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A Mighty Wind
(continued)
The entire affair is a little bit like Universal's Twister attraction, in
fact. Very loud noises, sudden banging and explosions, and a lot of wind.
It's simulated, though, and filmic 3D action rather than occurring via
physical effects in front of you, and thus it's a lot less impressive in
person. I imagine it was quite a bit cheaper to build, though.
After a few minutes of this mayhem, the neighborhood is a wreck. Most of
the houses look uninhabitable, cars are bashed in by trees, and the
landscaping is a mess. The CM host comes to the front of the room and
announces we will all help "rebuild" the house to the left (the one
dominated by the garage, from our vantage point), and we're going to do it
by voting from our seats on the kinds of repairs to install.
Two buttons.
Like Who Wants
to be a Millionaire, we vote using permanently-installed buttons in front of
each seat, though in this case, the choice is only A or B (if only life
itself were this simple!) The host talks us through different options.
What style of roofline should we use? Should we rebuild the roof with tile
or shingles? Should we use nails or braces? Should the new doors open inward
or out? Should we leave a window open to equalize pressure? Should we put
tape on the windows to protect them? Should we plant a magnolia tree or a
Florida pine? Should our new garage be one unit or two?
The questions are doled out one at a time, and the winner is chosen by
simple majority of audience votes. We'll test our choices after the question
and answer session, when another storm will come to ravage the same
neighborhood, and we see how each of our choices fared.
But let's dwell for
a second on how the questions are asked. The hosts are working off a
memorized script, so they are told to ask things a certain way, and it
struck me that the questions were a bit leading, as if the audience was
being guided to choose certain things. For instance, the garage door
question was posed something like this: "Should we install one big garage
door, or two little ones with less surface area?" Subconsciously or
otherwise, it sounded like most of the questions were designed to lead in one
direction.
The question about taping the windows marks an interesting moment when
the audience is led toward the WRONG choice. "Should we leave the windows
alone or put tape on them, to prevent damage?" The answer turns out to be
that we should leave the windows alone - in the second simulation, our
windows break right away. But if we as an audience had chosen the right
answer, the windows STILL would have broken. It's an odd quiz question,
since the answer is that taping windows isn't a "wrong" choice in real life;
it's just a useless activity. It does no harm. Unlike, say, installing nails
rather than braces to anchor the roof. For this reason, the tape question is
unusual and slightly unfair.
There's one other question where the audience is led to the wrong answer:
"should we plant a magnolia tree or a sand pine, which is native to
Florida?" I chose the latter, thinking if it's native to the state, it might
be adapted for wind better, and the rest of the audience apparently agreed.
But the "right" choice turns out to be the magnolia, for it has deeper
roots.
I suppose it's possible they intentionally led the audience to the right
answers sometimes, and the wrong answers at other times, since in both cases
people will still "learn", and the point here is certainly educational. But
I'd rather see no leading at all. Completely neutral questions would open
the door to more variation here.
After the audience polling, we jump right back to the main viewscreens,
as our fixes are put into place for the houses on screen, and then the storm
comes back. We don't hear yet whether our answers were right or wrong; we
discover that by watching the action. In our case, we only missed the
question about tape on windows (I knew the answer, having lived through
Hurricane Charley, but the rest of the audience did not) and the
magnolia/sand pine. It turns out that in most shows, those are exactly the
questions that the audience misses, which further strengthens my suspicion
that the exact language of the script is to blame.
After we see the new destruction, which is less the second time
around, we get a debrief of our choices, and why each was right or wrong.
Then, there's a short conclusion invoking the names of the sponsors, which I
have to say did not stick in my head at all. I'd forgotten who they were
until looking up the press release for this story. If I were the companies
paying for the exhibit, I'd be a little concerned about that.
The post-show has three main features. You empty out into a mock-up of a
roof under construction, to see the straps and braces that are advised
rather than nails. I recognized the one brace from the video, and labeling
on the wall identified it as a Simpson Brace, a kind of knee brace to attach
wooden beams in the roofline to each other. But a flat panel of simple metal
formed another brace elsewhere on the lattice, and I couldn't find out what
it was called. When I asked the CM working the exit, she didn't know either.
It turns out she wasn't given any particular training in the science of the
modifications recommended. She knew the script well enough, but only what
was in it.
Just what are those
aluminum plates?
That got me thinking. The point of the show is to entertain, yes, but
also to educate and presumably to drive people to the sponsor. Yet I'd
forgotten the sponsors right away, and I had a question relevant to their
material that couldn't be answered. It seems to me that some free literature
lying around would kill multiple birds with one stone. I could learn about
braces, and I could be pointed toward the sponsor in question. As it stands
now, I learned only enough to go home and search Google for some other
assistance.
It's telling that I DID leave the show wanting to check out my own home's
hurricane preparedness, specifically with regard to braces in the roof
structure. The show was effective that far in making me care and seeming
relevant to my own situation, living in Florida as I do. This is where I
wonder if folks living in other states might be less captivated by the
presentation. Will they find it less relevant to their situation?
Further down the exit corridor are some computer monitors, which use
touch screens to provide an interactive quiz on natural disaster
preparedness (including other disasters, like floods). You can then email
yourself a postcard, but mine never came by email later on, so I assume this
feature only looks like it's turned on for the moment.
Monitors to the left,
kids game to the right.
Finally, next to the monitors is a zone for a kid's game. There are
identical stations where kids compete one on one to see who is the fastest
to build a disaster kit at home, which they do by taking items out of plain
cupboard lockers and fitting them into the exact right spot in a central
location. In essence, it's a giant game of Perfection (you know, that board
game that had you fit irregular shapes into matching holes). It's fun as far
as that goes, especially for the kindergarten set, but it has little to do
with actual disaster preparedness. They tried to connect the dots; after
placing all the items in a race, the kids are asked questions to put the
items back to the cupboards one at a time. "Which one would you use when the
lights go out" was one question, designed to get them to reach for the
flashlight. I'm not sure this kind of message will stick in my son's
consciousness, but I suppose it cannot hurt.
It's fun for a few
minutes at least!
Still, it begs the question of how much this new exhibit fits into
Innoventions. The answer to that depends on what, exactly, you want
Innoventions to do. Is this place meant to be a showcase of new concepts and
technologies? The name means innovative inventions, after all. That's a
decent fit for a product like the Segway, but most of Innoventions is taken
up by advertising, with various levels of thinness to the
disguise. Some are dressed up as moderately fun pastimes (the music-playing
robots come to mind), but most are pretty bald about the sponsor's
advertisement. Ironically, in my case I wanted MORE sponsor, not less, in
the product. (The same could not be said for the garbage display down the
road)
On the other hand, if you want Innoventions to be all about cutting-edge
technology, then this exhibit doesn't fit the bill. Most
of the exhibits here won't, in fact. Velcro? 30 years after its
commercialization? Cutting edge would be bioengineering, materials science,
genetic advancements, or cloud computing. Heck, even the Olympic swimsuits
are cutting edge. But then you've got modern-day exhibits in Innoventions,
like product safety testing. Are they cutting edge? Not so much. Alas, Storm
Struck keeps to this pattern. It's not cutting-edge so much as it is
sponsorship. I'm not complaining too loudly, though. As a local who visits
often, I like seeing and experiencing new stuff. As a local who owns a
house, I'm even keenly aware of the relevance of the subject matter. I just
wonder whether non-locals will be as interested as I was. |
