Powerhouse Museum Interactive Science Exhibition Introductory Installation – Galileo
These paper construction/sculpture works introduce the Interactive Science Exhibition in the Powerhouse Musuem in Sydney. They represent four milestone moments in the history of science and the enlightenment. Paper folding and manipulation has a distinguished history of use in exhibition, display, retail window display, advertising and general model making. Each of these vignettes locates actual reproductions of the paraphernalia of the experiments/discoveries, in a ‘dream-like’ setting of white paper construction.
Gray conducted experiments with conductivity of an electric charge created by rubbing a glass rod with a silk cloth, along ever increasing lengths of string to an ivory ball.
Joule made exacting measurements of the transference of energy into heat in an apparatus he developed, in which paddles in a container of water were turned and the increasing temperature carefully measured. His contribution included exacting test conditions and detailed record keeping.
Newton demonstrated that the refracted colour spectrum was constant and could be recombined into white light.
Gallileo, in an (probably) apocryphal story, measured the timing of the swinging of a lamp in the Cathedral at Pisa against his pulse, and from that, extrapolated the pendulum mechanism for a mechanical clock.
