TACTILE DOME FIELD TRIP. SATURDAY APRIL 14 5PM. GET ON BOARD.
The final (and most suddenly unexpected) event in conjunction with Will Brown's current exhibition, Untitled (Black Painting), is a very special visit to the Exploratorium's famed and fabled TACTILE DOME. We've worked out a serious discount with the Explo, so if you've been putting off this experience forever, now's the time.
A chutes-and-ladders odyssey through total darkness inside a geodesic dome furnished with a panoply of hilarious and peculiar tactile sensations, the Tactile Dome is very special and very memorable trip for curious folks of any age. Built by artists August Coppola and Carl Day in 1971, the dome was one of the very first commissioned artist projects at San Francisco's only museum of science, art, and human perception.
As visits to the dome generally sell out months in advance, this is a totally fluke opportunity to visit. The Exploratorium has offered to knock the price down from $20/person down to $12. For an additional $3 you get general admission to the museum all day.
Some sections of the original 1971 press release:
"Visitors have compared the experience to being born again, turning yourself inside out head first, being swallowed by a whale, and inevitably, being enfolded in a giant womb."
"Dr. August F. Coppola, whose brainchild the exhibit is, became interested in perceptual prejudice while directing interdisciplinary studies as head of California State College’s Honors Program. He gradually came to realize that philosophy, physics and even psychology have always relied overwhelmingly on visual evidence to interpret the world. As evidence of our overly-visual values, Coppola points to the overemphasis on fashionable clothes and the benefits of tourism. “This route leads to passive, non-participatory activities like TV watching” he said."
"Coppola and Carl Day, co-developer of the Tactile Dome, and gallery director at California State College in Long Beach, are leaders in an art revolution which uses people as participants in art experience rather than as targets at which to hurl artistic messages. They believe the revolution, if successful, will greatly affect not only art, advertising and industrial design but even life styles and basic beliefs."
Holy shit!
This thing is first-come, first-served -- and we can only fit about 15 people, so book a spot now if you're interested.
Feel free to direct any/all questions to wearewillbrown@gmail.com
Seriously? It's so dark in there.
