Polytech Festival 2014

«POLYTECH»festival of science

and curiosity

The «Polytech» Festival of Science and Curiosity is a joint project of Moscow Polytechnic Museum and World Science Festival (New York). The celebration of science, art and technology took place out in the open on VDNKh, in Promyshlennosti (Industrial) Square, as well as Cosmos pavilion and pavilion №26, where a new Polytechnic Museum exhibition «Rossiya Delaet Sama» (Russia Makes Its Own) awaited guests. The Festival played host to world famous science communicators and artists from Russia, the United States, Sweden, the Netherlands, Poland and France.

«POLYTECH» festival 2014

«Strandbeests» installation by Theo Jansen became the key exhibit at the festival. The exhibition opened on the 24th of May at the Space Pavilion. Theo Jansen is renowned internationally for his giant sculptures which come into motion with wind power. On a daily basis Theo demonstrated giant beasts coming to life with the specially designed pneumatic system.

festival participants

«STRANDBEESTS» BY THEO JANSEN

EXPOSITION, NETHERLANDS

«Dear Albert!» is a stage adaptation of Alan Alda’s novel based on Albert Einstein’s letters. Alan Alda, a six time Emmy winner, premiered «Dear Albert!» in 2008 at the World Science Festival, New York. Since that time the play has not been staged outside U.S.This year, «Dear Albert!» has been translated into Russian especially for the Polytech Festival and staged by Ruslan Malikov, a renowned Russian theatre director.

«DEAR ALBERT!», WORLD SCIENCE FESTIVALREHEARSAL, USA


Created by the outstanding physicist Brian Green in collaboration with legendary composer Philip Glass and media artist duo Al+Al, World Science Festival Media Opera project «Icarus at the edge of time» became one of the highlights of the festival. The show was held at the Space Pavilion and featured live orchestra in combination with cutting edge multimedia technology, which helped the audience realize that science can be incredibly interesting, and it is the science progress that brings us closer to understanding and transforming the world.

«ICARUS AT THE EDGE OF TIME» WORLD SCIENCE FESTIVALMEDIA OPERA, USA


Nikolay Polissky, a well-known land artist, presented his «Brilliant Thought» – a mesmerizing installation, part of «Universal Mind» project. Especially for the festival the installation was expanded by a construction set, made of 7000 wooden modules. Every visitor could take a chance at constructing his own land art mini-sculpture or add to the main interactive installation, guided by curating architects.

«BRILLIANT IDEA» BY NIKOLAY POLISSKYINTERACTIVE PLAYGROUND, RUSSIA


BESTIARIUM CONSTRUENDUM is a special exhibition for kids, designed to look and feel like archeological digs with pieces of ancient sculptures scattered around. «Precious artifacts» are made of soft, rough to the touch sandstone equipped with invisible magnetic locks which allow to connect the pieces. Kids of all ages can build a beast or a mythical hero from these parts.

BESTIARIUM CONSTRUENDUM: MYTH CONSTRUCTOR BY ALEXANDER REICHSTEININTERACTIVE EXPOSITION, RUSSIA


Swedish designer Eric Aberg presented his wooden origami sculptures. In artist’s hands wooden cubes magically transformed into the most impossible forms, folding, connecting, turning and diminishing.

«GHOSTCUBE» BY ERIC ABERG, PERFORMANCE, SWEDEN


The Rube Goldberg machine is the mechanism performing very simple tasks in an extremely complicated way, based on chain reaction principle. A team of improvisers of such mechanisms came from San Francisco to participate in «Polytech» Festival. Mike Petrich and his colleagues brought the prototypes of the odd structures and helped visitors participate in creation of a giant complicated mechanism.

EXPLORATORIUM: RUBE GOLDBERG MACHINE ZONEINTERACTIVE PLAYGROUND, USA


Polish street theatre presented an outdoor evening performance based on Stanislav Lem’s sci-fi novels. Set in the future, the anti-utopian creation with spectacular costumes and special effects presents the idea of inevitability of total control over human mind. Audience has a glimpse into the future to see the outcome of technological development.

«PLANET LEM» SCIENCE FICTION PERFORMANCE, POLAND


French artist Clement Briend presented a special art project created as a mixture of street art, photography and light projection. Tree trunks in the alley across Space Pavillion became screens: projected portraits of renowned Russian scientists looked upon visitors in the dusk.

VIDEO PROJECTION BY CLEMENT BRIEND FRANCE


festival in numbers

DAYS OF FESTIVAL

PLACES FOR SCIENCE EXPERIMENTS, PERFORMANCES AND INSTALLATIONS

POP-SCIENCE LECTURES

LITERS OF NON-NEWTONIAN FLUID

WATER ROCKETS

CHAIN REACTIONS ACTIVATED

PORTIONS OF LIQUID NITROGEN ICE-CREAM CONSUMED

MONTHS OF PREPARATION

OVER

VISITORS

I-LIKE WRISTLETS

PUBLICATIONS

VIEWS OF INTERNET BANNERS PUBLICATIONS ON FB

USERS – COVERAGE IN FB

TOTAL COVERAGE IN VK

VIEWS OF VIDEO CONTENT ON YOUTUBE.COM

VIDEO REPORTS ON TV (1 CHANNEL, TVC, 5 CANNEL, NTV, MOSCOW 24, CULTURE) VIEWS OF DEDICATED WEB-PAGE

METRO STIKERS IN MOSCOW

L EA F L E TS

promotion

contacts

IVAN BOGANTSEV DIRECTOR OF POLYTECH FESTIVAL

DEPUTY DIRECTORTHE POLYTECHNIC MUSEUM

TEL.: +7 495 621 10 41CELL: +7 916 144 [email protected]@YANDEX.RU

festival partners

Education

Polytech Festival 2014