[accessibleimage] Tactile Dome Exploratorium San Francisco

Hi,
Article (1971) about the Tactile Done at the Exploratorium in San
Francisco.
Regards,
Lisa
http://www.exploratorium.edu/visit/tactile_dome/index.html

Original 1971 press release
An internal sculpture exhibit which people will feel but never see goes on
exhibit September 9, 1971 at the Exploratorium in San Francisco's Palace
of Fine Arts. 
Tactile Dome on the museum floor        
The exhibit, called the Tactile Dome, is encased in a geodesic dome about
the size of a large weather balloon. Visitors enter through a light-lock
room into a totally dark maze (path). Then, for an hour and fifteen
minutes, they feel, bump, slide and crawl through and past hundreds of
materials and shapes which blend, change and contrast. 
The purpose is to disorient the sensory world so that the only sense the
visitor can rely on is touch. The sensation is so outside ordinary
experience that a few people panic. An attendant in a control panel can
reach every part of the ant-hill like maze almost instantly. 
Pre-opening visitors have compared the experience to being born again,
turning yourself inside out head first, being swallowed by a whale, and
inevitably, being enfolded in a giant womb. 
Seemingly the tactile equivalent of a light show, the tour is actually a
carefully planned and structured succession of shapes, temperatures and
textures which require the full range of the touch sense to perceive. 
The idea is to make people aware of what a complex. sensitive and under
used sense touch is, and to train them to use the astonishing range of its
perceptions, which include detection of pressure, pain, temperature and
kinesthesia, as well as cutaneous, internal body and muscle awareness. 
Tactile Dome on the museum floor        
Dr. August F. Coppola, whose brainchild the exhibit is, became interested
in perceptual prejudice while directing interdisciplinary studies as head
of California State College's Honors Program. He gradually came to realize
that philosophy, physics and even psychology have always relied
overwhelmingly on visual evidence to interpret the world. 
"Yet the irony is that touch is still the test of reality," said Coppola.
It's the tangible, the concrete, what you can put your finger on when your
feet are on the ground. 
Coppola believes people are actually prejudiced against the touch sense.
"It's development gets off to a bad start," he said, "for as soon as we've
stopped chewing our toes, the first commandment in life is given: "Don't
touch". The Exploratorium is one of the few museums in the world where
visitors are encouraged to touch and even manipulate the exhibits." 
One result of the touch taboo, Coppola believes, is that people become
leery of physical contact with each other and the environment and that
this leads to a sense of isolation and loneliness. 
As evidence of our overly-visual values, Coppola points to the
overemphasis on fashionable clothes and the benefits of tourism. "This
route leads to passive, non-participatory activities like TV watching" he
said. 
Coppola and Carl Day, co-developer of the Tactile Dome, and gallery
director at California State College in Long Beach, are leaders in an art
revolution which uses people as participants in art experience rather than
as targets at which to hurl artistic messages. They believe the
revolution, if successful, will greatly affect not only art, advertising
and industrial design but even life styles and basic beliefs. 
Both claim that improving your haptic powers also increases your visual
skills. 


Lisa Yayla
Huseby Kompetansesenter 
Oslo Norway
lisa.yayla@xxxxxxxxxx

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