NYSCI

The New York Hall of Science. What an incredible space. I visited after Maker Faire tired me out, and it was incredible to see how many people were just as interested in its exhibits as the faire itself (I’m sure the AC helped though). There are a few different levels to this museum and it can be a challenge to navigate efficienty, but the exhibits are very detailed and appear to be long term, which is good because they teach important concepts. They even have a little makerspace in the basement!

The first exhibit I stumbled upon.. or into… was Mathematica. It was a lot to take in at once, but for this class I paid close attention to the interactions and the time elements. Obviously, the first thing that indicated time was the timeline on the wall, indicating how math has influenced design and architecture thought the last millennium. The next thing that caught my attention was the box full of shapes. It showed how different viewpoints and lenses can influence what we see.

Moving back to this class my biggest takeaway from this exhibit was that, even without anything digital, there are so many ways to visualize data interactively and meaningfully. I really enjoyed this exhibit and remember being in awe of it when I first visited the hall of science years ago.

The other exhibit, tucked away in its own corner if the museum was Connected worlds. This was a much more new exhibit, with an impressive list of sponsors listed on the wall to make it happen. Using a ton of kinects and projectors and sculpted screens this exhibit allows people to interactively see how they are effecting the environment in an accelerated time-frame. I really loved this exhibit, it just took so much work to pull it off and I appreciate that.

As far as data visualization goes this was really neat because it was convincing to everyone. It illustrated its concept without even using words. By creating a whole environment for people to play in it could show them how they can help or hurt the world based on what they do intuitively. It was really awesome to see.

That was my trip to NYSCI!