The British Science Museum

I can’t remember the last time I went to the museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, but it cannot be half as grand as London’s. London’s British Science Museum is comprised of several themes such as space, energy, and mathematics. Every exhibit could exist as a stand-alone museum somewhere else; they are that massive. I don’t even like boats or nautical things, but was impressed by the sheer number of display models.

The best exhibit however was on the top floor almost hidden away in a seemingly boring section having to do with the history of audio, telephones, and radio communication. It was called the Listening Post. The award-winning display is in a darkened corner of the theme, and intrigued Jesse and I. At one end of the room, hundreds of small 3x6in LED panels displayed green text. Ambient music was playing in the background. Jesse and I initially skipped the explanation panel, so we went back to the room entrance to find out what was going on.

The LED panels display text typed out by people in various chat rooms in real-time. The display initially starts with an opener, such as “I Am” or “I Love”. As people type something that starts with the opener, such as “I Am 17” it is displayed and read aloud by the robotic voice. If a second response appears, it is read in a different tone, so that the voices begin to harmonize with each other. Because of the nature of chat rooms, the exhibit is never the same thing twice. Some responses are very bland and normal, and a good 40% of them are sexually explicit in some way. It is really something to see the spirit of the age (zeitgeist) display itself in such a multimedia fashion.

At some points, it is overwhelming – responses layer on top of each other for information overload. At other times it is calm enough to let each part speak for itself in a sobering way. The robotic voice is emotionless, and reads responses in the same tone from “thinking about killing myself, need advices,” to “any straight h0rny guys here wanna get sucked? discreet guy here”. It’s hilarious, sad, informative, and genius. I could probably sit for quite some time watching. There is always the possibility that it uses Omegle for its database…in that case I’m sure it has seen plenty of strange things from yours truly and friends. There was displayed at one point, a bunch of usernames – one of them jwagner. I don’t think we have to worry until we see King Jesse on the board.