From TracingNetworksWiki

Call for proposals for the 2010 Summer Science Exhibition

Theme: storytelling

Title (suggestions welcome):

• ‘From gossip to Google’
• ’Storylines’

Budget & Date

• Funding: approximately 10.000 GBP needed (external funding required)
• Date: Summer 2010
• This year’s Royal Society Exhibition is from the 30th of June to the 4th of July
• The call for proposals 2010 opens in June 2009 http://royalsociety.org/page.asp?id=6971
• This is the homepage of this year's Summer exhibition http://www.summerscience.org.uk/09/

Ideas

• Starting point are artefacts that can be handled, and investigated – we need roughly 10 different sherds, a minimum of 8 different types and fabrics
  • → look for artefacts we can borrow from the Mediterranean (collections: BM, Fitzwilliam, Museum for Arch and Anth Cambridge)

• Microscope – the artefacts can then be put under a microscope (cheap USB microscopes are available for 100 GBP, e.g. at Amazon: link
  • → visitors can match the fabric type to a range of existing fabric types on the computer
  • → explain about fabric types and use

• They can then find the provenience of the sherd on the interactive map
  • → from here we can
  • show a map of finds similar to the artefact and their distribution
  • show where the artefact has been made and where it was found
    • explain about the chaîne opératoire
    • explain about cross craft interaction
    • invite to invent a story about the artefact: how did it get from where it was produced to where it was found.

• The artefacts can be matched into an ontology sherds can be matched to drawings of complete vessel types
  • → Types can be classified in a typological hierarchy

• Story with choices: a story unfolds and the visitors have the choice of different options e.g. A loomweight was found in Metaponto. It is personalised by the imprint of a fingerprint. Who did this fingerprint belong to?
  • a. If you think the potter’s child left the trace continue to read at a1.
  • b. If you think the fingerprint was made by the lady who owned the loom, continue to read at b1.
  • a1: The potter was going about to do his business. He had already finished making several amphorae and decided to use the left-over clay to make some small loomweights– they were always popular amongst the women of Metaponto. He did not see his three-year old child coming into the workshop quietly, so focused was he on giving the loomweights the perfect shape. But then it was already too late! The little one had entertained himself placing fingerprints all over the finished loom weights set out to dry.
  • c. If you think the potter scolded his child and took the loom weight away from him, go to c1.
  • d. If you think the potter laughed and promised the child he could keep the weight after it had been fired, go to d1.
  • → We could trace the choices of stories visitors make, and present it as a graph
• Story telling competition:

Everybody is invited to invent a story and post it on the web – price for good stories, stories may be graded as to how imaginative or how realistic or how impossible they are

• Computer game: a treasure hunt?

This can reach different levels of sophistication – what about a simple, mine sweeper like thing? Maybe with clues to different fields? What about an antiquity quiz?