Museum visitors seem to grow and shrink in the distorted environment of the Ames Room (left). Filtered through prisms and mirrors and projected on a large screen, a directed sunbeam paints vibrant pictures (right). Courtesy The exploratorium
When blind people come here, they say it's like everyday life," says Xavier Diaz, the attendant at the Tactile Dome, an 18-foot-tall geodesic structure tucked into a corner of San Francisco's cavernous Exploratorium. Sighted visitors, however, are unlikely to have experienced anything quite like it since exiting the womb. First they must hand over shoes, wallets, jewelry, eyeglasses, and anything else that might fall out or slip off. Then they step behind a curtain into a lightless world. Padded walls close in, steering unseeing occupants through winding passages, up steep inclines, and in and out of chambers with curved object-studded ceilings. The museum-goers crawl through holes that fit snugly around the hips; they tumble down slides head first, then feet first; they pull themselves up a network of ropes that seems to stretch over emptiness. All around is creamy black. A plunge down a slide into a soft, clattering mass of mysterious granular objects, and it's over.
The Tactile Dome, one of more than 650 exhibits, highlights the Exploratorium creator's fascination with direct perception. "Perception doesn't require instrumentation: You are your own instruments," says Rob Semper, executive associate director. The museum's philosophy is "learner centered," he adds. "Not that teachers teach, but that learners learn. The Exploratorium provides the props."
Thirty years ago, physicist and educator Frank Oppenheimer turned the traditional notion of a museum on its head. Instead of static, text-heavy displays, he designed a science museum that would allow people to explore the physical world through their senses. A fan blowing through a traffic cone holds a beach ball aloft, helping viewers understand equilibrium. To demonstrate turbulence, sand slides through water in a rotating glass column. A pile of wedge-shaped rubber-blocks holds a grown man, once he's arranged them in an arch.
