After Dark: Let's Play

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Presentations

Pinewood Derby Race
With Zeke Kossover
Weigh-in at 6:30; races at 7:00, 8:00, and 9:00  |  Bechtel Gallery 3

For 65 years, the Pinewood Derby has been a rite of spring for the Boy Scouts of America. With a few basic rules of the road and gravity as the only propelling force, cars crafted from small blocks of pinewood compete to emerge fastest. Interested in competing? Bring your own handbuilt or kit-crafted car to try to take all the way to the finals. Check out the guidelines here. Not building your own car? No worries—we’ll have a few on hand for visitors to take out for a spin.

Connecting through Play: Designing Technologies that Bring Us Closer
With Katherine Isbister
7:30 p.m.  |  Bechtel Gallery 3, Webcast Studio

Read too many news stories about how technology is destroying our social connections and creating isolation and depression? Come hear about research focused on creating technology that playfully heightens and augments being together in the moment. Katherine Isbister’s lab is working toward a future in which wearables and other devices artfully bring out the best in us as social and emotional creatures. You’ll also get to try on and try out custom-built wearables her lab built to augment live-action role play.

Everything Matters: Krypton
With Ron Hipschman
8:00 p.m.  |  Osher Gallery 1, Kanbar Forum

The unreactive noble gas krypton may not look, smell, or taste like much, but just wait until it gets excited—it’s a key element in powerful lasers, high-speed photography, and energy-efficient lightbulbs. Find out about the bright side of krypton with Exploratorium scientist Ron Hipschman at Everything Matters: Krypton.

The Deinstrumentalization of Games
With Eddo Stern
8:30 p.m.  |  Bechtel Gallery 3, Webcast Studio

As a games designer, artist, and educator, UCLA Game Lab Director Eddo Stern takes a remarkably experimental approach to his work. In this talk, Stern will discuss making games and projects about games as an expressionistic and humanistic practice. He will discuss the struggle of cultivating and sustaining a games laboratory that survives while resisting the prominent values, technologies, and expectations of the entertainment industry and highlight some of the inventive, genre-expanding work produced within the lab.

Ongoing

True Colors
With the Social Emotional Tech Lab
6:30–8:30 p.m.  |  Bechtel Gallery 3, near webcast studio

True Colors is a social wearable device originally designed to help larpers (live-action role players) get into character and enjoy the immersive social experience of a weekend of play. The University of California, Santa Cruz Social and Emotional Technology Lab worked closely with a local larp organization (Event Horizon) to create the form and feature set, then studied how they impacted players' experiences during their action-packed romp in the Marin headlands. Try these devices out for yourself--and see whether you agree that they help create an unexpectedly positive feeling of vulnerability toward others that is lacking in everyday devices.

Virtual Virtual Reality
With Tender Claws
6:30–9:30 p.m.  |  Osher Gallery 1

In the near future, most jobs have been automated. What is the purpose of humanity? Activitude, the Virtual Labor System, is here to help. Your artisanal human companionship is still highly sought by our A.I. clients. Strap on your headset. Find your calling in this virtual reality game.

Micro-Drone Races
With the Museum of Future Sports
6:30–9:30  |  Gallery 2

Sit back, relax, and enjoy a virtuoso showcase by professional drone-racing pilots. Featuring LED lighting that reframes the Exploratorium’s exhibits and architecture as an aerial racetrack, spectators can watch from below or above—or ride along in a virtual cockpit experience—to get completely immersed in the drone-racing experience.

Bezos Shopping Spree
With OllieBear
6:30–9:30 p.m.  |  Bechtel Gallery 3

How hard is it to spend the amount of money Jeff Bezos makes in a day? Find out in OllieBear’s latest minigame, Bezos Shopping Spree.

BlindFold
With Tom Ackerman
6:30–9:30 p.m.  |  Bechtel Gallery 3

Stumble toward success in the deceptively simple game of BlindFold. Players take turns writing words on pieces of paper and then must draw from a pile of directions that call on them to manipulate the paper through folds, tears, and flips. Earn points by having your word stay visible. Easy peasy! Oh, wait—one thing. You’ll need to prove your dexterity in the dark, since you’ll take your turn blindfolded.

Driver's Seat Racing
With the Museum of Future Sports
6:30–9:30 p.m.  |  Bechtel Gallery 3

Put your tiny pedal to the metal in a hands-on, head-to-head remote-controlled car race that puts you in the cockpit. Taking RC racing to the next level, the Museum of Future Sports’s custom cars feature onboard video cameras. By donning video goggles, racers experience a first-person “driver's seat view” that shrinks them down to floor level for an unexpected new perspective on the Exploratorium.

UCLA Game Lab Arcade Backpack
With David Elliott, Steven Amrhein, Eddo Stern, Tyler Stefanich, Alex Rickett, and Jen Agosta
6:30–9:30 p.m.  |  Roaming

Play inventive art-games on a most ingenious gaming cabinet. Created by the UCLA Game Lab as a mechanism to infiltrate public spaces and engage audiences with game art projects, the backpack debuted at the 2nd Annual UCLA Game Art Festival at the Hammer Museum and has since travelled the world.Constructed from plywood, a laptop, arcade-style controls, and an illuminated  LED Marquee, the entire cabinet is holstered onto a military-grade back frame and can be adjusted to fit comfortably on any willing back. Enjoy a selection of inventive art-games from students and graduates of the UCLA Game Lab: Miller Klitsner, Adeline Ducker, John Brumley, Nick Crockett, Jon Haddock, Lea Schönfelder, and Gerard Delmàs.

Panoply of Play
With Explorables
7:00–10:00 p.m.  |  Gallery 4

Join Explorables for two playful activities exploring sound and motion:

Glove-a-phones
Glove-a-phones are musical instruments you create with gloves, tubes, and straws. Some say they sound like saxophones, others think they sound more like bagpipes. What's indisputable is that playing your Glove-A-Phone is like nothing else.

Spinning Disc
Pull the string to make the disc whirl around. How fast can you make it go?