Mind over matter

What a terrible thing to have lost one’s mind,” former US Vice President Dan Quayle once famously mused. “Or not to have a mind at all. How true that is.”

The VP was grasping for that oh-so-true cliché, “A mind is a terrible thing to waste” — while unwittingly offering himself as Exhibit A.

Hopefully, the Mind Museum project at Taguig — a P1 billion undertaking to be completed in 2011 — will inspire deeper thoughts than Quayle’s. Designed by architect Ed Calma, the futuristic two-level facility is looking to be the Philippines’ grandest science museum, telling the story of human history and exploration through five interactive galleries.

The planned building — whose groundbreaking was celebrated inside The NBC Tent at Fort Bonifacio with a grand gallery of top donors in attendance — will occupy a crescent-shaped space on Third Avenue called JY Campos Park and resemble, to these eyes, a kind of futuristic computer modem — quite fitting for a facility meant to transmit knowledge and information at super-fast rates.

For the moment, this ambitious project remains imaginary, but for once, the imagined world seems inviting. After being greeted by a robot guide (according to Manny Blas II, managing director of Mind Museum), visitors to the Mind Museum will tour five separate galleries covering the story of science. Here’s what to expect:

• The Atom Gallery will “let you play in the strange world of the very small.”

• The Life Gallery will “captivate with the exuberant varieties of life.”

• The Earth Gallery “tells the story of nature across the breadth of time.”

• The Universe Gallery will “cradle you in its vastness and majesty.”

• The Technology Gallery explores what we do with what we know and will “surround you with engaging pieces of human ingenuity and creativity.”

The Tuesday-night program had a ton of corporate and private donors on hand (too many to mention), but the recent effects of Ondoy and the fragility of nature were not far from people’s minds. Underscoring this, guests watched a performance of Kenji Williams’ “Bella Gaia” (Beautiful Earth) onstage, a multimedia mix of violin and laptop computer soundscapes, breathtaking images of earth and live performance from Ballet Manila dancers. NASA computer imagery and 3D charts showcased eye-catching data about the planet, such as oil consumption per country, water temperatures throughout the world, polar storms and time-lapse glacier formation, plus crisscrossing GPS satellites and commercial aircraft circling the planet. 

The “Bella Gaia” project, Williams explained, developed out of interviews with astronauts from the International Space Station. Their comments about the experience of orbiting our planet are telling. One says he was “terrified” by the fragile appearance of our blue globe. Another concluded that “we’re really all sailing in the same boat.” Another said that, during his first week in space, “I was seeing my own country. By week two, I saw only my continent. By the third week, I saw only one world.” As with so many things in life, perspective is everything. 

The role of such a museum, Bonifacio Art Foundation, Inc. chairman Joselito D. Campos noted in his introduction, is to “inspire a deep love for the planet” and to “take heed of what keeps our planet, ourselves and everything we hold dear, alive.”     

We’d all love to believe this is the case, though I wonder why the world, which has built countless science museums in the past for this very purpose, has so far failed to get the message. Earth is still in peril, though there seems to be a lot of interest in using technology as a way to underscore the urgency of the message. A great portion of the facility will be devoted to technology, as this is one surefire way to stimulate young kids who might otherwise find museums dull and deadly. Perhaps the Mind Museum’s biggest task is to get so many idle minds out there to do the very thing that minds are designed to do: think.