The excursion week started off great, because it started off with robots. Naturally, that gives any museum the benefit of the doubt, and Evaluon did not disappoint. Even just walking into the lobby made me excited, because they had these huge black and white portraits circling the top of the wall; each of them an individual who had a particular vision of the future, from Leonardo Da Vinci to Greta Thunberg and more. My personal favourite was, of course, Isaac Asimov (author of I, Robot and The Bicentennial Man, among other amazing works) and the fact that he was included filled me with hope. (I'm not much of a museum person, but if my favourite robot author is there, it's gotta be good, right?) Tragically I didn't see much of him in the expositions, but it definitely set the tone for the sort of things that were on display.
The museum was split up into various rings (the building itself was shaped like a UFO, it was... fascinating) that climbed higher and higher around the edges. Each ring had a different theme-- I made the unfortunate mistake of not really taking a picture of the whole, but perhaps there's maps to be found online. I took a lot of pictures overall (they didn't say it wasn't allowed, so uhh... free advertising?) but tragically I can only insert 10 pictures per post, so I tried to make a selection for you guys.
One of the first things we encountered was a small robot that could type the phrase "I work" on an iPad, before rapidly deleting it again and starting over (same little robot, I too have anxiety about everything I write). Then my attention was rapidly absorbed by a literal wall of text arcing around about half of the first ring, each section detailing a dilemma or topic concerning the future, ranging from robot workforces to eternal life and paradise to doomsday. I absolutely loved what they did with the little quote sections at the bottom, the typography felt very in-style with the exposition and I loved recognizing quotes and song lyrics amidst the information. They were also fascinating topics, and when I first saw this I was like "yes. this will be my term 4 project". Foolish little me had no idea how many times I would think that that day, but we all have lapses of judgement /lh.
Anyway, there was a lot more to see: lots of examples of robots in popular media, a good amount of which I recognized (as resident robot nerd, that was kind of a given). There was also a wall with magnets where you could build your own robot, and we built this... monstrosity... yeah...
I also saw this cool screenshot which I believe is from an anime... I'm gonna have to check that one out, it looks interesting (if you see me ranting about an anime on my main sometime soon,,, uh,,, no comment)
floating blocks! idk i just thought they were cool. also i played space invaders (i was so proud i got the console to work, nobody else in my class knew how to work it). Oh, and there was a Back To The Future car. that was pretty neat.
There were also things I didn't remember to take pictures of-- there was a video about a Kitty AI, a supposedly benevolent cat AI that took over the world and tooootally had the best intentions. The cat loves you. Yup. So safe.
Also there were some little interviews with people, i took random notes:
Stine Jensen: stated that the difference between humans and robots are that humans have emotions
Martin Koolhoven: really excited about AI, says it's the "biggest invention": claims it will take control of the world someday, he just hopes we'll be part of that world when it comes
Pupul Bisht: storytelling about the future is often told from the perspective of those in power: if you tell the story of the future from the perspective of a different culture, you might get very different ideas than those of stereotypical European/American utopias
Some other things I noted: the schools from Astroboy (they had a very interesting system that I want to look deeper into). I also wrote down Over The Moon. Uhm. I don't remember why. I just did. yerrrp
