Creaky 78rpm Records, Old Cylinders, Gramophones
Meets High-Tech at the Exploratorium:
Seattle's Climax Golden Twins Perform on Saturday, February 17 at 1pm

The development of recording that took place at the end of the 19th century signified big changes in society. It marked the end of the oral tradition and signaled the beginnings of the information age. Now deep in that age, Seattle's Climax Golden Twins fuse both worlds by creating live, improvised performances that uses the sights and sounds from recordings made during those early days. They abstract and process those creaky 78rpm records, cylinders and gramophones while presenting a collage film of early recording's visual ephemera. It all takes place at the Exploratorium on Saturday, February 17 at 1pm in the Exploratorium's McBean Theater. Source material for their performance includes home recorded acetates, historical speeches and sermons, comedy, jazz, folk, pop, classical and traditional music from all over the world from the first part of the 20th century. This performance is presented in conjunction with Listen: Making Sense of Sound, a major new exhibit collection at the Exploratorium. Both the event and the exhibition are included with admission to the Exploratorium.

Climax Golden Twins is a duo composed of Robert Millis and Jeffrey Taylor. They have composed materials for NPR, scored for film and television, curated compilations of Asian music, created gallery and museum installations, and released LPs, CDs and DVDs on a variety of labels including Anomalous Records (Lovely) and Sublime Frequencies (Phi Ta Khon: Ghosts of Isan). An upcoming project will include selections from their collections of 78rpm records played on period machines.

Music for Rocks and Water
By Composer Cheryl Leonard
February 18, 2007, 1pm

On Sunday, February 18th, at 1pm at the Exploratorium, three musicians play amplified water and a spectrum of rocks in a performance of compositions inspired by gestures and motions from the natural world. The works, by composer Cheryl Leonard, are based on phenomena such as the mysterious racing rocks of Death Valley, ocean waves and eddies, rockfall on mountains, wobbling boulders, patterns of wind on grass, the sculpting of landscapes by glaciers, water flow through falls and rapids, and shifting tectonic plates. This performance is presented in conjunction with Listen: Making Sense of Sound, a major new exhibit collection at the Exploratorium, and is included in the price of admission to the Exploratorium.

Go to: http://www.exploratorium.edu/pr/documents/07-2Music.html

Wiring a Brain to See with Stanford's Dr. Stephen Smith
Cutting-Edge Biology Lecture Series
Thursday, February 8, 2007, 7pm

Stanford University's Dr. Stephen Smith, an authority on microscope imaging techniques and the biology of brain cells, will talk about the eye-brain connection in the developing embryo, in the second in the Exploratorium's Cutting-Edge Biology Lecture Series. This event, Wiring a Brain to See, is free and open to the public.

Most of our knowledge about how the nervous system works has come from using animal models. Using tiny zebrafish larvae and various nerve cell markers, researchers have probed some of the remarkable events that lead to our ability to see. Using research microscopes and genetically modified fish larvae, Dr. Smith will present some of his latest observations and describe the growing connections between a developing eye and brain. Participants will see astounding images of these tiny embryos and learn how nerve cells communicate with one another. Participants will be able to view live organisms used to study these processes under the microscope as well as take part in the Q & A.