EMP/SFM brings together hard rock and weird science
Published: Mar 12, 2009
The Experience Music Project and the Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame are an odd couple if ever one existed. Aside from sharing a common roof — designed by renowned architect Frank Gehry to look like a smashed guitar — and a single admission fee, the two museums would seem to have nothing in common.
Yet, once you've explored both, the connections become clear. EMP/SFM isn't strictly about sci-fi or hard rock but about popular culture as a whole, and the ways we love it.
EMP is the larger and more ambitious of the two. At first blush, it looks like a simple music museum: There's a room of vintage guitars, exhibitions of music-related art, and an entire wing devoted to the popular music of the Northwest, from Jimi Hendrix to Heart to Nirvana. But EMP treats music as it should be treated — as a living, dynamic entity A good chunk of the space is devoted to interactive exhibits that allow you to make and listen to music.
Sound and Vision features thousands of hours of recorded oral histories by influential musicians, writers and artists, which you can peruse from comfortable lounge chairs. The Sound Lab allows you to test out guitars, drums, samplers and more. And On Stage approximates the experience of performing live before a global audience.
The Science Fiction Museum takes a somewhat different tack: It makes you feel like you're off the planet entirely.
You'll see all manner of geeky memorabilia — Captain Kirk's command chair, and a Death Star model from the original "Star Wars," for example — but you'll also be able to watch an armada of fictional spaceships pass by a spaceport window, enter the worlds of "Blade Runner" and "The Jetsons," and stand eye-to-metallic-eye with giant robots.
EMP/SFM welcomes field trips for students from kindergarten through high school. The facilities provide Investigation Workshops, which are hands-on workshops for students that include follow-up activities for when they return to the classroom.
Such group visits must be scheduled two weeks in advance. While weekday reservations can be made online, weekend reservtions must be made by telephone. For reservations or more information, call (206) 770-2766.
- by Geoff Carter, Seattle Reporter for HelloMetro
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