20 Dec The Exploratorium is Far from Boring

The Exploratorium is an excellent place and I can’t recommend it more. It’s kind of ridiculous that I only made it there so close to the end of my stay (I think I was averse because I thought it would be too similar to the Academy of Sciences), but it’s certainly a case of better late than never.

I went on a Thursday night. The host an evening called ‘After Dark’, during which the exhibits and activities they normally have on the roster are accompanied by other strange and intriguing performances, themed displays etc. They also have a few bars, and the atmosphere is really quite fun and lively. It would make for quite a good date night, actually, but I’m sure I’m the first to have thought of that.

I was drawn to The Exploratorium because on the night that I went, a musician named Zachary James Watkins (who does some really interesting, avant-garde stuff with synthesizers and a guitar) was going to be performing alongside a kinetic light sculpture called Illuminatoria. Weird stuff like that is definitely my kind of thing. The sculpture was constructed by a pair of New York based artists named Sandra Gibson and Luis Recoder, and the surreal pairing of light and sound by which the audience was enveloped (complemented by the influence of a few glasses of wine) was quite awesome.

But yeah. There’s a bunch of other stuff to do there, too. Too much, in fact, to do in only one visit that lasts a couple of hours. Most of it genuinely fascinating and stimulates the mind in interesting, unexpected ways. Visit the Exploratorium. It’s nothing short of super-fun.