Exhibit Critique

Giant Mirror ~ Personal favorite

The Giant Mirror exhibit impressed me with its simplicity and its ability to engage and delight the viewer immensely.

There is an element of surprise and discovery. From far away you see your reflection as a huge, upside-down face but as you move closer your figure flips into a small right-side up reflection against a blurred background of giant faces. I'm not sure if others felt the same way, but the way my reflected self bobbed in a sea of blurry, larger-than-life faces of other museum-goers struck me as very cinematic. It was very mesmerizing. Shifting your distance from the mirror results in different effects. If you stand at the focal point ~10-15 ft away from the base of the mirror then your reflection seems 3D, as if a hologram. 

It encourages us to play. It was fun pacing back and forth, left and right to see what tricks the mirror allowed you to do. Also, I noticed that it was difficult to take photos that accurately reflected what your eyes saw, since the difference in angle has a huge effect. Thus it encouraged us to put away our cameras and explore rather than focus on simply capturing the experience on camera. I saw people waving their hands, reaching out to their reflection, and making faces. Simply put, it's addicting. The sample illustrations on the exhibit sign (high five yourself and kiss another person upside-down) could serve as both hints and jumping off points for how to further explore this giant mirror.

It encourages collaboration. As suggested by the exhibit placard, you could attempt to strike the pose of kissing someone upside-down à la Spiderman. There were plenty of other ways to collaborate too: if you stood next to a partner side-by-side at the mirror's focal point, you could reach out and it felt like you were touching a 3D projection of the other person. Alice decided this would be a great opportunity to bite my head off.

It makes us ask questions. Because the exhibit is so simple, it's straightforward to understand that these effects are the result of the mirror's curvature. It prompts us to ask ourselves how exactly this curvature reflects light to create these effects. I thought it was helpful that a diagram was provided on the placard to confirm any of our hypotheses.

It's a new experience. I was delighted to discover that standing near the focal point of the mirror produced a reflection that seemed 3D. I spent a long time staring at this upside-down reflection of my face---it's the closest I've ever been to experiencing what it's like to interact with myself. Normal mirrors create a reflection, but here, the reflection felt so life-like and multidimensional. I tried to touch my face, grab my hand, and poke my eye out. 

I noted that the large size and the simplicity of the exhibit compared to the others works in its favor, since it takes minimal effort for the passerby to notice and engage with something so gigantic and straightforward.

Overall I thought it was an excellent combination of learning and delight.

Self-Centered and Self-Excluding Mirrors ~ Could be improved

A pair of exhibits I thought had much room for improvement were the self-centered and self-excluding mirrors. The self-centered mirrors were a series of mirrors that all reflected me, whereas the self-excluding mirrors reflected other people around me, but not me.

I feel like exhibits are most successful when it surprises or delights the viewer, but also allows the viewer to think and investigate. "Wow this happened!" and then, "I wonder why..."After viewing this pair of mirrors, I wondered what made one mirror excluding and one including and so I tried to figure it out for myself. I had a suspicion perhaps it had to do with the angle of the mirrors or the overarching angle of the set of mirrors. However, when I tried to investigate, I was blocked by one thing: the 2 exhibits were so far apart! Ok, they weren't that far apart---perhaps 10 footsteps from each other---but that was far enough to prevent me from properly juxtaposing the two sets of mirrors. By the time I walked from one mirror to the other, I had already forgotten what the set of mirrors looked like, or what the subtle difference between angles might be. The exhibits sparked a curiosity, but it seemed to prevent me from satisfying it, which was frustrating.

If I were to design the set-up I would definitely place the two mirrors right next to each other, perhaps one or two footsteps away. Then the viewer can jump from one to another and make observations about the difference between mirrors, fully engaged in the exhibits.

Finally, very randomly, I shall conclude my blog post with photo of Dan that also reflects our mirror theme ... no pun intended.