Manchester Science Festival 2016-Part Three

Monday 24th October saw me doing my second stint. Today I was at Manchester Museum for the event entitled Ocular Bionica. This was great fun but seemed like a short shift 10am until 3.30pm. Ocular Bionica refers to the painted stop-frame animation film which tells the story of a patient named Ray who has lost his central vision due to age-related macular degeneration. He becomes the first person with this condition to see with help from new technologies, highlighting advances in the treatent of sight loss and what they mean for humanity. This film was the brainchild of talented artist Lucy Burscough who ran this event whilst her film played on perpetual loop. We basically had a couple of tables with lots of fun stuff for kids to do, which we had to set up first of course. Lucy had brought her very helpful and knowledgeable 8 year old Alfie. I shared this opportunity with fellow long-term volunteer Colin Batchelor. Always nice to see and work with him. We had badge making where kids could chose from some images or draw one of their own. There was also a zoetrope and flip books to demo how film making first started. You can then make your own zoetrope. Again creating your own images. Colin and I had a go ourselves just to make sure we could! This free event was here all week and very busy. The kids obviously seemed to enjoy it. Colin and I did too. We took turns helping the little ones out using the badgemachine. I missed out on helping to clear up at the end as my lunch was later than planned. Colin and I hung around afterwards in the staffroom chatting and drinking coffee. For me, I was killing time but glad of his company. I was waiting to attend an event this evening which didn't start until 6pm.

Colin and I

Colin badgemaking

Me, sporting my eyeball badge, made by meself

Film: Ocular Bionica. 

Lucy, showing us how its done.

  










In the evening I went to an event simply called 'Mesh'. This was in the Benzie buliding, part of Manchester Metro politan University but I'd never heard of it. I was amused by the name and liked looking for the venue opposite our Aquatics Centre as it was an area of their campus I hadn't explored before. I found it after a while and was so early they were still setting up, so I enjoyed a soft drink and a flapjack in their cafe. Yet another free event this was the premiere of a 3D exhibition of printed fine art sculpture faturing 6 leading artists. These specialits first gave a talk each showing us their own creative journey to get to where they are now in this pioneering field. They were Keith Brown, Bruce Gernand, Annie Cattrell, Jon Isherwood, James Hutchinson and Sumit  Sarkar. I sat at the back clicking away taking far too many photos with my phone. At the end there was even a computer demo which I taped. It seemed abit too long to me but perhaps I was just tired. Here are a selection of photo's

3D in the 1980's

           Then we had a a look around the exhibition which also had a mini 3D printer in action. There was free red or white wine on offer but being pregnant, I had to stick to orange juice. I have more pics of this exhibit. It was a long but nice night. Its good when an event manages to pack alot in.

mini 3D printer