You won’t believe your eyes — or your nose, mouth, ears or fingers — at Denver Museum of Nature & Science’s new exhibition,
The interactive offering, which opens April 12 and is included with regular museum admission, invites people of all ages to engage with brain-tickling exercises and activity stations that illustrate the strange, wondrous ways in which we perceive the world.
“It’s like DJ’ing but with animal sounds,” said Taliah Farnsworth, a museum educator, as she cranked a knob modulating the frequency of various natural sounds in (and outside of) the human hearing range.
Themed rooms in “Our Senses” take on the individual senses with high- and low-tech features that illustrate how what we’re experiencing isn’t always what’s happening. There are hidden ultraviolet patterns on flowers (as bees see them), invisible images in masses of colored lines, and mirrored, textured walls with all manner of visual and tactile delights.
What we perceive as a distinct sense — like the aroma of chocolate — is often a combination perceptions, Farnsworth said as she sniffed tubes in a room dedicated to the sense of smell. And we’re just starting to understand how our internal senses of weight, temperature, balance and hunger play crucial roles in our physiology beyond what the world is telling us.
Can you find your balance in a room designed to make you feel wobbly? Are you willing to pit your vision and memory against challenges that prove how easily misled we are by context clues? It’s an overall surreal experience, but one rooted firmly in science, making “Our Senses” a clever, all-ages educational addition to a museum that strives to balance its entertainment factor with mind-bending natural facts.
If you go
“Our Senses: Creating Your Reality.” Museum exhibition organized by the American Museum of Natural History. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. daily through Aug. 4 at 2001 Colorado Blvd. Included with general admission: $14 (ages 3-18); $19 (adult); $16 (seniors). 303-370-6000 or .
