KonzeptioNerd

Don’t Touch

With half a free day in London on Sunday, I skipped into my favourite Science Museum. After five minutes or so I realized my mouth was hanging open in a rather stupid manner. But that was fine, as in most other museums, I catch myself after five minutes muttering agck agck under my breath. The vast halls are filled with bustling people, crowding around the exhibit, hardly subduing their voices, photographing and touching everything. Picture one of the Frankfurt Schirn ladies, scuttling up the people from behind, trying to keep up the discipline, hissing “you cannot carry your jacket over you shoulder, madam” and “take off your rucksack now, sir”. Agck. There. I did it again.

The Science Museum is so different in their approach, the curators can afford to be tongue-in-cheek about their hands-on policy - and people do get the joke. In the current “Energy” exhibition, there’s a metal pole near the entrance with a segragated structure somewhere near chest level. The pole is positioned in the center of black and yellow concentric rings painted on the floor. Bold writing on the rings warns: “Do Not Touch”. Of cource, everybody steps up and touches the strange structure.

The prohibitive circles were as effective, though funnier than a large arrow-sign suggesting to “Touch here”. And, yes, the center of the pole carries a low charge that stings if you keep up the contact for a little while. Ouch. But in a good way.

I like to go to the Science Museum to remind myself of how spoilt I am by the mass-produces consumer electroncis I carry. To me, hightech is my iPhone: A sleek slab of polished materials, every rounded edge, button and icon positioned with great intention and care. On every single identical copy.

In the past, cuting edge technology tended to be far more handmade, individual and rough around the edges. Huge black steam engines, integrated with whole buildings, fit the image of pre-microelectronic technologies. The first hall of the Science Museum is nicely affirmative, the engines on display matching the massive Victorian architecture that houses them. The shocker is in the next hall, space age. Individually welted hulls. Craft wrapped in slightly eveloved tin foil. Teflon-covered cloths. Suits with large plastic zippers. Written statements from the woman who created some of the early suited in her standard sewing machine.

I’m always amazed when I see the rickety contraptions early aviators trusted their lives to. But the stuff they take into the vacuum of space …

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