Num	Exhibit name	Area	Concept it covers	Other key points covered	Stage of development	Who	Resources required	Est. cost
1	Bucket of code	knowledge	1,2	1	doubtful for practical reasons	Keith, Michael	Software, special hardware, computer
2	Judge Gene	Ethics	4	10, 11, 13	Will be included	Keith Michael	Software, special hardware, computer, maybe video, graphics, audio
3	What is perfect?	Ethics	4	13	Will be included	Keith Michael	Graphics panels, computer, software, special hardware
4	Resistance is useless	knowledge	4?	8	doubtful for practical reasons	Keith Michael	Special hardware, computer, video camera, capture card, software, graphics, audio
5	Books & magazines	pop culture	4	?	Not sure, needs further thought	Keith Michael	Graphics
6	Follow the bouncing gene	pop culture	4	?	doubtful for practical reasons	Keith Michael	Special hardware, computer, pa, microphone, graphics, audio, camera, genlock
7	gene tv	pop culture	4 and potentially 1,2,3	?	Maybe on a small scale	Keith michael	two tv's, two vcr's, poss computer, lounge settings
8	idiotic computer games	pop culture	4 and potentially 1or2or3or4	?	doubtful for practical reasons	Keith michael	computers
9	If the price is right?	ethical	4	?	Will be included	Keith michael
10	Detective clone	applications	1,2,3,4	?	out	Keith michael
11	Frenetic Forensic fun	applications	1,2,3,4	4	Will require further work before it can be included but in.	Keith michael	Graphics, special hardware, pool lane ropes
12	Touch my genes!	applications	1,2,3,4	?	doubtful for practical reasons	Keith michael	Graphics,  special hardware, audio
13	Silly cells	knowledge	1	5	Will require further work before it can be included	Keith michael	bean bag things, shapes (moulds)
14	My genes made me do it!	knowledge	2	1, 3	Will be included	Keith michael	Graphics, computers, special hardware, audio
15	Party animals	knowledge	1	12	Needs more work.	Keith michael	Graphics, computer.

 

Bucket of code
We have had many different ideas for this, none of which have appeared to be very practical. Our latest discussions have questioned whether it would be better to go with the telephone book analogy rather than this. Here are some of the ideas we have had so far:
1. Fan fold paper going into a large container from a dot matrix printer that responds whenever a key is typed.
2. Thin (cash register type) paper that does one letter at a time, which is big enough to read.
3. Beads rolling down a twisted (double helix like) tube and slowly filling it up.
4. That we use a small thing (e.g. fruit fly) as the genetic model rather than a person. 3,000,000,000 bits of code in a person or approx. 100 telephone books, or 39,000,000 in a mosquito!
5. The organism with the greatest number of chromosomes that we found is the Adder's Tongue Fern (Ophioglossum
reticulatum) which has over 1000 chromosomes in the somatic cell. The organism with the fewest number of chromosomes
was E. coli which had 1 chromosome.
6. A worm has 4,000,000 bits of code.
7. 4400 characters on an a4 page and approx. 682,000 a4 pages to describe the human genome.

This image is following on from the idea of using a tube with little balls rolling down to fill it up.

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Judge Gene
The user sits in a judges chair (perhaps puts on a wig) infront of a nice judicial bench and is posed questions by a screen (may be video or just text) to which they either answer yes or no by banging  a yes or no button with a gavel. As soon as they answer they are shown statistics on what decisions other users have made over the life of the exhibition.

 

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What is perfect?
A graphics panel is set up with pictures of famous people. Users are encouraged to vote for the perfect person by pressing the button below the image. The people may include Arnold Schwartzeneger, Mother Theresa, Stephen Hawkings, Margaret Thatcher etc. and the final image will be a mirror so the user sees themselves. Up the top of each image is a counter displaying the number of  votes that image has received.

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Resistance is useless
A large aluminium ball is slowly turning on an axle on top of a plinth and is isolated from the visitors. Two ropes that are attached by levers too two large hammers are available for users to pull down on and thus activate the hammers.  When either rope is pulled the hammer it is attached too strikes the ball and slightly changes it's shape.  A camera is directed at the ball and takes one image every minute. That frame is added to an animation that will in essence be a record of the changing shape of the ball. Or something like this anyway.
hmm, it is a start I suppose.

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"Mighty clever" DNA tester
The visitor is invited to put their hand through a rubber grommet into the machine, in order to have their DNA tested. A blast of air (or something similar) is shot onto their hand, laboratory and mechanical noises are heard as the screen says "processing" (or something like that) then a message appears on screen (anim of double helix?), "your dna is unique and has now been patented and is owned by megafun, have a nice day"

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Planes, trains and automobiles

An exhibit with three "books" that lie at a slight angle on top of a table thingie with a monitor in the centre. Open the book to choose which object to start working with (plane, train, auto) and a message comes on screen saying choose your instructions and press the button to make your vehicle. The user can get lines of code or instructions from the other vehicle's instruction books and replace lines from the one they are working on. The top two lines might say " This is a train" and "It travels on tracks" if they are removed the vehicle will not work? only other characteristics like "I am red" or "I have a big upright exhaust" can be changed and have the vehicle remain viable. Once ready to make the vehicle the button is hit and the vehicle is constructed and either works or is trashed in the scrap yard.

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Books & magazines
around the popular culture area there will be various lounge chairs and coffee tables on which will be a selection of books and magazines all with articles on genetics in them from various sources. Some made up some real. Another idea with the books was a bookshelf in the lounge room with fake books ie just the spines showing with silly genetically inspired names. In the current day lounge they are current in the future lounge they are futuristic. May even be scenic paint on flats.

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Follow the bouncing gene
A karoke set-up where all the songs are to do with genetics in some way. Either silly or pop culture. e.g.. Jean Genie, mary had a little lamb, sesame street song furry monster, baby makes her blue genes talk, I've got you under my skin, I did it my way,....

Background animations, jumping sheep or chromosome to follow the words.

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gene tv
In the two lounge rooms (present and future) there will be remote control tv's with various stations. One will be clips from tv and movies that are related to genetics, one might be commercials (future and present), one might be the karoke exhibit.
Present lounge

we spoke of just having one lounge room and just having different tv stations, but two is probably better. If two we spoke of them looking very similar from a distance but when you got up close you could see the differences. Also the tv commercials would suggest they were made of strange things like optic jelly, the chairs might move a bit etc.

Gene mart

A shop with products and corresponding buttons. Each button is a product ad. Graphic product displays, merchandising just released, latest product, new improved etc. etc.

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idiotic computer games
In the lounge rooms there might be silly genetically oriented computer games. Some ideas are:
Pong with genes (or pollen escaping)
space invaders (not modified)
Mutant wars
 

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What's a pair of genes worth?
The user is invited to genetically engineer a plant through a series of multiple choice questions and they are given a dollar value for their invention.

Every 30 min (60min?) there is an auction (unseen) and the person who designs the best, most profitable plant in that time has their name announced as the winner and added to the list of star genetic engineers (their pic as well?). They are asked to sketch their plant (food producing) and describe it as well as answer a series of questions about the plant, e.g. category of food, what it is immune to, what it is tolerant of, amount of sunlight needed etc. The computer chooses the plant with the most points according to a random selection of needs for this round of auction. Loud fanfare, flashing lights, persons face displayed, value of plant etc. is announced with great excitement every half hour (or hour).

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Detective Clone
The user is a suspect in an investigation into a fraud crime. They enter a booth where they are questioned to determine if they are the second party in the crime. They are asked to give their fingerprints, they are shown a picture of themselves and told that the fingerprints of clones are similar but different and that this as a check to determine if they are the prime suspect (the one pictured) or the accomplice. They are told that dna testing is too slow and so they will be questioned to see if they are a clone (or identical twin) of the criminal, or if they just look the same by chance. They are asked about 5 yes or no questions that will determine whether they are a clone (or twin) or not. e.g.. To the best of your knowledge are you an identical twin? etc.

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Frenetic Forensic fun
Three (or four) big reels on which is rope with beads attached like a pool lane divider rope. The reels are motorized and controlled by the users via big fun levers (like train). Two of the ropes have identical sequences of beads while the other/s are slightly different. the user is told that these are models of the dna sequence of four blood samples. The one on the left was found at a crime scene, the others are from our suspects, can you work out who is the culprit? Should we also ask which reel goes the fastest?
I read that:
"It has been determined that testing 10 gene pairs distributed randomly across the 39 chromosome pairs is mathematically sufficient to establish a unique identity" (this is in relation to dna testing of dogs)

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Touch my genes!
A touchy feely exhibit where visitors enter a darkened tunnel (could be fluro paint on walls to make it silly). Along the walls of the tunnel are holes into which you stick your hands and feel what is in there, there may be a sign suggesting what it is you are going to feel. e.g. saliva excreting bench top, fingernail cup etc.  when they exit the tunnel they do so via a path that takes them around the back of the exhibit where they can see the hands going into the containers through perspex.

My concern is vandalism in the tunnel because it is out of sight, could it be waist high to discourage naughtiness?

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Silly cells
There are four frames on benches at a slight angle and a bucket of balls (cells) in the middle. e.g. The frames are a person, a dog, a tomato and one you can mould yourself. the idea is that the balls are different colours so you can make a red tomato a brown dog and a pink person or a pink tomato a red dog etc. the final one you can make whatever you want.

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My genes made me do it!
A series of activities that demonstrate what is genetically determined. e.g. reaction time, sense of time, body temp, sense of humour, gullibility, lung power etc.

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Party animals
Users are invited to find out who was at the party by finding stray cells and cloning them with the "impossible but..." cloning machine. Or if that is too misleading just identify them by finding the cell and the computer will match up the person to the code.

The micro transporter unit
We have overcome the need to dematerialize and re-materialize a whole person by developing a gene reading technology. All we have to do is transport a single cell and then reconstruct the person at the new location based on the genetic material the cell contains.

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