I confess...

I have a hummingbird feeder.

Where I grew up, I never saw hummingbirds. The first one I saw was on a summer trip to Maine with my family when I was ten, and although I'd read about the little blighters (somewhere picking up the misinformation that they eat nothing but nectar and never land or perch on anything... I wondered how they laid their eggs), seeing one in real life was a revelation. I hadn't thought of them as real before that, not real like squirrels are real or cats are real, but "real" like kiwi birds were undoubtedly real somewhere in New Zealand, which adults assured me was a "real" place. Now that I live in the Bay Area, even though I see them much more frequently, the fascination continues—enough that I recently bought a feeder and installed it on my balcony.

At first, I didn't see any immediate results—I kept looking outside for hummers and seeing nothing, so I got discouraged. I didn't clean the feeder as often, didn't change the nectar as often, and finally, absorbed in my many other projects and priorities, let it get cloudy. When the hummingbirds finally came by, they found a poorly maintained feeder. They were interested in it for a little while, but soon their visits fell off.

To keep the hummingbirds around, I need to keep the feeder fresh and keep refilling it with new nectar. And to attract and keep any blog readers, I'll need to keep updating the blog.

So, sorry for my long absence. Here's an update:

My class finished our exhibition Life Under Ice: Mission Europa. It had a brief run at John F. Kennedy University's Arts and Consciousness gallery. The exhibition concept was kicked off by the enthusiasm of several scientists and researchers for unmanned missions to Europa, a moon of Jupiter, to gather information about the possibility of microbial life in its icy oceans. Our primary research came from a NASA scientist and some folks from SETI, who were very kind to help us out.

We had such a short period to conceptualize, plan, design, and build the exhibition—ten weeks, in all—that we had no chance to research opposing viewpoints: the belief of many scientists that life on Europa is unlikely, or that if there is life on Europa it is likely to be so scarce as to make it difficult to discover. We were able to cover some of the objections to such a mission, such as the utility of space exploration, and the possibility of contaminating Europa's environment.

The exhibition content was divided into three main themes: Europa 101, Life Under the Ice, and Implications. The class was divided into three groups, each assigned one of the themes. We were still in the design process during installation. As a result, it was a bit of a scramble during installation to unify the three thematic areas of the exhibition visually, but still create enough of a distinction to make it obvious how labels were related to one another, and the most accessible way for participants to navigate the space.

The centerpiece of our exhibition was what we called The Big Ball, which was a 7' diameter artistic representation of Europa, lit from the inside and covered in plastic-wrap and glaze. Below this we had a round table where labels explained basic facts about Europa. We hypothesized that visitors would gravitate (heh) to the big glowing ball, read some of the facts, and then head out toward the wall in some direction. The ideal first object for them to proceed to was the telescope which marked the continuation of Europa 101, and I saw many visitors head in that direction. However, on the opposite wall there a television played a silent animation loop of a proposed surface lander, and in a corner nearby, a case displayed a sample of aerogel, and in the other corner on that side a large scale model of a proposed orbiter hung overhead. These things competed for participants' attention, and led many over in that direction, where much of the text assumed prior knowledge.

Design-wise, we benefited from our instructor's expertise. We had the restrictions of very little time and resources, and also the limitation that we could not modify the gallery space. However, our class came up with a clear and aesthetically-appealing design. We ran a band of black paper around the gallery space and created a starfield background. We also made "spectral lines" with colored tape, and used that design element to indicate the thematic areas.

We created opportunities for interactivity, even with our budget and time constraints. Some of these were very ad-hoc—one interactive asked participants to step on a sheet of white paper and observe if they left a footprint behind, in an effort to get them to imagine the possibility of contaminating Europa. Some were made possible by serendipitous finds—the telescope, found on the side of the road by a fellow student, became a way for visitors to practice finding Europa with the aid of a starmap, looking through the telescope at painted constellations hung high on the opposite wall. The starmap was available to take home so that participants could see the real Europa from their own backyards (or another place where the stars are clearly visible). Early feedback indicates that participants enjoyed all the interactives and believed themselves to have learned from them.

I developed a program component in the form of a brochure in which visitors were invited to draw and write their thoughts about the exhibition, with some guiding questions to help. These were collected in a box in the gallery space. I haven't received these back from the instructor yet, but I look forward to using them as an evaluation component.

Since then, my internship with the Museum of the African Diaspora has been keeping me very busy, and I'm finding it very exciting to be involved with a one-year-old museum as they reflect on their successes in the past year and on what they can do to improve. I look forward to participating in their growth in the future, as well.