Tinkering: all Summer at the Exploratorium

TINKERING: all summer at the Exploratorium

Take It Apart: Home Appliances
12 noon-4 p.m.
How do vacuums suck? Toasters pop? The Exploratorium puts a new spin on home improvement as we supply visitors with the tools and expertise to take apart our favorite household things. Learn the fascinating science and mechanics underlying everyday appliances. Join us as we uncover the things that heat our food, keep us connected, and enable our routines.

	Fooling Around with Found Footage 2 p.m.
Fast Film (2003, 14 min.), by Virgil Widrich, is an animated homage to motion pictures handmade by folding 65,000 xeroxed prints of film frames into three-dimensional objects. Includes selections from roughly 300 of Hollywood's most memorable films.
Light is Calling (2003, 8 min.), by Bill Morrison, captures the random and fleeting nature of life and love as seen through the roiling emulsion of an ancient film—James Young's The Bells from 1926.
Metaphysical Education (2002, 4 min.), by Thad Povey, was edited by turning the film splicer sideways to reveal both the film sprockets and the soundtrack. As the film strip slides by, gravity and the desire to fly battle for a boy's soul.
Passage à l´acte (1993, 12 min.), by Martin Arnold, makes a simple breakfast scene from To Kill a Mockingbird look like a surrealist nightmare. The 1950s family is the target, here being transformed into a crazed version of a postwar family.
Papillon d'amour (2003, 3 min.), by Nicolas Provost, is a mesmerizing manipulation of Rashomon that expresses the horror that can lie in beauty and pure love.
Come Ons (2000, 2 min.), by Joe Sola, employs cunning edits to Hollywood films to make a point.
Apparent Sensory Perception (2004, 5 min.), by Jesse O'Donovan Lockard, was made by using found images from old educational films and was inspired by a short story by William Gibson called Fragments of a Hologram Rose.

Marble Machines 12 noon-4 p.m.
Also on Sun 7/18
Reconnect with marbles in a whole new way! Design and build kinetic contraptions inspired by Rube Goldberg, a Pulitzer Prize-winning inventor and cartoonist best known for designing intricate chain reactions that accomplish very simple tasks. Send marbles along an interconnected obstacle course of jumps, bumps, and turns. Participants will construct and test their designs, then leave them behind for others to test, take apart, and rebuild. Use all types of materials, including funnels, tubes, planks, propellers, and pins.

	Tinkering with Space 2 p.m.
Fetch (2001, 5 min.), by animator Nina Paley, is a funny and kinetic exploration of space involving an animated dog chasing a ball. Music created by Nik Phelps and the Sprocket Ensemble.
Two Space (1979, 8 min.), by Larry Cuba, explores color afterimages and the illusion of figure/ground reversal.
Muretti Gets in the Act! (1934, 3 min.), by Oskar Fischinger, is a tour de force of pixellation composed of marching, dancing, and ice-skating cigarettes. This animated commercial is set to music by Josef Bayerís Die Puppenfee.
Diggins (2000, 3 min.), by San Francisco filmmakers Christine Bruno and Natalija Vekic, is a hand processed, dual super8 valentine.
Blowing Things Away (2001, 3 min.), by Felipe Dulzaides, is a whimsical film that shows what happens when the artist blows with force on a multitude of common objects. This is a refreshing and visceral film that is a physical study of focused breath as well as a metaphor for changing one's life.

Note: All films will screen in the Exploratorium's McBean Theater unless otherwise noted.