The World Science Festival is underway around town, including Greenwich Village where a massive interactive sculpture from NASA is stopping people in their tracks because it sounds as good as it looks. NY1's Roger Clark filed this report.
There are many interesting sights in Greenwich Village, but this might top them all: the NASA orbit pavilion.
"This is surround sound on steroids, really. So people haven't experienced speakers above you and speakers below you," says NASA’s Dan Goods.
It’s right on West 4th and Greene Streets, one of the centerpieces of the World Science Festival, now in its eighth year. There are more than 50 events over five days all over the city.
"We're taking the top scientists in the world, and bringing them here to interact with people, for people to meet them and to listen to them. And they're really great at communicating science,” says Tracy Day, CEO and co-founder of the festival.
The orbit pavilion is designed by NASA and Brooklyn based architects StudioKCA. Visitors learn about NASA's 20 satellites and their focus on our planet's seas, land and sky.
"It just gives us a really clear, big, global view about how our different Earth systems work, and how they interact with each other," says NASA’s Daniel Delgado.
Even though you can't see the satellites, you get an idea about where they are and what they do.
"It's a way of taking data from an experience that's very far up and very abstract, which is the satellites and using something that creates a very textural and very real experience," says sound artist and composer Shane Myrbeck.
Inside an aluminum structure that resembles a giant seashell, like the ones you put up your ears so you can hear the ocean when you're a kid.
"How do you showcase sound in an interesting way, that was the problem we were tasked with, so here's a big shell," says Jason Klimoski of StudioKCA.
To find out more about everything going on at the World Science Festival—lectures, star gazing at Brooklyn Bridge Park, a science street fair at Washington Square Park—just head to worldsciencefestival.com.