Science, history, and art converge in this whimsical tribute to San Francisco’s 1915 World’s Fair, which celebrated its centennial in 2015. Lost landscapes from the Fair (including the Exploratorium’s former home, the Palace of Fine Arts) become the backdrop for spectral encounters. Are the spirits of fairgoers getting restless?

Museum visitors who dared to enter the Black Box interacted with ethereal forces and became part of a world of ghostly apparitions that sprung to life. Just in time for Halloween, Visible Spectres took as its cue the illusion technique known as Pepper’s ghost, used in theaters, haunted houses, sideshows, and magic tricks.

Do YOU see ghosts?

Kerry Laitala is an award-winning moving-image artist who uses analog, digital, and hybrid forms to investigate the ways in which media influences culture. She considers this approach to making art as a type of media archeology. Laitala’s work resides at the crossroads of science, history, and technology. Her uncanny approach to evolving systems of belief manifests through an array of media including films, videos, installations, photographic works, performances, and kinetic sculpture. She studied photography and film at the Massachusetts College of Art and received her Master in Film from the San Francisco Art Institute. Laitala’s 2015 City Luminous series encompassed seven separate works spanning the realms of installation, multi-projector performance, photography, and single-channel film, shown thus far at the Palace of Fine Arts, the San Francisco Art Institute, the California Historical Society, and in solo shows at Oddball Films and Shapeshifters Cinema. Elements of The City Luminous series have been funded by a Special Projects Grant from the Princess Grace Foundation, San Francisco Arts Commission Grant, Yerba Buena Benefit District grant, California Historical Society, and Maurice Kanbar.