[accessibleimage] Re: Tactile Dome Exploratorium San Francisco

So, what happened to it?


Lori

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Lisa Yayla" <lisa.yayla@xxxxxxxxxx>
To: <accessibleimage@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, February 17, 2005 7:29 AM
Subject: [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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