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Eric Siegel : Hi I'm Eric Siegel. I'm the Director and Chief Content Officer here at
the New York Hall of Science. This exhibition that we're working on now, that you see behind
me, is an exhibition we're prototyping for the Great Hall. We don't really have a name
for it yet, but it's all about sustainability and how you can participate in sustaina - in
making a sustainable future.
There are three components to the exhibit right now. There's a city, there's a farm,
and then there's water, or the water source, and what we're trying to do is provide a kind
of creative and engaging way that people can explore the relationship between different
parts of the - uh - different parts of the globe and how we need to work together to
create a sustainable future.
By now, you can see what's happening over here is kids are watering corn, they're harvesting
it, and then they're bringing it over to the city in little trucks, they're actually little
boxes and the computer system that's built by the artists, Theodore Watson and Emily
Gobeille, contract these trucks and say "Ok this is bringing corn now from the farm over
to the city," but the farm won't work unless there's sufficient water. So if you go over
here, what you see is you have lakes and little, a little interactive that you can turn that
you can change which lake is getting water from. And now you say "oop the water just
drained."
Shannon M. : So what we're trying to do is to show them how, you know, the reservoirs
are affected every time they keep wastefully using resources. Then we're building up the
cities to show them how hard it is to keep that water level going.
Satbir M. : You see how water influences and impacts everything from growing to providing
food and other materials you need for living in a city.
Visitor : It's so important, I mean, water supplies to, you know, such a waste. A lot
of people, especially in this diagram right here actually, the city system actually are
using a lot, consuming a lot of water. Best thing to do actually - the key is to save
water.
Theodore Watson: The connectables prototype which is what you see is really the result
of a three month prototyping session at the New York Hall of Science where we've been
testing ideas for sustainability as well as testing the idea of an overall experience
which is made up of multiple installations where resources sort of shared and managed
between those installations. When looking at sustainability, there's a lot of, you know,
different factors. I guess, you know, the moment when people talk a lot about kind of
oil and fuel and gas but the one that seems to be coming up on the horizon as a potential
of a much more scarce resource is fresh and natural water. And it's also you know it kind
of impacts us on a daily level, everyone can relate to it. The main thing we want kids
to take home is the idea that kind of getting a stronger sense of where things come from.
We turn on a tap in our apartments and we have some water come out of that tap, but
we have no idea how far that water's traveled or how many other things that sort of water
is being used for. And then think maybe more about the conservation of those things.
Visitor: As a teacher, I think it's very - I think it captures the attention of a child
considering it's very colorful very bright very interactive
Carlos R. : You weren't just a passive person playing the game. You actually got to pump
the water going into the city, you got to water the crops, you got to cut down the crops,
bring them from the farm all the way to city, and see how that influences the growth of
the city or the lack of growth in the city and it's a great way to show people about
the interconnectedness from the farm to the rain to delivery to growth and I think that's
what makes this one of the most unique things we have here at the Hall of Science.