Activity – COLORS

We read a blurb about a new temporary exhibit called Prismatica, which was described as consisting of prisms that look like kaleidoscopes. Picturing a large exhibit where we could walk around and lights would be shining everywhere, we decided it would be worth checking out. So, we drove over to the mall and, having read it was at the main entrance, went inside and saw…nothing. We asked a few people if they knew where it was, but no one had even heard of it. Figuring we may have had the wrong entrance, we started driving around the entire boundaries of the mall and were ready to leave when we noticed a security car driving towards us. Having nothing to lose, we flagged him down and asked if he knew where the exhibit was. The guy was nice and said we should just follow him. We’re not sure if he thought we looked old and feeble, but he was going about 5 miles per hour and had his flashing lights on. Hopefully he didn’t notice us laughing in the car behind him. We did come to the prisms but were greatly disappointed as they were just standing in a row in front of the mall, and while each prism was a different color, there was nothing special going on at all.

Barbara: I later reread the blurb and saw that they suggested going after sunset for the best effect. So off I went again and while it was definitely more impressive, the overall planning was poor. First, they needed to have signage inside the mall so people could find it. Second, instructions on how to maximize the effect of the prisms were sorely lacking. While they had one little placard by the prisms that said that you can manipulate the prisms to cause them to spin, it wasn’t clear that you did that not by pressing something, but by actually spinning the prisms by hand. Once I did that the effect was nice. But unless there was a group of people all spinning at once (the picture below shows them after that happened), it was still unimpressive. There should have been an automated mechanism that spun the prisms at set intervals so that driving up one could be attracted to the exhibit. My exhibits manager self was screaming and if that had been my project, I definitely would have fired the design house.