture: a desk, chair, filin g cabi net, trash can and coat rack fu sed together as one un it with all compo­nents intersectin g the surface of the desk. Some twenty-odd li ghted tubul ar fluorescen t lamps also in tersect the surface at varying points, as if incli ­vidual "rays" of li ght. The scul pture is suspended in space above the ex hi­bi tion fl oor.

J WELL OF LIGHTS TO SHIO IWAI (199 2) [P] An extension of ea rly 19th-centu ry movin g im age technology: f1ipbooks, zoe trope, etc. , Welt oj Ligbls goes we ll beyond fi lm and the video moni­tor/TV form at to consider some revo­lutionary ways in which an object and image can appear to move in space. Welt oj Ligbts is an image sculpture, a three-dimensional piece employin g layers of movin g imagery th at are generated by a combin ation of com­puters, strobing video projections and spinning transparent discs .

• ORIENTATION SCULPTURE FOR THE BLIND WILL NETTlESHIP (1992) [P] Seven tacti Ie maps, at va rious

science and math teachers, helping them

make use of hands-on learning in their class­

rooms.

Watching Paul at Michael Brown's

Meanderings , you might guess that the piece

was designed by a physicist to be used as a

teaching tool. Paul tilted the glass to send

streams of water flowing down the glass.

"Meanderings is one of my favorite teaching

exhibits," Paul said. "There are so many

things you can explore with it, and it's

beautiful."

He began by pointing out the meanders

and starting a discussion about why the water

acted as it did. What forces were affecting

it? Gravity pulls the water down the glass;

cohesion holds the streams together; adhe­

sion attracts the water to the glass; inertial

forces come into play when the water goes

around a bend.

"You can directly interact with the

water," Paul said, demonstrating by making

two small streams merge to make a larger

one. "You can also change the angle of the

glass or the flow of the water. All of these

give the piece great depth."

Paul also uses Meanderings to teach

about light. The meandering streams of water

focus light from a small bright light to make

bright streams on the white surface beneath

the glass. The light reveals the pattern of tur­

bulence created when the streams flow into

the pool of still water at the bottom of the

incline. The shadows of bubbles in the pool

have a bright star in the middle, another

effect of the focusing of light by water.

According to Paul, one of the strengths

of Meanderings as a teaching tool is the

tremendous range of exploration it makes

possible. " I expect to find something new

every time I come to it no matter how many

hours I've spent teaching at it," Paul said. "In

general , the artists seem to approach their

work with a different perspective than the

scientists. Often a scientist will start with an

idea of what they want to teach and build the

exhibit to teach that. The artists create

exhibits that end up being more open-ended.

Especially this piece. There's a spectrum of

both scientific exhibits and works by artists,

and Meanderings happens to be at one

extreme of the spectrum, allowing explo­

ration in ways that even the artist never

expected."

Paul uses many A.I.R. pieces as teaching

tools. At T erraforms, he teaches about geo­

logical processes, considering erosion and

deposition. He makes teachers get their

hands dirty, shaping landforms from sand and

watching the flowing water erode them away.

At Water Waves, he encourages people to

watch the waves and look for connections

and patterns. He finds many of the art pieces

are particularly effective in encouraging peo­

ple to make observations, and then connect

those observations with phenomena that

they see in the world around them every

day. He finds that the artworks direct the

viewer's attention, but allow enough space

for experimentation.

The teachers at the Exploratorium make

use of the artworks just as they do the

exhibits built by scientists-to help people

learn about the world around them. Thomas

Humphrey, a physicist who has been involved

in both teaching and exhibit-bUilding at the

Exploratorium, sees that as the museum's

main role in education. "What museums do

is provide rich and memorable experiences

for people. No one comes away from the

museum remembering anything that's quanti­

tative. When they talk about an exhibit later,

they don't use the language of physics. But

they remember experiences they have."

Thomas feels that artists play an essential

role here. " If our job is to provide visitors

with rich experiences of the natural world,"

he says, "who can help us do that? Who

should we call into our museum to make

exhibits to do that? There are scientists and

there are engineers and there are artists. You

could go on and on. If what you want to do

is provide memorable experiences that cen­

ter on natural phenomena, then artists belong

here as much as anyone else does- maybe

more."

Pat Murphy is a fiction writer and the

Director of Publications at the Exploratorium. Her

books include The City, Not Long After, the

Nebula Award- winning The Falling Woman,

and By Nature's DeSign, a book on patterns in

nature created in collaboration with photographer

William Neill.

locations inside the Exploratorium, guide visitors by shape and by sur­round in g floor textures. As an artwork, the maps function as a navigational aid for visuall y impaired guests.

MOBILE: A PERSONAL AND HISTORICAL NAVIGATION JIM PAUL (1992) A slide/lec ture presentation on human migration. In attempting to trace his matriarchy, the artist followed his fam ily from Virgi ni a to Mobi le, Alabama at the start of the Civil War, to Ca li forni a in the 1920s in an attempt to illuminate the relationship between personal events and larger­scale historical movements.

I DANCE OF THE HONEYBEES: AN EXPLORATION OF SAN FRANCISCO'S MISSION DISTRICT MARK THOMPSON (1992) Artist/beekeeper Thompson translated the foraging movements of honeybees, housed in a hive on Capp Street, into coordinates on a city map, which he then followed. Along the way, he col ­lected raw materials-stories, visual impress ions, pressed flowers, street objects. At the Exploratori um, an observation hive was on display, along with a city map showin g the progress of Thompson 's exploration .

2 LIFE MAPPING: PORTRAITS FOR THE TWENTY·FIRST CENTURY MORGAN O' HARA (1992) This install ation offered two ways to make se lf-portraits. The first was a drawing table with a map of the world on which visitors could track their individual travel paths by hand. The second was a computer graphics sys­tem which allowed visitors to trans­form their lifetime travel patterns in to printed images.

J MUSIC INSECTS TOS H 10 IWA I (1992) [P] Music I7lsecls consists of an RGB monitor with fou r "insects" moving about randomly on the screen, each corresponding to a different instru­ment (pi ano, bass, percuss ion) in a MID i sound modu le. There is also a palette of colors which correspond to the individual pitches of a two-octave diatonic scale. The user paints his/her music on the screen by selecting and plaCing a color from the palette wi th the cu rsor or "brush." As the insects on the screen cross the lines drawn by the "composer," they sound the pitch indicated by the color on their partic­ul ar instrument. Certai n colors cause the insects to change directions, allowing them to move around the entire screen. in short, users find themselves emp loying the visual medium of painting wi th colored li ght to actua ll y compose their own beautiful music.

PRACTICAL INFORMATION FOR MUSEUMS CONTEMPLATING AN ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE PROGRAM

he following are particular points

that the Exploratorium's Artist-In­

Residence Program has found to be

important for integrating artists into

a working museum environment.

• Have an artist on staff to coordinate the

program and to act as a liaison between visit­

ing artists, staff members, and the public. This

person, or another, should be designated as

the shop mentor or project manager- the

person who makes sure that things go

smoothly in the shop.

• Establish an Arts Advisory Committee of

interested and sympathetic arts professionals

from your community. They are helpful with

finding artists, with the selection process,

with supporting and contributing to the art

and science dialogue, and with resolving

issues. They can also help with fund-raising

activities .

• Commission artists who have experience or

are willing and interested in working collabo­

ratively with your staff. Working collabora­

tively enhances the quality of the piece and

the learning experience of all involved.

• Establish criteria so that projects are the­

matically related to content areas of your

museum. This provides a frame for both the

artists and the institution to make decisions

about how (or how not) to become involved.

• Structure each project so that the idea or

piece can evolve, but maintain control by hav­

ing a clearly written, but flexible budget. This

allows the project to take a new direction if a

discovery is made in the development

process, without going over budget.

• Negotiate a fee for the artist that is approx­

imately one-fourth to one-third of the total

project cost (this should include travel and

housing, materials and equipment, and staff

assistance). Factors that will affect this formula

are the scope and/or the time needed to

complete the project.

• Have the artist make a presentation of his

or her proposed project to your staff. This is

a nice way to inform the staff and to provide

an avenue for establishing contacts.

• Have the artist do development work and

fabrication work on the premises, so staff can

offer suggestions and ensure that the piece is

durable and safe. (State in the contract that

the artist has control of the aesthetics and

content of the piece but must be open to

suggestions concerning durability, safety, and

compatibility with your other exhibits.)

• Structure the project into three phases:

experimental phase, fabrication phase, and

shakedown phas . The experimental phase

should result in a working prototype. At the

Exploratorl um w put an escape clause in our

contract that allows us to terminate the pro­

ject after the experimental phase if we decide

that insufficient progress has been made to

warrant going ahead. The shakedown period

allows time fo r working out all of the unan­

ticipated problems that occur once the piece

has gone on display.

• Require that the artist write a maintenance

manual for the piece and a critique of the

process.

I WATER WAVES ANDREJ ZDRAVIC (1993) [PJ See detailed description , page J 7.

2 MEANDERINGS MICHAEL BROWN (1993) [PJ See detail ed description, page 15.

~ CLOUD RINGS NED KAHN (1993) [PJ See detailed description, page 15 .

• LAGOON RESTORATION PROJECT LAURIE LUNDQUIST (1993 -97) [PJ The goal of this three-phase effort is to improve the flow of energy in the Palace of Fine Arts lagoon, just out­side the Exploratorium, and to create an informative water feature inside the museum. Phase I and Phase II wi ll include the design and construc­tion of a sculptural fountain inside the museum th at remecliates water fro m the lagoon and educates mu­seu m visitors about the dynamics of a wetland system. In Phases 11 and III Lundquist and the Exploratoriu m staff plan to augment the biodiversity of the lagoon and implement biological modifications to the lagoon's eco logi ­cal system th at will abso rb excess nutrients out of the water and cycle them hi gher into the food chain.

ESSAYS- ON THE ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE PROGRAM MARK BARTLETT (1993) As a writer-in-residence, Mark Bartlett wrote two essays for A Curious Alliance: The Role of Art in a Science Museum, a publica­tion outlining the importance of the arts at the Exploratorium. This publication will hopefully become a tool for other museums wanting to include artists in their exhibit-deve lopment process.

"

RESIDENCY PROGRAMS

AT THE EXPLORATORIUM

n addition to the Artist-in-Residence

Program covered in detail in this publi­

cation, the Exploratorium offers two

residency programs for artists working

in other media.

The Exploratorium's Artist Research

Program (AR.P.) offers residencies for per­

formance and installation artists-in a wide

variety of disciplines- whose work explores

aspects of nature, perception, and culture.

One element of the AR.P. is Cultural

Rhythms, a performance program which

encourages artists to examine culture as a

perceptual phenomenon. The common bonds

all these performing artists share are an inno­

vative approach to their art forms and a

desire to explore technical and creative prob­

lems in the development of their work.

Artists working in this program have created

and performed pieces involving dance, per­

cussion, theater. storytelling, song, accor­

dions, robots, poetry, puppets, synthes izers,

harps, and even canaries. Finished pieces are

presented as temporary installations, presen­

tations, or performances at the museum.

The Exploratorium's Film Program col­

laborates with other departments in the

museum, as well as with various film festivals

and community organizations, to provide

films, videos, and multimedia presentations. A

Filmmaker-in-Residence Program provides for

an extended exchange with artists who use

the moving image as a tool for inquiry and

who are working in an experimental mode

with film, video, and new media. Residencies

have explored media literacy, persistance of

vision, cognitive and diverse cultural process­

es, personal histories, and the relationship

between image and sound. Finished projects

are projected in theaters or presented as

temporary installations at the museum.

Requests for further information about a

particular residency program at the

Exploratorium should be sent to:

A.I.R. Program

Peter Richards-

Director of Arts Programs

Nick Bertoni-

AI.R. Projects Manager

Melissa Alexander­

Program Assistant

Artist Research

Program/Cultural Rhythms

Pamela Winfrey-

Director, Performance Programs

Film Program

Liz Keim-

Director, Film Programs

Marina McDougall­

Curator

) 1

Michael Rudnick

The address for all programs is:

The Exploratorium

360 I Lyon Street

San Francisco, CA 941 23

For the AI.R. Program information packet.

please include an ay, x I I envelope with

$1 .50 postage.

Shadow play performance by Kirk Roberts.

3601 Ly Street CA 94123

• ..

Non-profit organization US Postage Paid San Francisco, CA Permit No. 10380