Exhibit Critique

Rotating Faces: Which mirrors rotate your face when rotated, and why?

My favorite exhibition of the ones we were asked to explore was Rotating Faces: 

it is a simple exhibition that causes an extreme amount of initial mind-bafflement, and I think it is very clever and powerful.

I felt that it had a particularly strong element of actively encouraging analytic thinking through observation, 

and this simultaneous stimulation of physical and intellectual exploration is an aspect of Exploratorium exhibits that I find extremely compelling.

It took me a few minutes of turning the mirrors until I found the pattern, and then a few more to figure out one of the logical explanations to it. 

While it is true that most people probably wouldn't have time to stay at one installment for a long time, 

and therefore might walk away from it without being any closer to a possible solution, 

I think it is still nice to have planted a question in people's minds, 

and to leave them walking away from the Exploratorium with not only a fun experience but also unanswered questions. 

Seeing myself in the self-excluding mirror

My least favorite was the pair of self-excluding/centering mirrors, 

mainly because I don’t think they were set up very well. 

The mirrors wouldn’t work properly if you stood too close to them, yet putting the exhibits in a relatively narrow corridor made me naturally approach it from a close distance; it was somehow slightly anti-climatic when the first sight I saw in the self-excluding mirror was myself. 

In order to prevent this from happening, I think it would have been better if more consideration were given to place the mirrors somewhere more spacious.