Science Centres Museum of Science Fiction gathers speed
The amusements sector can inspire new approaches HANS GUBBELS
I
’ve worked in both the amusement and the science centre sectors, and I know
that entertainment and learning are fully compatible. At Continium Discovery Centre in the
Netherlands, we’re adopting amusement park techniques as we expand. We want to diversify our audience and extend our thematic offer to include sustainable development and the design process. We’re creating two new venues next
to Continium: a design museum and a planetarium. They’ll have distinct target audiences, branding strategies and separate tickets from Continium, while belonging to the same institution. It will be part of a new museum
quarter called C-City, a multiple day destination opening in Q3 2015. The planetarium, named Columbus, is
an innovation I’m proud of. We wanted to engage audiences with sustainable development – readers will know how hard it is to turn this concept into a visitor experience. I was struggling with this thought when I met three astronauts. I asked them about the most striking experience they had had in space, and they all agreed: it was seeing the earth from above. “And then,” they said, “everything falls into perspective.” The idea of the Earth Theatre
was born, the world’s fi rst inverted planetarium. It will consist of a 16-metre (53-foot) hollow projection sphere visible from two rings of glass balconies, rendering the illusion of looking down on our planet from space. It will provide a powerful big data visualisation tool, illustrating both planetary phenomena and local trends. What sounded like an amusement
technology is proving to have serious learning and research potential. I’m looking forward to discussing it with colleagues at the Ecsite Annual Conference in Trento on 11-13 June 2015.
Hans Gubbels, director of Continium and former Ecsite president
12
The world’s fi rst Museum of Science Fiction is coming to Washington, DC, with a preview facility currently in the works before a full-scale museum opens in 2018. Expected to launch by the
end of 2015, the $3m (£2m, €2.5m) preview museum will test concept exhibitions and offer a glimpse into the process of building the fi nal full-scale attraction. One of the museum’s
fi rst exhibits will explore how ideas in science fi ction have become a reality, such as the mobile phone. The museum aims to
use science fi ction as a tool to inspire science, engineering, technology, maths, art, history, literature and philosophy. Jerry Vanek is operating independently as the lead architect for the project. The museum has been
A rendering for the preview museum for the Museum of Science Fiction
designed to be portable for easy relocation to other locations across the US. Once open in 2018,
the 4,000sq ft (371sqm) preview museum will tour the country before being added as a permanent wing to the new facility.
The museum proposes
seven galleries focusing on TV, fi lm, music, art, literature, comics and video games. Its mission is to “create a centre of gravity where art and science are powered by imagination.” Details:
http://lei.sr?a=A5u9m_A
VR game, Planetarium, launches
US-based company Leap Motion has unveiled a new program using Oculus Rift technology combined with its own hand-tracking sensors that allows users to explore a virtual planetarium. The game, Planetarium,
is available from Leap Motion’s website as a free download. It allows players to explore the night sky, travel the globe and look at the stars as they would appear from different given locations and time periods. Using the combined
Oculus Rift and Leap Motion technology, players use their hands to travel the world and “time travel” using a virtual arm-mounted heads-up display (HUD). Players can reach out and “grab” star constellations, revealing distances from earth and temperatures.
Players “time travel” using an arm-mounted heads-up display (HUD) Planetarium is due to be
be released by Leap Motion as open-source technology, allowing developers to use the programming in their own projects. Following the March 2014
purchase of Oculus VR and its Rift headset by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg,
Read Attractions Management online
attractionsmanagement.com/digital
Attractions Management looked at implications for the attractions industry, with Zuckerberg predicting that virtual and augmented reality will become part of everyday life. ● See Face Reality, issue 3 2014, page 50
Details:
http://lei.sr?a=A4U8Z_A AM 1 2015 ©Cybertrek 2015
PHOTO: © JERY VANEK / MUSEUM OF SCIENCE FICTION
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