HokkaidoU Japan

iGEM 2011 Team of Hokkaido University

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• Human Practice

• Top
• Virtual BioArt Gallery
• A society which citizens can think by themselves
• The way to become “citizens who can think by themselves”
• The New Communication Tool, “BIO ART”
• The road to “BIOART"
• What BIO ART was like
• Questionnaire Results
• Review
• To the Future
• Recommended books
• Collaborations
• Acknowledgements

Review

After we finished our event, “BIO ART”, we had a meeting to thoroughly review our results in order to broaden “BIO ART” as a better communication tool. We found new possibilities and reviewed what did or did not work for this new challenge. Below, we have provided some reflections of our conclusions:

How to plan this event?

Reserve the place at least 3 months in advance. We held this gallery in early September but had begun planning this event at the beginning of July, which was a little late. Fortunately, we were able to reserve the spot but it would be better to reserve a location at least 3 months prior to when you want to have an event. Since the location we choose is at the center of the city, it is a popular location for other teams to use for commercial purposes. Therefore, as soon as you decide on a location check with the manager of the space to ensure it is available for your desired dates. If we had had more time to prepare, we would have been able to hold a rehearsal and perhaps had an entrance fee. We also would have liked to be able to ensure the gallery was more accessible for disabled guests, including colors used in the images and advertisements for partially color-blind visitors would have liked to enjoy the gallery as well. It is also possible to develop this event to be a city-wide gallery, getting many people involved under co-sponsorship from the city.

About the Copyright laws
While collecting photos, we must be careful of copyright laws. We had many offers to use photos and videos from the University and our professors were able to verify we were following all copyright laws. It is important to get approval from the source of these materials in order to make the event reliable.

Where to choose the place?
We held the “BIO ART” gallery in the new basement walkway in the center of Sapporo City where there are a large number of people on a daily basis. (Weekday average: about 590,000 people, Sat/Sun/Holidays average: 420,000 people 9/12/2011 current) We chose a location that had lots of shops as well as a lot of foot traffic from people going to the Sapporo station and subway that still provided enough space to hold events such as a gallery. Despite being held on a weekday, a lot of people came, from around 10 to 80 years old participated in our gallery and talked with our staff about their experience. From this data, we believe that we held our gallery at the perfect location. Also according to the questionnaire we had visitors fill out, we had a lot of responses saying “We barely have an opportunity to think about science in our daily life, so we would like to participate in this kind of science gallery again if it'll be held close to us.” We were aware of groups that had negative views towards our “BIO ART” gallery however; we had a goal to make it possible to take science outside of the laboratory to the public.

Our ability to communicate
As to the major theme of “BIO ART” which is “communicating with citizens”, it was a little awkward at first because we weren't used to talking to people we met for the first time but we ended up giving visitors a lot of accurate details during the gallery. As a whole, we think a lot of visitors enjoyed our gallery and we had a good knowledge and an attitude toward this gallery.

Contents
At the “BIO ART” gallery this year, we introduced some photos and videos of staining cells, books about gene recombination, a questionnaire, and a poster explaining about molecular biology. We believe this information was enough to fulfill our purpose and utilize the space of the gallery. Below, we would like to include more recommendation and details.

Photos
We were able to display the cutting edge technology of the research laboratories and exhibit this information at the “BIO ART” gallery thanks to our professors providing us with their photos. Also, by creating catchy names for each impressive photo, we were able to increase visitor’s curiosity and imagination.

Videos
We introduced videos with new technologies, such as 3D videos restructuring slices of photos taken by confocal laser scanning microscope and 3D videos of the brain of a mouse taken by two-photon microscope. Playing videos with photos, we were able to make visitors more interested in our research and share more of our knowledge with them.

Questionnaire
We did a questionnaire to know people’s interest in science and to improve the quality of the “BIO ART” gallery. As a result, the number of visitors who answered tbe questionnaire was over 100 people. We are still evaluating how this gallery will affect citizens and their society, which we will attempt to do next time. Please take a look at the results from the link below:

Introducing books about gene recombination
We read a book about gene recombination and wrote a review, respectively. We were able to have an opportunity to offer accurate knowledge to citizens by passing out leaflets that were printed about these books. We learned a lot from reading these books and we think that this process was very valuable in understanding the content regarding “human practice”.

The poster explaining about molecular biology and the activity of iGEM team
In order to have citizens interested in molecular biology and the activity of iGEM team, we created and displayed a poster explaining about what we did and our purpose. This poster was also an advertisement that caused some citizens to first be interested in our gallery.

Advertisement
The thing we believe was most necessarily to improve the most was the way of advertising for this gallery. We needed to think of more effective ways to advertise. What we did for the gallery this time was only put up posters at some shops and subway stops in the suburbs of Sapporo City. Some other ideas to increase our ability to advertise to more citizens are to utilize other medias such as newspapers, radio and TV. Also, having support from the city by putting advertisements in the city magazine would be a good idea. To increase citizens awareness of the “BIO ART” gallery, and extending the methods of advertising is a necessarily factor which can be very useful for the next science event.

At the end, from these reviews, we would like to consider what could do for the future events.