Humans are Changing
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| See these concept drawings in the Museum's "Then and Now" exhibit. |
Have you ever wondered whether or not your metabolism is
genetic? Is your gait more characteristic of your age or gender? Have you ever
considered the effects of your diet or the diets of your ancestors on your
body’s ability to digest milk?
Under the theme “humans are changing,” an upcoming Museum of
Science exhibit, the Hall of Human Life (HHL), will encourage visitors to
consider the answers to all of these questions. The exhibit will explore
through these and other questions how visitors’ physical environments are
affecting their bodies, how their environment itself is changing, and how they
are changing their environment.
Consider, for example, how the foods you are buying today
will be reflected in changes in your body tomorrow, and how, in turn those
changes will affect what you will be able to buy.
Brittany Jeye, a Program Presenter at the Museum of Science
explains the participatory concept behind the developing exhibit:
“You can get a wrist bracelet that scans info you provide,
and tracks what you do at different activities. Then you can compare yourself
to others who have done the same activity.”
This format incorporates Museum guests into the exhibit,
asking them to be both a participant and a researcher in order to gain a new
perspective about themselves and the human species as a whole. This perspective
is much needed in light of the rapid changes that medical fields have been
experiencing.
Miriam Ledley, coordinator of Cahners Computer Place,
explains the importance of the dialogue surrounding HHL exploration in relation
to these changes:
“Now, people are being treated at the molecular and genetic
level and most don’t realize that. This exhibit will try to bridge the gap
between what people know about medical treatment and how they are actually
being treated.”
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| The Vitruvian Man |
Proclaiming it’s self to
be, “no ordinary exhibit about human health and biology,” the Hall of Human
Life will indeed explore questions about the body, not through the abstracted
biological ideal represented by da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man, but through virtual
media and the data that visitors collect about themselves.
The data should prompt visitors to consider their own body
in relation to that biology, as well as to changes that have since complicated
that biological ideal.
Instead of probing through models of idealized physical
anatomy, they’ll be manipulating data that they participated in collecting and
forming their own hypotheses about why we are the way we are.
The virtual nature of this participation gives the information collected both local and global implications. “As someone
studying biology and psychology,” Jeye says, “I want to see what other people
are like and how I compare or am different. Since it’s all virtual, one day we
might be able to compare what we do to what people do in other parts of the
world.” Should these exhibits become popularized, the database that visitors
and museum experts have available to them could potentially grow to represent the global population.
Museums are Changing
Just as humans are changing, so too are museums. The Hall of
Human Life is just one of many exhibits to break the Museum of Science even
further out of the glass case and “Don’t Touch” philosophy that was once the
rule in exhibit formatting.
Miriam Ledley, coordinator of Cahners Computer Place (CCP),
another of the Museum’s exhibits, is excited by the change that the HHL
represents, a change that will be seen throughout the Museum over the next few
years.
“We’re trying to reshape the Museum so that it tells a story
about the natural world, the designed world, and how they intersect.”
After the HHL new exhibits such as “What is Technology?”
will be the next step in facilitating the telling of this story. Look out for
press releases and new information about this transformation.
Contributing to the Change
Fortunately, you don’t have to wait until 2013 to begin
experimenting. It is currently possible to contribute to the development of the
new exhibit when you visit the Museum of Science’s Human Body Connection (HBC).
The HBC is currently home to the Hall of Human Life Exhibit Laboratory, and a
prototype of an upcoming HHL activity.
Here, Museum visitors explore the question, “Why do people
have different abilities to balance?” Visitors may play a game in which they
can move a ball through a virtual maze by shifting their weight on a footpad.
Following the game, they compare the time it took them to complete the maze
to the times of visitors with differing genders and ages.
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| A visitor attempts a balancing task being prototyped for the upcoming exhibit. |
How long would it take you? What gender or age group do you
think would perform the task most quickly? Go to the Museum of Science and find
out.
