It spurs curiosity not by aiming for simplicity but by offering hints of complexity.”
It invites attention not by promising participatory sensation but by offering beauty and elegance. New York Times critic-at-large Edward Rothstein wrote, “It still exudes confidence. Mathematica installation at Boston’s Museum of Science, and the original exhibition is on permanent display at the New York Hall of Science. Mathematica made history: it remained open until 1998 as the longest-running corporate-sponsored museum exhibition to date before touring major US art museums. It whetted the public appetite for math and science as a way to understand the world, and paved the way for the creation of the experiential exhibits that are common today and emphasized at museums such as San Francisco’s Exploratorium, Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry, North Carolina’s Discovery Place, and dozens more. Mathematica popularized the field of math and delighted viewers with its accessible, informal and hands-on approach-without talking down to its audiences or oversimplifying its complex subjects. Individual viewing stations beckoned guests to watch “peep shows,” where playful animated films offered two-minute lessons on symmetry, powers of numbers and other mathematical concepts. The bubbles that stretched between the wires showed a visual math form of minimal surfaces. Elsewhere, wire structures emerged from soapy water. At the multiplication cube, 512 lightbulbs arranged in a cube flashed responses to multiplication problems typed into a keyboard by visitors. The sprawling exhibit included interactive stations demonstrating concepts such as celestial mechanics, the Möbius strip and projective geometry. The company turned to the Eameses, who designed a display that, in the words of Charles Eames, would “let the fun out of the bag.” Planning a new science wing to debut in 1961, the California Museum of Science and Industry in Los Angeles asked IBM for a contribution. Mathematica, the first interactive exhibit to make math its subject. This deeper, long-term educational mission was central to Watson Jr.’s notion that “good design is good business.” And central to that mission was the work of the Eameses.Īrguably, the signature example of their efforts for IBM was But it was his son who launched what became the shadow function of IBM: educating the world on the nature and potential of information, science and mathematics. had lofty ambitions for its impact on the world.
But when your ambition isn’t just to build information technology, but an information age-that’s different.įrom the company’s earliest days, Thomas Watson Sr.
#Eames power of ten how to#
Maybe you also help people learn how to use them. When you just want to sell machines, you describe their features and functions. Why would a corporation do that? The answer says a lot about this particular company’s idea of its purpose.
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