Photos by Courtney Pedroza
With a big white tent, a robot running around and thumping bass, ASU Emerge brought a carnival with a scientific twist to downtown during First Friday.
Entering its third year, Emerge is an ASU-sponsored event that brings together artists, scientists, engineers, dancers, storytellers, technologists and futurists to showcase their talents.
The event is usually a more formal event that takes place across three days. But this time, co-directors Joel Garreau, Cyndi Coon and Ed Finn decided to do something completely different.
“We got almost 20 exhibits and they’re all about causing two reactions for people: the first being to say ‘wow’ and second of all, the object of the game is to get them thinking,” Garreu said.
Crowds of people were looking at exhibits or getting a handshake from Deltron, a bomb disposal robot donated by police to the ASU Polytechnic campus under big white tents on Third Street south of Roosevelt Street. Students and staff, such as Sean Dengler, fixed the robot and put it on display at the carnival.
“Polytechnic was really into doing community events,” Dengler said. “When we were asked to join, we couldn’t really say no.”
Some people got a glimpse of how medicine might be able to predict a person’s health with a fingerprint. Others took a part in the future-face lounge, where individuals took a survey about which continent their ancestors were from while a camera took a quick picture of their face. For each person, a dot would be added to a map behind the crowd showing how everyone was connected.
There was a diverse crowd as children, adults and students such as Lauren Pedersen were enjoying themselves as they walked from display to display.
“It’s really interesting, I’ve heard about a couple of things but when it’s executed it’s pretty awesome,” Pedersen said.
One exhibit that had people lining up to play was a mixture of Whac-A-Mole and Twister. The game had a board with blue and red lights, and two people would have to press two blue or red lights at the same time to get one point. Eventually, instead of two lights, three lights would go off. Since the lights were spread everywhere, it was common to see people getting their arms twisted together or using their heads to hit a light.
The whole idea was to get more people outside playing games and interacting with each other, said Gavin Bushnell, who presented the game.
“We are interested in making games that bring you out of the home,” Bushnell said. “The more technology that comes out, even when you’re playing multi-player games and playing with thousands of people, you’re still alone in your room or living room.”
When not observing a performance by students from the ASU Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts representing how technology can drive people apart, visitors were listening to David Rothenberg — a jazz musician known for playing music to animals on his soprano saxophone — or to local band There is Danger.
“Emerge is artists and scientists redesigning the future because we don’t just talk about the future,” Garreau said. “We build it.”
Contact the reporter at Shaianne.Perez@asu.edu.
