Leiden City of Science References, Part 4: Convenings, Places, Activities
This is the last post in a 4-part series about “engaging, mind-blowing, and inclusive websites and/or online campaigns” relating to art and/or science — all in response to a call on Twitter from Meta Knol, Director of the Leiden 2022 European City of Science initiative.
This post focuses on Convenings, Places, and Activities. Previous posts focused on,
…It’s a nice, broad range of categories but, admittedly, non-scientific and there is a lot of overlap between them.
All the same qualifiers and caveats apply to this bunch of references as the last 3 — I’m focusing on science content from my own tiny Western frame-of-reference (though I would dearly love to know what the wonderful websites and campaigns look like from the perspective of people in Jakarta, Mexico City, Mumbai…!); I’m drawn to bottom-up & community-focused content and interactions (though I’m clearly a sucker for a good story); and I’m not as impressed with fancy bespoke apps and custom websites as I am with simple, direct, communication with and for people and communities.
As I’ve thought about Meta’s question over the last few weeks and considered my own responses it became really clear to me that the websites, apps, and digital projects and things that have brought me joy have rarely been the kinds of standalone apps or carefully crafted content experiences that museums and educational institutions often want to produce. Not that those kinds of here-is-the-virtual-tour-of-our-Cezanne-exhibition or here-is-our-learn-about-the-cosmos-app experiences can’t be joyous and wonderful — but, to me, the voice and the shocking, surprising, joy-giving wonderfulness of the Internet and tech comes, when it comes, more from the wilder, unconstrained corners of the web — and the parts of the Internet where people-meet-people — than from the parts that Institutions have tried to tame and control.
Finally, a lot of the examples and references I’m drawn to don’t fit neatly into the category of websites, apps, or digital things. For example, Fridays for Future, cited below, isn’t a website or an app, it’s a global climate-action movement for which social media and the web is an integral part. Meetup.com, also cited below, is a web platform, but it’s not the web/tech aspect of the platform that’s particularly interesting (though there is a lot to study and learn there) but what it helps to accomplish out in the world.
All of my choices across each of these 4 posts reflect my feeling that when it comes to designing things to help or inspire or serve people and communities — thinking about digital and physical as two different things is a trap; a dead end that leads nowhere. From what I’ve observed, digital and physical are just two parts of whole, and when teams think openly and creatively across the whole, blended spectrum of our digital and physical lives then wonderful, exciting, important things can happen.
Convenings, Places, and Activities
AI Dungeon
What: A text-based adventure game driven by an AI and neural network instead of human scriptwriting. Essentially, you and the AI are co-creating an adventure together.
Why: Not focused on science-based content, per se, but the astonishing richness and creativity of the AI responses hints at AI’s future possibilities and also the potential of this form of engagement to help people explore the world in new ways.
Press/info: Eat the Moon, https://www.usingdata.com/usingdata/2019/12/18/eat-the-moon
Sample: See Eat the Moon, above, and also this hilarious group of Tweets by Janelle Shane, https://twitter.com/JanelleCShane/status/1202972248874704896
Alternate Reality Game — World Without Oil
What: An ARG (Alternate Reality Game) that asked players to imagine what it would be like to live in a world without oil. “The game sketched out the overarching conditions of a realistic oil shock, then called upon players to imagine and document their lives under those conditions.…The game's central site linked to all the player material, and the game's characters documented their own lives, and commented on player stories, on a community blog and individual blogs, plus via IM, chat, Twitter and other media.” (via Wikipedia)
Why: ARGs and “serious play” (games for change, etc) often intend to help people develop new kinds of creative, civic responses to plausible future scenarios. “Play it before you live it” was the game’s motto. ARGs are also known for involving players in the shaping of the plot and narratives as gameplay progresses.
Website: Archive/contact, http://writerguy.com/wwo/metacontact.htm
Press/info: One Story With 1,700 Different Authors (Current, 2008), https://current.org/2009/05/one-story-with-1700-authors/; World Without Oil (Wikipedia), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Without_Oil
Sample: Video and info, http://writerguy.com/wwo/metahome.htm
Fridays for Future
What: Global youth protest movement focused on the climate emergency. Catalyzed by Greta Thunberg; also known as School Strike for Climate.
Why: Global protest movement reaching remarkable scale and visibility. Coordinated, amplified, and publicized through social media with the #fridaysforfuture hashtag, among others. A digital strike and a Fridays For Future Digital movement have been organized for those unable to protest “outside” and in places with COVID-19 restrictions.
Website: https://fridaysforfuture.org/ . See a map of future strikes (next one is March 19, 2021) and register your own event, https://fridaysforfuture.org/action-map/map/
Press/info: (Note: this article was written by a high-school student for the Seattle Times) “‘A mass woke-ning’: Seattle’s Gen Zers on the future they want to see” (Seattle Times, 2021), https://www.seattletimes.com/life/seattle-area-gen-zers-talk-about-the-future-they-want-to-see/
Sample: …
Into the Wild
What: 2017 Augmented Reality exhibition at the ArtScience Museum, Singapore. The museum worked with film and installation artist Brian Gothong Tan to create a rainforest inside the museum’s public corridors.
Why: Clever and resourceful use of non-gallery spaces to engage visitors in a visceral, playful way on the subject of deforestation, biodiversity, and the climate emergency. One interesting feature of the exhibition: visitors could plant a virtual tree and (for a fee) a real tree would be planted on their behalf by an NGO partner in Indonesia. (Note: I didn’t see this installation first-hand, but I talked to some of the museum’s team not long after the exhibition closed.)
Website: https://www.marinabaysands.com/museum/into-the-wild.html
Press/info: Press release by a project partner, the World Wildlife Federation, https://www.wwf.sg/?291970%2FVenture-Into-the-Wild-at-ArtScience-Museum
Sample: Video (MediaMonks, 2017), https://youtu.be/fgE7EE22_-0
Meetup.com
What: Meetup is “a platform for finding and building local communities. People use Meetup to meet new people, learn new things, find support, get out of their comfort zones, and pursue their passions, together.” (via Meetup.com/about)
Why: In-person meetups have taken a hammering during the pandemic, but the range and diversity of science-related groups and meetups is staggering. (I found over a hundred science-related groups within 100km of Leiden before my hand got tired from scrolling.) Someone told me that in fast-moving fields like robotics and AI a meetup is often the best way to share and learn of cutting-edge developments, with some topics/meetups attracting over 1,000 attendees on short notice.
Website: https://meetup.com
Press/info:
Sample:
Pokémon Go
What: A place-based, digital/physical augmented reality app, game, and global public phenomenon.
Why: A reminder that people can use games, stories, and tech in fascinating, surprising, and inspiring ways.
Vice News found a link to scientific thinking as well,"I think the biggest lesson is how many people are truly interested in biodiversity, even if the biodiversity they are first introduced to is fictional," Morgan Jackson, an insect taxonomist and PhD candidate at the University of Guelph, told me over email.
"It's easy to write Pokémon off as a simple game or waste of time when there are so many 'real' plants and animals out there waiting to be recognized. But there are a lot of barriers to learning about nature, and there's no tutorial mode to help people get started like there is in Pokémon." (Source/link below)
Website: https://www.pokemongo.com/en-us/
Press/info: Overview, Pokémon Go Will Make You Crave Augmented Reality (New Yorker, 2016), https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/pokemon-go-will-make-you-crave-augmented-reality; Is 'Pokémon Go' Good For Science? (Vice, 2016) https://www.vice.com/en/article/ezpad7/is-pokemon-go-good-for-science
Sample: See trailer at https://youtu.be/eMobkagZu64
Public Libraries
What: Public libraries as public and virtual places where people engage with science content.
Why: Civics, community…Libraries are an under-utilized resource and platform when it comes to the production of city-scale events and campaigns. Many libraries host events and public lectures, have after-school clubs for kids, offer classes and educational opportunities, and support “labs” and maker spaces as well.
Website: …
Press/info: …
Sample: See, for example, Do Space in Omaha, Nebraska, “a community technology library, a digital workshop, and an innovation playground filled with new opportunities to learn, grow, explore and create” https://dospace.org/; NASA @ My Library campaign (2017), https://science.nasa.gov/science-activation-team/nasa-at-my-library
Addendum/misc.
In working on this post I remembered a few other online/digital science-related things that made gave me a good, positive buzz ;)
Virtual Dissection Table
What: A big, interactive touch-screen table for looking at (and into, and through) the human body.
Why: Just a perfect, flawlessly executed use of touch-tables to visualize something that’s very hard to grasp in other media. Using one of these tables makes me think about the human body in an entirely new way.
Website: There are many vendors. Anatomage is one, and while I think their video is good the “sample” video below gives a better sense of what it’s like to actually use one of these with your own hands.
Press/info: TED talk and demo by Anatomage CEO Jack Choi (2012), https://www.ted.com/talks/jack_choi_on_the_virtual_dissection_table
Sample: Pirogov Interactive Anatomy table: tutorial for users (2020), https://youtu.be/GEw90E_rEOE
Do You Love Me (Spot, Atlas, Boston Dynamics)
What: Video demonstrating the capabilities of Boston Dynamics robots.
Why: It’s an inspired and effective decision of science-communication (and marketing, of course) to use a dance-music video to help people understand the capabilities of robots. Videos like this help us understand and think about the future capabilities of robots and the kind of relationships we want to have with them — and they might want to have with us — in the future.
Website: Boston Dynamics homepage, https://www.bostondynamics.com/
Press/info: How Boston Dynamics Taught Its Robots to Dance (IEEE Spectrum, 2021), https://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/humanoids/how-boston-dynamics-taught-its-robots-to-dance
Sample: Do You Love Me video, https://youtu.be/fn3KWM1kuAw
AR Chemistry Apps
What: Augmented Reality applications that let you see and manipulate molecules and chemical reactions.
Why: Chemistry can be really abstract and hard to understand for people (and it’s often poorly taught) but these apps can help people understand and appreciate how amazing chemistry really is. (I think having a grasp of chemistry is essential for 21st century citizenship.)
Website: There are a lot of apps out there and honestly I have no idea which ones are good, but the videos below will give a sense of what this is all about.
Press/info: Great story! — Vietnamese High School Student Creates AR Chemistry App After Academic Flop (Vietnam Times, 2017), https://vietnamtimes.org.vn/vietnamese-high-school-student-creates-ar-chemistry-app-after-academic-flop-12194.html
Sample: AR Chemistry Augmented Reality Education Arloon (2017), https://youtu.be/Qi3h18wJJiI
This one is a little confusing, but shows the potential for organic chemistry, MoleculAR (v0.4): an augmented reality app for organic chemistry (2018), https://youtu.be/Q67-MH5_4xQ
Perseverance Rover Panoramas and VR
What: Photos and semi- virtual reality files from NASA’s Mars Perseverance Rover, February 2021.
Why: Beautiful, awe-inspiring videos from outer space.
Website: https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/
Press/info: Nasa scientists hail Perseverance rover's arrival on Mars with stunning images (Guardian, 2021), https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/feb/19/mars-perseverance-rover-nasa-scientists
Samples:
On NASA’s site, NASA's Perseverance Rover Gives High-Definition Panoramic View of Landing Site, https://mars.nasa.gov/news/8873/nasas-perseverance-rover-gives-high-definition-panoramic-view-of-landing-site/
This one is a VR-enabled version — view it in the YouTube app on your smartphone or tablet to steer around the panorama. Note too that this is a low-resolution video and images with 4 x the resolution will be appearing over time: NASA’S Perseverance Rover’s First 360 View of Mars (Official) (NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, 2021), https://youtu.be/wE-aQO9XD1g; Perseverance sees Jezero Crater rim in 360° Mars panorama (VideoFromSpace, 2021), https://youtu.be/3PrLXEbMgo4;
Other post in this series: Part 1: Websites, Channels, and Platforms | Part 2: Campaigns and Happenings | Part 3: Media and Products | Part 4: Convenings, Places, Activities