Entice your Inner Caveman, Play with Fire at the Museum of Science and Industry

I’m just about kicking myself right now for not knowing earlier about FIRE-combustion, an interactive exhibit in my own city’s Museum of Science and Industry!  Though it’s a bit of a trek from my house, going to see this exhibit would be worth every minute stuck on the smelly, crowded CTA train.  At the exhibit you can get your hands dirty (burned?) to “test virtual sources of combustion to see what common and unusual substances can be used to power cars and rockets,” “create colorful fireworks with chemicals that burn in vibrant colors,” and “learn how fires in nature can sometimes be helpful and sometimes harmful” (Museum of Science and Industry).

Pyromaniacs and Arsonists (yeah, that might not be a word…but it SHOULD be!) will experience sheer joy at knowing they can play with fire all while being  responsible citizens.  Not to mention, if you can control your inner caveman, you might actually learn something.  The beauty of this is that it’s both child-and-adult friendly, so you can share in the delight along with your child instead of feigning excitement every time they pick up a germ-infested plastic femur at the local children’s museum. Win-win.

Now please excuse me while I fawn over these other amazing MSI exhibits!

Oh Hey Blog, I haven’t forgotten about ya

Yikes-it’s been a while since I’ve posted!  To be honest, I’ve been a bit busy with my own interactive work!  After finally *conquering* the sadistic world of arrays, I made my first video game ever using Processing, an interactive platform and coding language that is basically a more art-oriented version of Java.  It’s a raindrop game where you have to “catch” raindrops with the mouse before they hit the end of the screen.  While it’s not my original code (its from Daniel Shiffman’s ‘Learning Processing,’ which is absolutely a fantastic tool), I did manage to make the raindrops way prettier and create some gravity to add more of a challenge.

 I can’t wait until I learn how to reference external videos and images! It’s going to be sick. Over the next month I will FINALLY be learning the “cool” stuff–videos, imaging, advanced object-oriented programming, converting to html, and translating to Java, C++, iPad apps, etc.

So stay tuned.  As soon as I get to the point where I can put some stuff online, you can bet I will.  In the meantime, new interactive art showcasing to follow…