I Think Therefore I Science: The Hall of Human Life: 2013 Exhibit to turn Museum of Science Visitors into Museum Scientists.

Humans are Changing

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.”

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.