Explanade's topics - tribe.net

Our location

2006-08-01T03:26:10Z

Yay!!! Our Art project has found our playa home.....

We have been wonderfully and graciously included with The Lost Penguins... 4:30 and Esplanade

Setup is Sunday before the event, and tear down is Sunday afternoon, after the burn

posted in Explanade - 0 replies

Playa help

2006-07-21T05:40:34Z

Hi all,

5 weeks to go.. oh no!!!

We are looking for a few folks that would like to help with setup, tear down, and daily visits to the art project to check on things...

Setup will be on Sunday for the structure before the event and possible on Monday to complete display setup. The structure is basically two large 20 ft by 10 ft tents..

We will have 10 displays to setup.

Tear down will be either Sat or Sunday at the end of the week.

Daily checks will be to make sure the genie has gas, the lights get turned on at night, and turned off in the morning. We will setup timers, but it would be great and if you happen to be a early riser, to have some help in just peeking in...

Ok, let me know your ideas.. and regardless, I'm looking forward to meeting you and having a cold bev or beer with you all.

hugs
Sarah

posted in Explanade - 0 replies

Thanks!!

2006-05-08T12:47:12Z

A million "thank you's" to the great folks who came out to the Explanade's fundraiser... Amazing people with huge hearts of gold and don't look too bad dressed up as brainy scientists.. We actually made a little money... ha!

Russell's presentation "A Public Debunking" was the hit.. Informative, hilarious and made me think of other ways to raise money for The Explanade... only kidding....

Big "Thanks" to Russell, Gomer, Da Mongolian, Smeed, Starlight, Adam, Richard, Ali Baba, Francis for the wonder art work, John Brecht and Kris for the great tunes (never miss a chance to see these guys gigging under K-Mac and Jaybee "Sockpuppet Soundsystem"!!)

And special note, we played "Tron", which turns out that the scenes where the "scientists" are working in the lab was where Russell had worked at Lawrence Livermore Labs... Coincidence or the SF Parking gods again at work....

posted in Explanade - 0 replies

Mad Scientist Dance Party/Fundraiser May 6th

2006-05-03T01:55:16Z

Mad Scientist Dance Party/Fundraiser
for "The Explanade" Art Project

StudioZ Gallery
1515 Folsom @ 11th St, San Francisco
415.252.7666 www.StudioZ.tv

Date: Saturday, May 6, 2006
Time: 9:00pm - 2:00am
DJs K-Mac and Jaybee of Sockpuppet Soundsystem
Price: $10 in costume, $15 without
Age: 21+ w/ID

The Explanade Art Project, a hands-on museum of the
parts of philosophy that relate to science which will
be displayed at Burningman 2006. Relevance to
everyday experience is emphasized, while maintaining a
sense of fascination and wonder at profound ideas near
the edge of human understanding.

Come as your favorite Mad Scientist, drink the
concoctions of lab juices and dance to the sounds of
DJs K-Mac and Jaybee of Sockpuppet Soundsystem.

www.laserminimalism.com
http://tribes.tribe.net/explanade
explanade2006@yahoo.com

posted in Explanade - 3 replies

Sign up for your display....

2006-04-24T17:24:54Z

Hi all,

Thank you so much for your interest in this art project. We set up a display at the Burningman Townhall meeting and had fun with manipulating a laser that attempted to represent the world. Way cool!

We are now getting ready to ramp up and need to start work on the displays.

Please see the below website:

http://www.laserminimalism.com/

and look over the Technical description of the displays.

http://www.laserminimalism.com/detailsonexpts.html

If a display is something that you would like to sign-up for, please contact me and let me know if you can help. While we are hoping to find folks to volunteer their time and materials, we do have a small budget and will be glad to reimburse you for your material costs. If you find the display, and would love to share your talents and skills, please let me know, any costs you expect, any additional help you might need and we can work from there. All things are possible, so don't be afraid to ask.

We are hoping to have the displays spoken for, and completed by mid-July. I will be glad to travel to your location, if possible to pick up the displays, or you could bring the display to the playa. I might even have contacts in your area that will pick up the display as well. All things are possible, so don't be afraid to ask.

Once our displays have weathered the playa, we will be looking to place this exhibit with the San Jose Tech Museum (dusted off, and perhaps with some better stands), and your name will be added to the "Artist/Creator" plaque for your display.

Additionally, we are looking to place the art exhibit on playa on the esplanade, and you will be showered with gifts and hugs for all your efforts.

And we are throwing a fundraiser in San Francisco, at Studio Z gallery on Sat. May 6th. More details to follow.

Again thanks and I look forward to working with you.

hugs
Sunburn Sarah

posted in Explanade - 3 replies

Need your resume of talents and skills

2006-03-09T22:42:40Z

To any and all on this tribe.

I am collecting team members talents, skills, and all over resume as it applys to this art project for future postings of our great artists and team members.

please pull together a little something on what you do, background and any experience as it would apply and I'll make sure to get your permission before any public release or brochure work.

thanks
Sarah

posted in Explanade - 1 reply

new technical descriptions for displays on the web site

2006-03-08T21:31:10Z

see the new section for more technical information on the displays.

and if you have your bio pulled together for project team member info, feel free to send that to me...

hugs
Sarah

posted in Explanade - 0 replies

Need talent to make these displays

2006-02-10T22:57:25Z

Displays and experiments

Expanding circles of knowledge
A diagram depicts the increase of scientific knowledge in terms of the areas of concentric circles. Inner circles represent the old theories and their regions of applicability. Outer circles represent new theories which encompass all previous knowledge, and hopefully anything we will encounter in the future. As knowledge expands, sometimes it overtakes the theory, requiring a new one (a new outer circle). (This model implicitly contradicts popular historian of science Thomas Kuhn and his paradigm/revolution model.)

Black boxes of reality
Our knowledge of the “world as it really is” can be compared with our knowledge of a “black box:” a container with inputs and outputs but unknown contents. The visitor is presented with three black boxes with two buttons and a light each. We can act in the world (push the buttons) and observe the results through our senses (see the light light up). But we can’t know what’s inside the box (the thing as it really is, or the “thing in itself” as Kant said). The visitor is invited to theorize about what’s in the boxes. Upon peeking, it is found that the boxes (which all exhibit the same behavior) have three different internal mechanisms, including one with a smaller black box inside.

The white crow
An standard example of the limitations of knowledge based on experience is that of the bird watcher who hypothesizes that all crows are black, after seeing only black ones so far. Maybe there is a white one out there no one has seen, it’s impossible to be certain. Still, it’s a good bet to say the next one you see will be black. The visitor can pull a lever to spin a jackpot-like wheel with (almost all) black crows on it. The visitor can form a hypothesis and test it by spinning the wheel multiple times. The more black crows come up, the more the hypothesis is confirmed, even if there was a white one somewhere not yet seen.

Ferrofluid spikes
A ferrofluid is a liquid filled with magnetic dust. When a magnet is placed below a shallow tray of this material, the fluid is pushed upward, but suddenly the lump of fluid breaks into spikes of uniform size. Why? Nothing in the magnetic dust particles says “you are programmed for spikes.” These arise because it’s easier for the fluid to collapse into zones that constrain the magnetic force inside them than it is to form a uniform lump. All the magnetic particles are connected via the fluid and the magnetic force, producing an “emergent property” of spikiness. This kind of phenomenon results in many of the features of our world that are unexpected unless you look at the big picture. The viewer can vary the magnet strength and see spikes form and disappear. It’s an argument for holism.

The game of life
This computer game demonstrates how life could spring from “dead matter” without a soul. The computer has many square “cells” that follow a simple set of rules that connect adjacent cells. The viewer can change the arrangement of cells or preload patterns, resulting in surprising action that never could have been predicted based on the simple rules. Patterns emit other patterns that move across the screen and are absorbed by other patterns, as some grow and others change. It’s an example of “emergence” and another argument for a big picture approach to complex systems.

Photon counting interferometer
This ambitious experiment reveals the utter strangeness of quantum particles. A light source emits light particles one at a time. The light signal splits into two parallel paths that recombine by crossing. A slight change in the length of one of the paths (controlled by the visitor) determines which final output path all the light appears in. It is argued that only a wave that was simultaneously in both paths could behave this way. Upon examining the signals in each path, the visitor only finds particles in one or the other, not a wave in both. How could this be? This experiment confronts the visitor with deep issues concerning knowledge, existence and time.

Rays are good enough, sometimes
Light used to be considered a ray, that is, something that travels in straight lines. This is good enough to explain why a laser beam is constrained to narrow down as the visitor reduces the diameter of an iris it passes through. But when the iris gets too small, the beam starts to expand into beautiful patterns. This behavior can only be explained by assuming light consists of waves, and the rays are just an approximation. We can still use rays to explain how a pinhole camera works (which the visitor can look through). The older theory wasn’t wrong, just limited in its applicability. But it was the wrong ultimate world view. We still use old theories, but we don’t believe in them.

Don't be fooled by optical illusions
Illusions are the bane of knowledge based on sense experience. How do you know your perceptions are not just illusions? Well, you can test them. The viewer sees a hologram, which is convincing until one puts one’s hand through it. An illusion of motion is created by a pattern that is clearly stationary when you look closely at its parts. An illusory color is found to be comprised of three primary colors when the visitor can turn each off and on at will. We needn’t be afraid that illusions dominate our experience of the world, because they have the hallmarks of illusions rather than the hallmarks of reality, which careful tests reveal.

What is a wave
It can be strongly argued that the entire universe consists of waves of one sort or another. What is a wave? The visitor can manipulate some electronic and sound waves to see how amplitude (loudness), frequency (tone), phase (delay), resonance (ringing) and interference (mutual cancellation) work. These concepts apply to everything from earthquakes to atoms. The concept of a wave is one of the most powerful explanatory tools in physics. We recognize wave phenomena from experience with sound, so sound is emphasized in this exhibit, which allows the visitor to play until the concepts become intuitive.

Decoherence: from the perfect to the ordinary
How does the everyday world emerge from the underlying quantum world? They are very different, yet one is made up of the other. This exhibit shows an example of a phenomenon that forms the basis of one possible answer. A laser emits nearly perfect light waves, like the waves of quantum particles when they are alone. The viewer can see a special quality of this light when reflected from a rough surface: the surface seems to be speckled, but the speckles move as the viewer moves their head. This is because the waves of light are slightly crinkled by the surface, and interfere with each other in the viewer’s eye (which links to the illusions display). The light passes through several diffusing surfaces, and as the light waves get more crinkled, the speckles get smaller until the light looks just like ordinary light with no speckles. This is analogous to how a quantum particle has its wave wrecked by interaction with the real world, and becomes more like what we recognize. After much buffeting about, complexification makes the quantum weirdness go away. (This display links to the photon counting interferometer display.)

When does ultimate truth matter?
Does it matter that things are made of atoms, not some continuous material? It depends on what you do with the material. It’s like dots on a color printed page. Look closely enough and the dots do matter, but far away you don’t notice or care. We know the world is made of atoms, but we don’t have to believe that it is when pouring water or cutting metal. For most ordinary activities, we could adopt the world view of Aristotle and reject the idea of atoms entirely. But we know this is not ultimately true, because looking close reveals atoms again. There are practical world views and ultimate world views. The visitor is invited to examine objects with a microscope, including color printing.

A deterministic machine
In the 19th century, it was thought that if an omniscient being could know every position and motion of every atom at one moment, they could predict the future and know the past precisely. This was called determinism, the idea that the course of all events is determined by the laws of nature. We now know that nature has many unpredictable elements that comprise it, so such a perfect prediction would be impossible. Still, the deterministic universe is an attractive idea. A mechanical toy is presented, where figures move according to gears and cams. The visitor can observe the driving mechanism, playing 19th century God.

The speed of light
No energy or information can move faster than light. This fact erases any concept of simultaneity or absolute time, a la Special Relativity from Einstein. To show that this speed is not infinite, we measure it with a simple instrument and some pulses of light. The visitor can move a reflector back and forth and see how the echo time for a reflected light pulse changes. The delay inside the explanade can only be a few billionths of a second. This means that the view you see of things around you is not how they look at present, but a few billionths of a second ago. Light from the distant mountains conveys news that’s a few millionths of a second old. The visitor is invited to look outside at night, at a specified point in the heavens, to see the 2.8 million year old light from the Andromeda galaxy. Given this limitation to the freshness of our knowledge, the idea of “now” kind of melts away.

Foucault pendulum
A carefully suspended pendulum swings in one plane, while a platform it’s attached to can be rotated by the visitor with no effect on the pendulum’s motion. If the platform was the earth (and the pendulum was at the north or south pole) the pendulum would still swing in one plane and ignore the earth’s rotation. Presumably the pendulum ignores the motion of the earth’s orbit around the sun as well. Well then, what is its reference? It’s stationary with respect to what? Itself, during previous swings. Such unperturbed objects with kinetic energy are indicators of straight lines and flat planes in what we call spacetime. The pendulum is aligned with respect to its history. This says something about continuity in our world view, and the present reality of past things.

posted in Explanade - 0 replies

What it is

2006-02-10T20:47:55Z

What it is
The Explanade is a hands-on museum of the parts of philosophy that relate to science. Concepts from epistemology (theory of knowledge) and metaphysics (theory of existence) are illustrated, as well as some key scientific ideas that comprise our present world view. Abstract ideas are made concrete and visual. Jargon is avoided. Relevance to everyday experience is emphasized, while maintaining a sense of fascination and wonder at profound ideas near the edge of human understanding.

In one sense this exhibit can be seen as the background of ideas that underlie or are implied by what other science museums present as facts. The information here is less about facts than about the nature of facts and how they are obtained.

Key questions
The viewer is presented at the outset with three questions that lead to the main philosophical themes:
1. What is the nature of the physical world?
2. How can I get an answer to this question?
3. What is the nature of my answer?

The first question is partly scientific and partly metaphysical. One goal of the Explanade is to delineate the boundary between these parts, while acknowledging that the boundary is fuzzy and moveable. The last two questions are epistemological. Naively, one would ask the first question first, and then realize one had to answer the second one before the first, and then realize the third question must be answered if one is true to the spirit of the first question. Ideally, we would answer the questions in reverse order, but in reality they are all being answered simultaneously and interactively, resulting in a complex process that involves feedback and constant reassessment. Such is the history of knowledge.

Why have this
There appears to be much popular confusion about the role and authority of science in everyday life. Citizens are required to make political decisions that they haven’t the knowledge to handle. Academic, religious, political and commercial entities attack science in the public arena, with general confusion the result. This exhibit attempts to bring some of the basic ideas behind scientific knowledge and method to the public in an accessible form, so as to reduce confusion. If the medium of communication of these ideas was only in print or electronic media, they would continue to be abstract rather than concrete. The engagement of the viewer with a phenomenon they can manipulate allows for a different kind of understanding more suited to visual or tactile learners. Most of our popular media concentrate on visual stimuli, so most people may be more accustomed to a visual learning mode.

Limitations
The Explanade focuses only on physical science and its philosophical underpinnings. Related questions in philosophy of mind, for instance, are not discussed. The emphasis is on not only a particular philosophical position as regards knowledge (a mix of realism and instrumentalism), but also a narrow cross section of opinions on current controversies is presented, particularly as regards the interpretation of quantum mechanics. These restrictions allow a relatively coherent picture of the world to be described, while other viewpoints are presented as alternatives to the main picture. Nevertheless, uncertainty is acknowledged throughout, particularly in regard to empirical knowledge. A distinction is made between practical and philosophical uncertainty.

Not all the key concepts in the philosophy of science can be illustrated concretely, so those that can’t be are not represented except in passing in the accompanying texts. It would not be possible to present a comprehensive overview of the complex issues in even the science-related portions of epistemology and metaphysics, so the sampling here is admittedly partial. The hope is that a viewer will come away interested in the questions, and will learn more on their own. Imparting just an awareness that there are such questions will be a success.

Not everyone will grasp the ideas presented. The audience is assumed to be adults who like to think. Children are most often the audience for hands-on science museums, but they aren’t usually able to think about thinking. Adults are more likely to grasp an abstract “big picture” idea, so the displays in this exhibit are aimed higher than in other science museums.

Organization of displays
Ideas are presented as displays or groups of displays. Each display has a physical demonstration of the central concept. A viewer stands before a display and reads text describing the operation of the display, and explanations of the illustrated ideas and their relevance to other ideas in the exhibit. In this regard, the displays are similar to those found in many science museums.

Guided mainly by the need to choose ideas illustrable by physical actions, the displays are organized into several groups. Groups of displays are organized within the main areas of knowledge (epistemology), existence (metaphysics), and world view (physics). Within the knowledge arena, for instance, there is a group of displays on illusions, as the specter of illusion or hallucination is often discussed in relation to empirical knowledge. One display on illusion would present a hologram, and discuss how one could determine that the illusion was not real, by passing one’s hand through it for example. The display would also note that a hologram is an example of the manipulation of waves, and the viewer should go to the group on waves in the physics arena to learn more about what that means. The displays can be experienced in sequence or one can jump from one to another following indicated links.

Display design
Most displays have a 2-foot high by 3-foot wide text panel, and a 1-foot high by 3-foot wide experiment panel underneath. These are attached to a 6’6” high easel with a light at the top for nighttime illumination. Some displays require more space, such as the light path for the speed-of-light display, and this is accommodated with extra hardware in the exhibit area. The footprint of the displays is about 3 feet square. Each one is independent, allowing placement in logical groups so as to present a set of coherent ideas at once.

The text panels are printed posters with color text and illustrations. Text colors correspond to the function of the text, such as concept, explanation and instructions. Since these colors are used consistently, the viewer soon knows to expect a certain function from a certain color text. Layout of the paragraphs is also consistent for the same reason.

Experiment panels are for the viewer to manipulate the physical effect, generally engineered to fit a standard format so that construction is easier and cheaper, and setup faster. When this is not possible, the format is changed accordingly. Examples of additions include audio speakers on the sides of the easel, tethered optical devices to look through, or a rotating jackpot wheel next to the easel (illustrating uncertainty and prediction).

Breakdown of ideas
Upon entering, the viewer can choose to investigate any of three areas: the nature of the physical world (current scientific worldview), how to get knowledge about the physical world (scientific method), or the nature of knowledge of the physical world (perception, empiricism, uncertainty, statistics). The three areas are interdependent logically, but can be experienced in any order as the viewer’s curiosity dictates.

The area about the nature of the physical world focuses on current pictures derived from quantum physics and relativity, with a background of classical physics. With these current pictures come current controversies, particularly about the interpretation of quantum mechanics. It is important to represent these controversies, because they show how our scientific worldview actually develops dynamically, and conveys the excitement philosophers and scientists feel when presented with an unsolved mystery. Most of the time, museums present science as a “done deal” yielding incontrovertible facts. Here, science is presented as always moving ahead on the edge of uncertainty.

The area about the nature of knowledge concentrates on empiricism and its issues, such as the problems of perception and imperfect knowledge. Illusions are presented as recognizable hurdles that can be overcome. Empirical knowledge may never be absolutely certain, but certainty is shown to be unnecessary in practical applications. Since knowledge of what exists depends on what actually does exist, metaphysics is developed in parallel together with epistemology. Instrumentalism contends that a physical theory is only a means of prediction, while realism claims that the theory is the best candidate for a description of what is actually out there, and we should believe it as the truth. The exhibit shows that both of these positions have their use.

The area about the scientific method also shows how we gain knowledge about our everyday world in a casual process we are often unaware of. The argument is made that our practical needs require an approach to learning that is more refined in science, but essentially the same philosophically.

posted in Explanade - 0 replies