Today was another day for visiting museums, this time in downtown San Jose. After dropping my wife off at the San Jose Quilt Museum (as neither NSS&F nor I were interested in seeing it), we headed off to the Tech Museum of Innovation.
The Tech Museum is a real cool museum. We started out by building a roller-coaster, and doing a 3-d image scan of ourselves. When I get home, I’ll download the plugin for the scan and post a copy. We then explored the life sciences section, where NSS&F learned about genetics, and inserted jellyfish DNA into a bacteria. We also explored how to view inside the body. Lastly, we went down to the NetPl@net display, where we played “Whack a Spam” (were it only that easy) and built webpages. It was just really cool.
After the Tech Museum, gf_guruilla rejoined us. We had lunch, and then went to the San Jose Museum of Art. This was even cooler. We started at the exhibit of artwork by Jennifer Steinkamp. This is a series of colorful digital projections that explore ideas about architectural space, motion, and phenomenological perception. It was truly fascinating — I could have just sat and watched the animations. We then went downstairs to the Kathy Aoki: The Cult of the Cute exhibition. This exhibition featured a Japanese-anime alternate universe populated by female construction workers and teddy bears, with trucks and cranes roll by emblazoned with flowers and hearts and colored bubblegum pink or baby blue. Really cool. It was then upstairs to the Edge Conditions exhibit, with more computer-based and edgier art. Basically, this exhibit explored the boundary between art and technology. It just had some really interesting displays. Last was the Gustavo Ramos Rivera paintings, which didn’t impress me at all.
On the way back to the hotel, we drove through Japantown, stopping at Nichi Bei Bussan, Inc., an interesting Japanese products store.
Tonight, it is dinner with Jon and Von. Tomorrow, we drive back to Northridge.
