When the ever so fabulous Museum of Science and Industry (MOSI) in Manchester invite you to the launch of Manchester Science Festival, there’s not a cat in hell’s chance my crew and I are missing out. Actually, regardless of whether it’s a launch night or simply a new exhibition or installation, it doesn’t take much to entice me to this venue.
Over the last few years one of my top blogging conferences, BlogOn, has been held at MOSI ensuring that I am guaranteed at least a couple of visits. If you have not been it’s definitely a destination you need to add to your list of must-see’s – whether you’re a local or a visitor.
But this time – well all my attention could be focused to the subject at hand, and in this instance that subject was that of artificial intelligence.
YES.
How exciting!?!? What an interesting, relevant, futuristic issue to learn about. I was extremely excited to see what they had in store for us and needless to say I was not disappointed…
Robot dancers, electronic sets, I don’t drink beer but there was a robotic arm that was serving it, it was all go when we walked in.
After settling in, grabbing a couple of drinks and a tasty noodle snack that was very kindly being passed round, it was time to preview the headline act – the robots.
It’s funny, because what I didn’t realise was how far back robots actually date. It’s always seemed like a thought of the future but it’s very much an idea of the past and the present.
The curation of this exhibit is fantastic and the robots themselves are sensational. You can learn about current research… interaction (you have to meet pepper!)… the various uses….
Now the last thing I want to do is drone on and on about everything I did and saw. I created a mini highlights video at the end of this blog post which gives a glimpse into it, but honestly the best thing to do is get online here and book tickets. If you’re even remotely interested in the technological advances of robots (the ethics of the situation interested me) then this is a great day out for big and little kids.
Also open for preview that night was interactive spider inspired installation known as ‘Tape.’ So stating the obvious, the whole thing is made from tape (what are the chances). Hearing about it all I thought, ok this could be cool and would be interesting to see. What I didn’t gather was the sheer scale of it and I had no idea before the night that we could actually climb INTO it. Yes, you can tap into that spidey-sense and crawl into the tape web to envisage the life of an arachnid.
Rewinding back to before we made the leap up into tape, we visited the spider activity area upstairs where a specialist had on display a number of creepy crawlies. They were pretty amazing to look at to be honest, definitely worth a trip up the stairs.
The Science Festival is only on until Sunday 29th October – there’s absolutely loads on and I’d recommend you check out this link here to see what’s happening.
BUT
If you don’t have the chance to make it to any of the festival events, don’t worry because ‘Robots’ is on until April next year 🙂
Robots and science festival aside, MOSI is a great destination point if you’re looking for something to do within the City. Manchester has a fantastic history of innovation and tech creativity and most of it is documented at this museum. The main collection houses parts of the first commercially available computer (the FIRST?!) and some models used by John Dalton to demonstrate his atomic theory.
It’s an inspiring place for everyone and best of all, it’s super entertaining too!
As promised I’ll end this post with my video highlights from last week, and please do let me know what you think if you do decide to go and visit!
Have you been to MOSI? What’s your favourite museum thats fun and educational?Â
