Force and Structure

Tactile Gallery—The Tactile Dome

The exhibit is encased in a geodesic dome about the size of a large weather balloon. Visitors enter through a light-lock room into a totally dark maze (path). Then, for an hour and fifteen minutes, they feel, bump, slide and crawl through and past hundreds of materials and shapes which blend, change and contrast. The purpose is to disorient the sensory world so that the only sense the visitor can rely on is touch. The sensation is so outside ordinary experience that a few people panic. An attendant at a control panel can reach every part of the ant-hill like maze almost instantly.