Today, I returned to the Science and Technology Museum, partly to take another look around the whole museum with both Wu Dan and Yu Wenhao, and partly to try to conduct an audit. Assuming that Sunday would be a very busy day (weekends usually are, in Dan’s experience, and she comes here quite often), we arrived when the museum opened at 09.00.
The AV Paradise (视听乐园) consists of 8 exhibits:
- 机器主持人The Robot Host
- 虚拟比赛Virtual Athletic Competition
- 飞机模拟驾驶Simulated Piloting of an Aircraft
- 影视合成Movie and Television Synthesis
- 全息音响Holographic Sound
- 涌金号海上航行器Yong Jin—A Marine Craft
- 与节目主持人对话An Interview with a TV Host
- 虚拟演播室Virtual Studio
We decided to audit the last two. Some of the exhibits are not good to photograph. For example, the “Holographic Sound” exhibit consists of a room you walk into. There is nothing to see from outside, and not much from inside. (Plenty to hear, of course, but that’s also hard to photograph.) So, thinking about that issue and the obvious relation of the last 2 exhibits to our work, we decided to audit from those 2 exhibits to the exit.
1&2.
Type of Screen: Computer Monitor:
Size: 0.4 x 0.4m approx
Location: In between the 2 exhibits. There are a number of these located through the AV Paradise
Function: Point and click for information about the AV Paradise and its contents, mostly text-based.
Notes: A pair of back-t o-back ball-mouse-operated computer screens, with general information about the AV Paradise. You stand to use them, and there is a pink circular light underneath the podium. I didn’t see anyone touch these today, and on other visits there have only seen people taking a passing interest. It has no game qualities, and there is no lever to pull, button to press etc.
3.
Type of Screen: LED?/LCD? Mitsubishi brand (三菱电机), large flat screen composed of 9 rectangles,
Size: probably total of 1.5 m high by 2 m wide
Location: outside the “Interview with a TV Host” (与节目主持人对话) exhibit, to the right as you look at it
Function: To show adoring parents outside or curious classmates your performance in a simulated interview. Inside the exhibit room, you sit on a chair and look at the interviewer on a screen, and then answer his/her questions. Outside, you appear to be together in the same space.
Notes: People did not seem to find this instinctive or incredibly easy, or enjoyable. Onlookers love it, of course. I also figure this is quite old large-screen technology, but I don’t know for sure.
4, 5
Type of Screen: Cathode Ray TV screens in colour TV monitors
Size: perhaps 0.4 m high x 0.5 m wide
Location: Inside “Interview with a TV Host”
Function: One shows you the host asking you a question, the other shows the result — the same image as appears on 3.
Notes
6.
Type of Screen: Touch-screen, “Contec” brand.
Size: 0.3 m high by 0.4 m wide?
Location: inside “Interview with a TV Host”
Function: Allows the volunteer running the exhibit to start and stop the show. It is positioned so that the participants cannot see what s/he is doing.
Notes: I think this is the only touch screen I have seen inside the museum. When the whole thing is going, you get a strange multiple mediation effect, with the user looking at screens inside the exhibit, the operator looking at this screen, and the people outside looking at the big screen
7-12
Type of Screen: 6 x Computer monitors, some on, some off
Size: 0.4 x 0.3 m
Location: Inside control room for “Virtual Studio” exhibit
Function: presumably they are all to do with operating this equipment
Notes: The person in the control room is a member of staff of the museum, not a volunteer
13, 14
Type of Screen: Sony Trinitron monitors
Size: 0.3 x 0.3?
Location: Inside studio. One shows you yourself performing and the other what the audience sees, I think.
Function:
Notes: I think this might be most challenging exhibit, partly because it calls up on people to do a turn on television, so to speak, and partly because it seems quite technologically challenging (although all you have to do is stand there and sing or recite something). The more I pay attention to it the more I am convinced few people use it.
15,16, and 17, 18
Type of Screen: Sony Trinitron monitors
Size: 0.6 x 0.4?
Location: One pair mounted high outside studio, and one pair inside, facing audience to the “show”
Function: To show adoring parents their tots talent time performances
Notes: A sure lesson we have learnt from this place is that if you want people to use screens, you should show what happens when someone is using a screen to everyone else nearby. It seems to draw them over to watch and then have a go. On the ones outside, I could read “DRC-MR Dual Exhaust 3D Sound System Multi-System AV Stereo”, I believe.
19.
Type of Screen: Computer monitor in wall with a piece of Perspex in front of it. Ball mouse operated.
Size: 0.3 x 0.25?
Location: in wall inside virtual studio
Function: to preview photos taken of a performance. It seems it may print them out too, but I got confused about this when we tried to clarify whether you printed them out here or somewhere else.
Notes: I have never seen anyone pay for and print out the photos.
20.
Type of Screen: Computer Screen, ball operated, with image of VCD screen, it seems. Protected by a piece of glass
Size: 0.3 H x 0.5 W?
Location: On wall on the right on the way out.
Function: You can buy VCDs of the performance in the virtual studio.
Notes: Never saw anyone buying a VCD. Seems very outmoded technology and idea now
21.
Type of Screen: Dell Brand computer monitor behind Perspex on right wall on way out.
Size: 0.5 square?
Location: on right wall on way out, further on from 19
Function: shows 4 images from “虚拟比赛Virtual Athletic Competition”
Notes headed “Wonderful Retrospect” — i.e. it’s a goodbye screen. There is a tickertape scroll at the bottom of the monitor (not LED) telling you how to pay if you want these, too. The Perspex window has holes in it. I wonder if originally there was a person behind this selling photos and VCDs to people on their way out?
After the audit, we went into another exhibit on the Ist Floor. This is the “Children’s Science Land” (儿童科技园). This is going to be enlarged when they get rid of the AV Paradise. I wonder if this is such a great idea? It’s really like a playground at the moment, and seems aimed at very young children. (True, there are many of those at the museum) — perhaps the 3-7 year olds. Lots to climb on, push, pull etc. One exhibit where you yell and then a jet of water is sprayed in the air according to how long you yell. This is predictably popular! In fact, sound is big part of the exhibits here, as in the AV Paradise. I think this helps a lot to make exhibits popular and like theme park rides.
There are some screen-driven exhibits in the Children’s Science Land. For example, there’s a ball mouse operating drawing device, and a chess game. But neither of these seemed to hold children’s attention for long, and when we tried to use them we found them difficult. Presumably, a contemporary touch-screen based exhibit where a child painted or moved a chess piece by touching the screen might be both more fun and less challenging for the skill-impaired like myself.
Why are the fun push, pull, drive etc exhibits gone from the London Science Museum? Health and Safety? I could see ways in which someone could injure themselves, for example the “Light of Wisdom” (智慧之光) hall here features lots of things to pull and climb on that you could fall off or trap your fingers in potentially.
Outside the Children’s Science Land was a bank of 6 computers donated by IBM with “Try Science” (放眼看科技) written on them in Chinese and English. These were very popular, seeming to go against our observation that visitors did not engage long with screens that just used point and click technology to take you into layers of information on screens. Why? First, there was bench in front of each screen, so you could sit down (ah…). The bench was just about the right size for the modern Chinese family — two parents and one child, or two grandparents and one child. And, finally, there was another big screen above the main one showing what was being revealed to other people walking by, and therefore attracting their interest in possibly using it in future.
When we went upstairs to the Quantum Physics hall, which is far from interactive, there was almost no one inside. Presumably it’s too abstract, too? And it was Sunday, a family day?
So, how important is box office to the Museum? Especially if they are willing to get rid of one of their most popular halls (The AV Paradise)?
We heard that the 2nd and 3rd Floors were done in 2005, and the 1st floor in 2001 (when the museum first opened). Do they design and construct them all themselves, or do they invite outsiders to help?
On the subway on the way over, I notice again all the screens on the subway system, as well as the people using screens to create their own private space in the screened up public space!
