Where it all began…

On April 4, 2017, Adam and I had a meeting with Kerry and Helen from Sea Life Brighton to discuss an outreach project for the summer, which would eventually evolve into the Surprising Minds exhibit. Below are my notes from that meeting:

exhibits and outreach project for this summer
need to install in June, before Summer holidays start (mid-July)
try it out in Brighton, there is interest in rolling it out in other aquariums in the UK

topics:

• how brains make intelligence: what is intelligence, how does the brain create the representations necessary, etc.
• comparative approach to understanding brains. specifically, cuttlefish and cephalopods have come up with a completely different strategy to solve complex problems.

we want experience with installations/exhibits and how to make them robust.
needs to be quick and engaging, no longer than 2 minutes.

school workshops are about 45 minutes
could do this in the last half of June
would need to make our workshop an option amongst many, would have about 2 weeks notice

school room would be a great space to do a VR workshop with 12-18 year olds
would like to let ppl explore the tech a bit

exhibit in front of bubble tank - how do you assess the intelligence of another animal? what is surprise and what does it mean? what are expectations and how are they related to what we know about the world?
measure pupil dilation by having guests peer into a periscope-like viewport. this viewport is actually a VR headset or something else that measures pupil dilation.
could also track gaze to see where people look, or how people’s gazes track objects/people in a video.
link up with Clive to build this exhibit
need to have a computer nearby
should require an action to use, but should be theft-proof.
perhaps it should be drilled into the ground, be a standing object. should be height-adjustable. it would be nice if it moved side to side, or tilted up-down.

things to think about:

• legal stuff about liability, who is responsible for maintenance of equipment, etc
• timelines: when should we install? perhaps also during late-June.

next steps:

• speak to Clive for costs and construction timeline
• dimensions of the equipment, rough sketch of how it should be laid out
• speak to Ross about liability

other thoughts…
if this exhibit is up for July and August, we would collect human psychophysics experiment data from thousands of aquarium guests. as long as guests are informed that they are participating in an experiment it should be fine.

does Sea Life have an app?

Sea Life is connected to a home school network. The Intelligence Lab could provide an online course of some kind, that familiarizes young people with the next phase if they are interested in neuroscience, studying intelligence, comparative science, etc. Can advertise these courses/resources in the Behind-the-Scenes tour.