(Links will take you to the original sources.)

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ARCHITECTURE:

EXPLORATION is the key experience created by a distributed complex exhibit architecture. It offers many advantages over the more traditional TOUR architecture. Visitors entering the exhibit are immediately drawn deeply into the space by "teasers" on the distant wall. From there they are immersed in other "attractions" as they become visible from these new vantage points. Visitors are drawn to a large unobstructed area where they feel free and unrestrained. Instead of thematic installations being confined to specific sub-areas, each theme is highly distributed across the installation in a rhizomatic web. The theme of "Nanomachines," for instance, may have a focus in one spot, but it will have many rhizomes reaching far across the room. Each theme thus interlocks with each other theme constructing a rhizomatic web, encouraging movement, as visitors question and seek and seek answers to the overall exhibition's content. Users thus actively construct their own meaning for the installation, moving from space to space in a narrative of their own construction.

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The TOUR is a traditional exhibition architecture in which themes are arranged discretely and visitors are encouraged to follow them in order. This movement, station-by-station has many disadvantages. Visitors are confronted by a queue and the experience of a pre-arranged narrative. feel they are being indoctrinated and may be discouraged from entering by the queue that inevitably emerges.

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NANOMACHINES:

Why are machines exclusive to technology? Why didn't biology evolve machines? These questions raise doubt as to whether the term "nanomachines" is an appropriate metaphor for biotechnology. To answer this question we must first ask, "What is so unique about machines?" Clearly, nature has evolved ball-and-socket joints, hinges, levers, hydraulic and pneumatic devices. What nature does not seem to have evolved are rotary devices, capable of continuous rotation about their axes, like gears, wheels, pulleys and propellors. Evolution does not appear to have solved the problem of sealing rotating parts from the environment at a macroscopic level. But at the molecular level evolution has successfully explored rotation. The common bacterium, Escherichia coli, has actually evolved a corkscrew-shaped flagellum that is continually rotated by a molecular motor.

We should consider fielding this question with a physical model of E. coli and its motor, as a 6-8-foot sculpture and/or as a motorized automaton swimming in an acquarium.

	Most E. coli are motile by means of flagellae, which are strings of protein made in the shape of a corkscrew. They are continuously replenished from inside as they may be broken off. They are attached to a hook like structure embedded in the cell wall which rotates around 360° causing the screw like flagellae to push the bacteria through the water. To change direction the direction of rotation is reversed. The flagellae are arranged all over the body of the E. coli unlike other bacteria where they may be attached at one pole. This type of flagellation found in E. coli is known as peritrichous as opposed to polar.
	Some bacteria have long, hair-like structures on their outer surface called flagellae - these are important in movement. They are quite rigid and are attached to the bacterium by means of a sort of hinge. As this rotates, the flagellae acts like a propellor and the bacterial cell moves about in the liquid in which it lives.
	The torque generating assemblies consist of the S, M and C rings. These protrude from the inner membrane into the cytoplasm, and are anchored by ten studs to the peptidoglycan layer. Imediately outside the cell is a flexible protein "hook" which functions as a universal joint. This allows the flagellum to adopt any orientation with respect to the cell wall. Between the hook and the motor there is a rigid drive shaft which rotates within molecular bearings located in the bacterial membranes: the L ring in the outer membrane and the P ring in the peptidoglycan layer. The walls of gram positive bacteria lack both outer layers, and in these species the L and P rings are also absent.

 

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RAPID PROTOTYPING:

One or more rapid prototyping machines, of varying technologies, may be installed printing models of viruses and other nanostructures. Models may then be collected in a display case. Periodically, one rapid prototyping machine may print models of organic tissues in homage of nanoscale machines printing actual living tissues. The rapid prototype machine is also a suitable model of the atomic force microscope if a probe is inserted instead of the printing head. Such displays could introduce atomic force microscope arrays as rapid prototyping machines capable of printing nanostructures. Early industry cooperation would be critical. Virus models are readily available as manipulatable 3D images which could be installed on a variety of PCs, some even connected to haptic devices. Virus models could also be built as human size sculptures or used as textures on the wall...

 

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SURVEILLANCE:

As a "grabber" for passers-by in cars, buses and on the sidewalk, surveillance could be an enticing theme along with the notions of scale and perspective. Large color displays (on color LCD screens or arrays of CRTs) could display simultaneous views of the intersection. A camera mounted atop the gold tower pointing vertically down at the intersection might give a 10-second delayed view. Other cameras might be focused on macro, micro and nano events at the intersection. Macro events such as pedestrian's shoes waiting for the light to change or automobile tires rolling over the surveillance coils in the street might be imaged. Micro events might be more challenging to image, but might comprise changes in ambient particulate matter such as dust and pollen. Nano events are likely nearly impossible to render in realtime, but large models, or virus construction sets might be designed. Some of this should be done in color inhanced infrared for nightime hours. Another large display could be fed from the Los Angeles Automated Traffic Surveillance and Control Center (ATSAC) from the basement of City Hall. This ATSAC image would show the current live state of the intersection. Along with these images could be a feed from a surveillance satellite of the same intersection, microseismic data, and so on. The scales imaged should represent the range from nano- to macro-, consistent with Morrison and Morrison's POWERS OF TEN and Lewis Carrol's "magnifying and minimifying" glasses. (It is important that NONE of the live imagery be recorded.) Early negotiations with ATSAC would be critical.