After Dark: Immerse

PRESENTATIONS

Sensorama: Experiments in Immersive Cinema
With Kathleen Maguire
7:00 p.m.
Bernard and Barbro Osher West Gallery, Kanbar Forum

Virtual reality (VR) has been a hot topic in recent years with filmmakers and entertainers seeking to immerse us ever more deeply in their work. While the technology is ever-evolving, the impulse to engage audiences as active participants has always been intrinsic to cinema.

Join Exploratorium film curator Kathleen Maguire for a look back at some of the radical, quirky, and inventive ways artists and technicians have attempted to surround viewers in cinema, from bonkers multisensory experiences to ingenious marketing schemes.

Braised, Boiled, or Sous-Vide?
With Loretta Keller and Nate Campbell
7:30 p.m.
Fisher Bay Observatory Gallery

Placing food in liquid and then raising its temperature is an age-old practice. But does the amount of liquid matter? What about the temperature? Learn the ins and outs of cooking food in a hot bath and absorb how your choice of technique—boiling, braising, or sous vide—drastically affects your results.

Get Into a Good Book: Dissection
With Julie Crossman and Wendy Farina
8:00 p.m.
East Gallery

Sink into an exploration of the physical components and sensorial attributes of books. Wielding the traditional tools of medical dissections, artists Julie Crossman and Wendy Farina slice into a book to disclose its hidden anatomy, and then guide you through bookish, multisensory investigations.

The Euphoria of Walt Whitman and Hallucinations
With Facing West Shadow Opera
8:30 p.m.
Bernard and Barbro Osher West Gallery, Kanbar Forum

A dense and holistic visual landscape made from projected video, animation, and shadow theater is paired with live operatic voice and cello in The Euphoria of Walt Whitman, a handcrafted, multisensory production exploring Whitman’s obsession with the traveling operas of the Wild West in the Gold Rush era.

Hallucinations is an experimental film featuring puppets, objects, and cut paper animating a live performance of Mirabai Songs (1982) by new music composer John Harbison. Inspired by the legendary sixteenth-century poet and street performer from Rajasthan, India, the piece evokes Mirabai’s escape from death and devotion to Krishna expressed in dance, poetry, and song.

ONGOING

Tapigami
With Danny Scheible
6:00–10:00 p.m.
Bernard and Barbro Osher West Gallery

Encounter an intricate world made entirely of masking tape, and apply your imagination to your own tape creations.

Cardboard Costume Closet
With Jesse “Roadkill“ Wilson
6:30–9:30 p.m.
Bernard and Barbro Osher West Gallery

Celebrate WildCard with a cardboard costume of your own design. Meet with Jesse “Roadkill” Wilson of the Cardboard Institute of Technology for an intensive introduction to cardboard costuming techniques, from prototyping to painting to “sewing” segments together with hot glue. Get your glitter on with a fantastical, outrageous outfit—you can make anything with cardboard. 

Rolling Through the Bay
With Scott Weaver
6:30–9:30 p.m.
South Gallery

Scott Weaver’s complex masterwork—a love song to San Francisco made of more than 100,000 toothpicks—carries Ping-Pong balls through multiple “tours” of the neighborhoods, historical locations, and iconic symbols of the city. Join the artist on an exhilarating ride through his ever-evolving, decades-in-the-making artwork by the Bay.

Pulsefield
By Brent Townshend
6:00–10:00 p.m.
Bechtel Central Gallery, Phyllis C. Wattis Webcast Studio

The Pulsefield is an interactive installation that combines high-resolution motion tracking of up to 20–50 people with an extensible video and music display. Using Lidar (“light” and “radar”), or pulsed lasers to measure distances, Pulsefield maps the movement of people within the installation to patterns of light, generative video, and interactive music. 

Exploring Small Things in a Big Way
With GIGAmacro
6:30–9:30 p.m.
East Gallery Corridor

What does a landscape of moth scales look like? How would the Glass Settling Plate exhibit appear from the perspective of one of its inhabitants? Get into extremely high-definition imagery of small specimens and artifacts and discuss specialized photography rigs with GIGAmacro staff.

Programmable Projections
With Tinkering Studio Staff
6:30–9:30 p.m.
South Gallery, Tinkering Studio

Explore light, color, shadow, and motion using simple, everyday objects and construct larger-than-life shadow projections. Lights and motors are controlled with Scratch programming to create sculptural projections from visitor creations in this collaborative, immersive environment.