We organized a 3,600 square feet booth, including exhibits, snack activities, demonstrations, prototypes, and two PIE activities: a giant marble machines fort, and an even bigger enclosure where we let visitors build their portion of a collective chain reaction machine.

Photos from the event are coming soon. In the mean time, enjoy these frantic movies: they are two time-lapse movies, each compressing a full day of chain reaction workshop in less than a minute. You will notice the ebb and flow of visitors, and twice during each movie, the crowd building up to watch us set off the whole reaction, and then us taking it all down and starting again. It makes me tired and happy just looking at it!

Day 1:

Day 2:

The big set-offs were web-cast live on Saturday! You can see the archived versions here:

• Saturday, 2pm
• Saturday, 7pm

Visiting artist Shih Chieh Haung (”CJ”) spent last week here at the Exploratorium, researching possible collaborations, sharing his wonderful work with the staff, and generally having a good time. On his last day, we convinced him to make one of his “organic concept” installations on the museum floor. These are incredibly evocative and fun, but the execution is surprisingly simple!

All we needed to make it happen were a box fan, some painter’s tarp (which is a really thin, long sheet of plastic), and a couple of bungee cords. One end of the tarp roll gets secured over the box fan, then the fan is turned on, and the ends of the tarp are knotted together at regular intervals. The organic shape that results was an amazing draw, and it came together in less than 20 minutes! Of course visitors (especially children) attacked it immediately, but it was also really nice to see the Exploratorium staff come out of their hiding holes and start playing with it as well.

Another great advantage of this construction is the the inevitable holes and ruptures that happen can be immediately repaired by simply tying another knot! So, what we thought would last only a few minutes, ended up providing a couple of hours of solid enjoyment and wonder to many people.