This was the first time I visited the Art Science Museum: Future World and I was very excited. The exhibition made use of science and art together and it was very applicable to our studies in new media and interactive art. Of all the exhibitions, there were three that left lasting impressions for me: “Sliding through the Fruit Field”, “Sketch Aquarium” and “Create! Hopscotch for Geniuses”.

The main common theme among the three exhibits listed was that it was able to bring out the child-like happiness and carefree feeling in me as I progress from the first exhibit to the others. At the start when I first came across “Sliding through the Fruit Field”, two children were sliding down the sloop. With each slide, the fruits then disintegrate into pieces. As my friends dragged me over to slide down the slope, I felt a little embarrassed as I was already a tertiary student. However, after the sliding down the slope, I stood around to watch the two little kids slide down and felt a sense of comfort that it didn’t matter what age I was at, it was simply fun to slide down the fruit field.

When I moved to the “Sketch Aquarium”, my favourite exhibition, it allowed me to choose an animal of my choice and add colours using a very traditional form, crayons, something I used often for drawing when I was younger. I coloured a jellyfish and drew it according to how I wanted based on my imagination. Although I was afraid of others judging my work at first, I found joy in colouring and I just wanted to make the drawing uniquely mine, disregarding what others thought.

I also felt that the technical skills used for this exhibit were very interesting, turning a stationary drawing to a moving creature.  Even though it was a 2D image on the screen, the movement of the jellyfish made it appear realistic. Furthermore, this was a very personalised interactive art as it allowed the audience to bring back their art pieces and see their work on a big screen showcased to others.

Lastly, the “Create! Hopscotch for Geniuses” allowed us to create hopscotches for ourselves and play the hopscotches just like when I was in primary school. It brought back a lot of memories as I hopped through. While standing around, I also saw some adults who walked through the hopscotch while some hopped through. I felt a little disappointed for those who walked through the hopscotch as they would not have been able to experience the full joy of reliving the childhood experience.

Through these 3 exhibits, they truly left lasting impressions on me. I felt that it was important to relieve these happy and child-like moments from time to time as we grow up. Especially so in this current competitive world that we live in where stress often gets a grip over us, we can face it with a positive outlook and sometimes these innocent moments such as playing hopscotch or simply using imagination could open new doors and help us through our tough times. Where Art meets Science, it is really interesting to see how new media is being used to collaborate with art to bring it to a new level of interactivity and vast capabilities the new media can bring to art.