For this assignment our entire class visited the Nemo science museum in Amsterdam. We were asked to select an interesting installation and take a selfie with it.
This installation is part of the Humania exhibition on the fourth floor which is all about the human body and the brain. It is a sort of game in which eight sticks fall on after another from an elevated stucture in a random order and you, as a user, are supposed to try to catch them before they reach the ground.
The technology seems pretty basic, there is a button to start the game and you just wait under the structure which holds the sticks. My guess is that there is a very basic computer in charge of releasing the sticks in a random order and they seem to be attached by a magnet that can be deactivated. The user does have to place the sticks back himself at the end of the game, but it is easy and quick enough that everyone did it (except some children who needed assistance to reach the structure). I chose this installation because it was one of the simplest yet most engaging ones in the entire museum. There were a lot of people around it at all time and it is as fun to watch as it is to participate. The users were of all ages too, both adults and children tried it. At first when you look other people do it seems really easy, but while waiting for your turn you see most people failing to catch most of the sticks and you wonder if you'll be able to do better. The purpose of the game is to test your reflex and show how long it takes for your brain to transfer a signal from the moment it sees which stick is falling to the moment the nearest arm tries to catch it, and I think the fact that this game is quite difficult demonstrates just how slow this whole process is. Your eyes see the stick really fast so when you watch someone else play you wonder why it takes so long for the person to react, but when you actually participate you see that the problem is the communication between the eye, the brain and the arm/hand.