Category Archives: griffith observatory

griffith observatory, writing

Finding the Voice of the Cosmos

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What with Blogger being up and down the past few days, it has been difficult to get on and write an entry. Things seem to have settled down, so here I am again.

Griffith Observatory
Griffith Observatory

I’ve been thinking about the past year’s worth of work I’ve done for Griffith Observatory, now that it’s almost all done but the shouting. We have a few clean-up details to do with the exhibits, but my part of the project is just about done. If you go to the Griffith Observatory web site, you’ll see the latest pictures of the exhibits being put into place. It’s amazing to see the place taking shape, and the words I so carefully crafted going up on the walls and exhibit panels.

I’ve had a lot of people ask me what the project has been like, and I’ve been invited to write an article or two on the process of writing exhibits such as these. As soon as the project is completely off my desk, I’ll settle in to write those articles. For now, though, I can say a few things about the experience. As I think over the whole process, I have a lot of very good memories of accomplishment, many memories of hard work, sometimes frustration, sometimes complete madness. It was fun, it took every skill I had to pull off the writing, and it taught me so much and gave me so many new experiences. We got through it and even though not everything is finished yet, it will be soon. And it’s turning out beautifully.

For most of my writing—from books to documentaries to stories to software documentation for planetarium products—I have to get inside the mind of the reader/user/viewer and figure out what story I want them to get from the product I’m creating. For Griffith, I had an additional “role” to take on as writer—the “voice” of the observatory. And make no mistake, the Voice WAS and IS a role. It was not the voice of any one person, not even me. It was a construct I created in my mind, with a LOT of input from others, and that voice is what helped me tell the story of astronomy in th exhibits.

In a way, I suppose that creating that role of the Voice was not much different from the process an actor goes through to understand a character’s part in a performance. As it happened I WAS taking some acting classes during the time I was writing for Griffith, and many of the preparations I made for classwork were quite similar to what I did to create the Voice.

So, when this fall rolls around and Griffith Observatory re-opens, and we go out for the opening, I’ll be anxiously waiting around the halls, hoping that the Voice I created (with the help of so many artists, scientists, and others) is doing its job, bringing astronomy to the huge universe of people who will be visiting Griffith Observatory over the next decades. While it won’t be just ME up there on the walls, I’ll have the satisfaction of knowing that the words I worked so hard to create will come to life with the help of the Voice.

Astronomy outreach, griffith observatory, writing

Halls of Astronomy

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Griffith Observatory, image courtesy Tina Burch, DailyNews.com staff photographer.
Griffith Observatory, image courtesy Tina Burch, DailyNews.com staff photographer.

For the past year, I’ve been involved with one of the most amazing projects I’ve ever been invited to join, working as senior writer for the Griffith Observatory’s exhibits, set to be unveiled to the public sometime this autumn. The subject is, of course, astronomy, and without giving away too many secrets, it’s safe to say that we cover everything from earth-based astronomy out to the limits of the observable universe. (You can read more about the observatory at the story link under the picture.)

Like just about everybody else in the planetarium community, I’d been aware of Griffith’s place in the domed landscape, but it wasn’t until I got started with the project that I learned more of the history of the place. And, after my first meeting with the curatorial teams advising on the content to be covered in the exhibits, I was hooked by their idea of bringing astronomy to everybody using this “People’s Observatory” to do so. How so??

There’s an easy answer to that: because throughout my career, I’ve always tried to bring astronomy to everybody. I’ve eschewed the jargon and technobabble (which I CAN sling with the best of them when I’m working with scientists who know the language) in all my work. So, “speaking astronomy in plain English” wasn’t exactly unbroken ground for me. But, the challenges of explaining this complex science at a general level, on panels that often didn’t have more than 40 or 50 words on them—that was different.

At some point I’m going to write more about how it all worked—probably later this summer when I’m completely finished with the work. For now, let’s just say that, with astronomy at least, there’s a way to tell the story of the stars—and I want the next person who tells me that finding a way to make our science approachable is just “dumbing it down” to know that telling the story of science is a job we should ALL take seriously. And we should do whatever it takes to learn how to tell that story effectively. That’s what the Griffith experience has reinforced for ME.