ICAM is proud to announce the public unveiling of a unique, interactive, online science center—emergentuniverse.org—which brings the excitement and mysteries of emergent phenomena in matter to the Millennial generation, ages 15-30. A visitor to the site can wander from one exhibit area to another, as one does in a science museum, exploring a given topic in greater or lesser depth.

Two years ago, the ICAM Board of Governors approved funding for the creation of this site and contracted with Dr. Suzi Tucker, an exhibit designer with a background in theoretical chemistry, to be its Director and Chief Designer. The project was envisioned as a mode of science outreach, a virtual museum that would be especially attractive to a young adult audience. The ICAM community has long believed in the importance of this group, not only as a source of future scientists, but also as a source of leaders in other fields, whose understanding of the emergent perspective will be vital in support of future scientific research.

The first exhibits are now ready, and on October 1 http://emergentuniverse.org went live. With topics ranging from quantum matter to slime mold to Alzheimer’s Disease, its initial offerings comprise about two dozen exhibits grouped under the headings, “Emergence Is Unlocking the Universe” and “Renegade Proteins and the Fibril Connection.” A variety of approaches designed to appeal to young adults has been employed, from a manga, or Japanese-style comic, to animation, music, video games, and self-guided activities. The dark-toned palette and edgy graphics were chosen after careful research on what appeals to the target group.

In “Emergence Is Unlocking the Universe,” the visitor can

• listen to music composed to express the concepts of emergence in quantum mechanics, while reading about parallels between musical elements and the properties associated with emergent phenomena;
• view a manga comic called “Rebels of Complexity” that illustrates key principles of emergence and what it means to hold an emergent perspective;
• zoom in on a pointillist image, “It’s All about Zoom,” that illustrates length scales;
• play the “Game of Life,” which demonstrates the principles of cellular automatons and creation of patterns from simple interactions on a grid;
• “grow art,” watching a computer-generated image grow from repeated application of very simple rules.

The exhibits in “Renegade Proteins and the Fibril Connection” are designed to look like pages from a scrapbook, containing slips of paper describing various protein and amyloid structures. Scribbled questions in the margins provide links to more detailed explanations and examples. There is also a drag-and-drop video game called “Got Amyloid?” and an exhibit, “Alzheimer’s from the Inside,” that features a series of self-portraits painted by an artist with Alzheimer’s as his disease progresses. To convey to a younger audience the relevance of a disease of the aging, one exhibit, “What’s Our Future?” follows the fictional lives of 10 young people and shows how they will be affected by Alzheimer’s either in themselves or in an immediate relative, based on actual statistics for the US. Two dancers perform a piece choreographed to show the impact of Alzheimer’s on a father and daughter.

Another section, “Zoom in and Search for a Cure,” introduces the cellular and sub cellular biochemistry of the brain by an animated video that zooms in on the neuron forest in the entorhinal cortex region. Different “hot spots” in the forest describe the progress that is being made in our understanding of this disease and its potential treatments.

A 45-member focus group representing four continents has reviewed the online science center and given it high marks. Ninety-five percent of respondents said they would definitely (70%) or maybe (25%) tell their friends about it. However, it is a step in a new direction, and further input from the viewing community is being actively sought. If it becomes a significant site of interest for its target group, it will not only help to raise awareness of emergence and the study of emergent behavior, but will also serve as a model for other, similar, sites. Research into the tastes of the targeted users revealed that the word “museum” had stuffy overtones for them, so this term is not being used to promote the science center, although its designers refer to it as such.

The idea of the virtual museum is currently a hot topic among museum curators. It has great potential as a mode of informal science education, being easier to create and update than physical exhibits and extensible to any field. It also offers a way to link the physical exhibits in a science museum to a worldwide audience. Dr. Tucker and Melissa Carrillo, Director of the Smithsonian Latino Virtual Museum, are co-organizing a session at the next meeting of the American Association of Museums entitled “The Completely Virtual Exhibition: What is gained, what is lost?” For more information on Dr. Tucker’s work as a designer of interactive exhibits, visit her website at http://biznik.com/members/suzi-tucker.

David Pines’s long-time advocacy for online outreach and Suzi Tucker’s detailed conception of the virtual museum were at the heart of this project. However, it could not have happened without the contributions of many others within and outside of the ICAM community. In addition to substantial funding from ICAM’s branch member contributions (ICAMICS) and two consecutive NSF grants for the International Materials Institute, support from the Richard Lounsbery Foundation, generous continuing support from the Trinity Capital Corporation, and recent gifts by Douglas Carlston, Deborah Fried, and the Delle Foundation have helped to keep the program on track.

Scientific Advisors for the Emergence and Amyloid portions include José Onuchic, David Teplow, Jonathon Wiessman, Evan Fletcher, Daniel Cox, and David Pines. Scientific Advisors on the Superconductivity exhibit include Ilya Vekhter, Andy Mackenzie, Meigan Aronson, John Mydosh, and David Pines.

The interactive designer and programmer, Steve Hartzog, has been working closely with Dr. Tucker on bringing her designs to life. In addition to his contract work, Steve is an Adjunct Professor in the Design program at the California College of the Arts, with a specialty in Interactive Design.

The activity “Hear the Music” is based upon the website “Music of the Quantum,” a site which Piers Coleman played a major role in developing. His brother, Jaz Coleman, was commissioned by ICAM to write the piece, “Music of the Quantum,” that accompanies it. Tami Tolpa, of Tolpa Studios, created the brain zoom medical illustrations while Jeff Tolbert composed the music for this animation. Dr. Christopher Solomon and VisionMetric Ltd. created the age progression images. Others were instrumental in creating the Alzheimer’s dance video, including Corrie Befort, choreography, Jeff Tolbert, music composition, Bronwyn Lewis, videography and editing, Laura Prudhomme and Serge Gubelman, dancers. A preliminary testing of an early version of the site on generation-Y users was carried out by Michael Plautz and Lulu Petrina, in Spring of 2008.

Work on the next set of interactive exhibits for emergentuniverse.org, tentatively titled “Superconductivity: Quantum Electron Emergence,” is now underway. It is hoped that the necessary financial support will come through in time for it to be completed well before the global celebration of the 100th anniversary of the discovery of superconductivity in Leiden in 1911.

All readers of ICAMNews are invited to visit the site http://emergentuniverse.org, link their home page to it for educational purposes, and send their feedback on it to Suzi Tucker via the Emergent Matters forum site, www.emergentuniverse.org/forum.

By Karie Friedman, ICAMNews, October 2009