I visited the Ontario Science
Centre in late November, with my primary goal being to look at exhibits focusing
on technology for my anthropology of new technologies course. As I was there,
however, I discovered an exhibit named ‘The Living Earth’ which was less
focused on technology and more focused on demonstrating to the public, in an
educational way, the interesting ecologies and environment that can be found
around the world in a place where they are very foreign: a city. While it was
not particularly relevant to my other class, it proved to be incredibly
relevant to the discussion of nature and the city.
The
primary visitors at the museum at the time I went were school field trips made
up of what I would assume to be elementary school kids up to middle schoolers. They
were fairly large groups, and the Science Centre’s position as a popular
educational tourist attraction in Toronto allows this to make a lot of sense.
This
exhibit in the Science Centre has such things as an artificially constructed
cave (given that the cave was designed largely for children, and I am quite
tall, I decided to forgo entering it) that one can go into in order to feel
what they are actually like, displays explaining about different plant and
animal life that exist around the world, but in particular in rainforests. This
is because the Science Centre has built a simulated rainforest inside. When I
entered it, I was immediately hit by the humidity, which is a staple of
rainforests. It was immensely humid, and the room consists of a pathway with a
small bridge going over a stream fed by a waterfall, with plants filling the
room to make it appear as though you are in the middle of the rainforest. The
sight, heat, and sounds all combine to create this immensely immersive
experience of finding oneself out in nature that cannot be found in Toronto in
a human-constructed environment. There were also a couple of lizards and other
animals in cages that live in the rainforest environment, but they were there
for educational and entertainment purposes and added little to the immersive
feeling created by the rainforest. It was a strange but interesting experience
that impacted me even as I left the living rainforest and moved back into the
exhibit hall where much of what was inside the rainforest (plants, animals,
etc.) are explained by displays.
The
Ontario Science Centre, according to its own website, is an iconic cultural
attraction in the city of Toronto that seeks to foster and create experiences
for all ages that educate and excite in regards to science and technology
(Ontario Science Centre Website). Its stated goals are to delight, inform, and
challenge the communities that it serves, through exhibits that make visitors
think and interact to expand their knowledge bases in a very accessible way
(Ontario Science Centre Website). It features several different exhibits
focused around space, the human brain and body, etc. along with the Living
Earth, which is the primary focus of this piece. The Science Centre also
features and Imax Dome, which provides an incredibly immersive movie experience
(I have gone to it in the past on school field trips and can confirm that the
documentaries they display in this theatre are incredibly immersive, and often
quite educational).
The
Ontario Science Centre was first opened in 1969, and was one of the world’s
first interactive science museums (Ontario Science Centre Website). Since it
opened, it has had over 48 million visitors, with most of the visitors coming
from the Greater Toronto Area and Toronto as a whole, and a large percentage of
these visitors are school groups (which was also confirmed by my experience
there). It also changes some of its displays every so often, in order to try to
constantly provide new and interesting experiences for visitors, though
exhibits such as the Living Earth and the space section are staples of the
museum that have been there for many years (I can in fact remember visiting the
Science Centre in elementary school and going to the space exhibit’s
planetarium). As a whole, then, the Ontario Science Centre is one of Toronto’s
older and premiere museums, and is a staple of the city as a whole.
The
Living Earth exhibit at the Science Centre brings to mind quite a few thoughts
that can be related to the nature-city dichotomy. The Living Earth museum most
certainly makes connections to Aldo Leopold’s land ethic, which wants humans to
treat the land as a part of the ‘community’ (see a more detailed explanation in
the Christie Pits section). A lot of the educational information in the Living
Earth exhibit, especially about the rainforests and exotic animals, centred on
this notion. Since a large part of the exhibit is a recreated rainforest
environment, much of the literature in the Science Centre discussed human
impact on rainforests. Many parts of the world that have rainforests (the Amazon
comes to mind) are suffering because of massive amounts of deforestation and a
human lack of caring for the natural world, since deforestation projects in
places like the Amazon rainforest are massively profitable. Thus, part of the
Living Earth Exhibit’s goal is to try to educate the average visitor about this
problem, to help them understand that there are beautiful, natural places in
the world that are being damaged because of greed and lack of concern for the
environment. Now, this discussion of the land ethic in regards to the rainforests
at the Science Centre is not one that is particularly associated with the city,
since there are no natural rainforests in Toronto to which this knowledge could
be applied to, but the fact that the Science Centre is making a concerted
effort to educate people about what is essentially a land ethic is a good
thing.
The
land ethic does, however, apply as well to an outdoor exhibit the Science
Centre has that only really runs in the warmer-weather months, and as a result
I could not study closely. Outside, in an enclosed space, the Science Centre
has a small area full of trees that is known to host a wide variety of birds
over the spring and summer. Some of the educational displays about this section
were also focused on notions such as conservation and respect for the land,
much like Leopold’s land ethic. At the same time though, this was a man-made
enclosure, but as far as I am aware the birds that visit it are not actually
trapped there—they can come and go as they please, but quite commonly are
attracted to the enclosure by bird feed put out by the museum staff.
The
Living Earth exhibit also inspired a structure of feeling, as discussed by
Raymond Williams (see the Toronto Island section for a more detailed
explanation). As has been stated, the destruction of rainforests is a fairly
serious concern that is covered at the Science Centre. This is quite directly a
‘loss’ as Williams would put it. At the same time, however, the Science Centre
is essentially using this loss of natural wildlife plant life, and the recreation
of this plant life in an enclosed, man-made establishment, for economic gain. While
the Science Centre does have worthy goals of education and excitement in mind,
at the end of the day it is a museum that visitors have to pay to enter, with
subsequent gift shops and restaurants associate with it. In this way,
therefore, notions of endangered wildlife and destruction of the natural world
are being used to create a structure of feeling and invoke feelings of loss for
the benefit of others.
Does
the educational value of teaching visitors about land ethics and treating the
environment with respect outweigh the structure of feeling being created by the
Science Centre? It is hard to say, but I personally would say yes. At the end
of the day, one leaves the Science Centre feeling as though they have learned
more about the world, and the Living Earth exhibit proves to be very
interesting and educational, with the recreated rainforest being quite
exceptional. The structure of feeling is absolutely there, but the educational
value of the Science Centre seems to counter-balance it well.
Works Cited:
Ontario Science Centre Website, accessed at https://www.ontariosciencecentre.ca/.
Pages Cited in Particular:
Aldo Leopold, 1949. “The Land
Ethic,” From A Sand County Almanac. In The Sustainable Urban Development Reader (2009, 2nd edition).
Stephen Wheeler and Timothy Beatley, Eds. Routledge.
Raymond Williams, 1977.
“Structures of Feeling,” Chapter 9 in Marxism and Literature, Oxford University Press.
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