Theater 360
National Museum of Nature and Science · 2005
Near the dinosaurs on the lowest floor of the Global Gallery is a door that leads onto a bridge inside a sphere. The sphere is nearly thirteen metres across and its entire inner surface, above, below and all around you, is a screen. When the lights go down you are floating in space, or diving under the sea, or standing inside the Earth as the continents drift, and because there is no edge to the picture the sensation of movement is startling. Hold the rail; many visitors feel the floor tilt even though it never moves.
The theatre was built for the Japanese pavilion at the 2005 World Exposition in Aichi, where it was one of the most popular attractions, and it was moved here when the fair closed. Its name plays on the Japanese word for the number three hundred and sixty, written with a circle for the last digit, and on the idea of a complete view in every direction. Look at the joins between the projected images as the film starts; they vanish once the picture is moving. Several short films alternate, some on the birth of the solar system and the evolution of life, some on the ecology of Japan and the deep sea.
The screening lasts about ten minutes and is a good break for tired feet between the fossil halls. Shows run throughout the day at fixed times and the bridge holds only a few dozen people, so pick up a time slot early. Children love it, though very small ones can find the sensation of falling too strong. It is the one exhibit in the museum you experience rather than look at, and it sends you back out among the skeletons with a new sense of the scale of time and space.
Did You Know? The theatre was the centrepiece of the Japanese pavilion at the Aichi World Exposition in 2005 and was rebuilt here after the fair closed.
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