screenshot of cute-ify
The Mind website just launched.
This was a project I worked on for 4 years at the Exploratorium -- developing web/kiosk interactives and some physical exhibits. (Though I must say...I never want to go back to the days of making sites under 800px wide and it hurts to look at any site that isn't in Drupal!)
Here are some of my favorite pieces of mind-related content (I'm not biased at all!)
The list of links: a quirky assortment of resources for learning about some of our favorite, thought-provoking, topics in the science of mind (attention, judgment and emotion - not spirit or memory)
Cute-ify: in which you can learn about the parameters of cuteness by making a very cute or a very ugly cat, or a demonic looking child.
Masks: to me, personally, this was the most important exhibit that I worked on -- I hated the idea that most masks of the world live behind glass and that we don't get to experience our 5,000+ year heritage of mask traditions (indeed, it's illegal somewhere in Florida to wear a mask in public.) Masks are just really really interesting -- and this webpage gives you a little input into some real, but simple, physical theater techniques which might just trigger your 'holy crap how does that work???!' response which capitivated me years ago.
The really cool thing is that everyday, at the Exploratorium, museum visitors are exposed to masks used in a different context than just halloween...AND also, the exhibit is about how we communicate with our emotions and our bodies. The main point of the exhibit is to try some simple movements and notice the communicative abilities we have in our bodies. There's so much to think about in relation to the mind...why we usually focus on the face...why some people 'carry themselves' well...
It's kind of a miracle of engineering that Diane Whitmore came up with this really cool headgear that makes the mask sit far enough away from museum visitors faces..since the germs were a real problem. We made these indesctructible masks from altra-form -- or something like that. it's a plastic from douglass and sturgess which you set in hot water and then it melts. Those masks really take a beating. :)
Thanks so so much to physical theater people Christina Shonkwiler and William Hall and Tim Guigni and Janaki Ranpura for checking out that exhibit at the Exploratorium. William Hall had watched the kids using the masks without supervision, and he said that they were taking the masks where they could get a reaction (usually scaring people.) We may never know why some people are totally freaked out by masks and others are completely captivated (similar to puppetry.)