I’ve spent the last several days at the Association of Children’s Museums InterActivity 2010 conference in St. Paul, Minnesota. On Thursday night, we had a reception at the Science Museum of Minnesota which had several art pieces that related to science. The image above is a huge series of chimes. These chimes are automated by a computer that tracks earthquakes around the world (remember, the world has about 500,000 earthquakes a year, 100,000 of which can be felt) so that they play sounds based on the location and magnitude of the earthquake. If you are interested in seeing the daily earthquakes, you can check it out at the USGS here.

This image is a sculpture created by artist Randy Walker. He creates intricate webs of strings that, in person, appear to change depending on location and lighting conditions.

This final one is a sculpture by Allen Christian meant to be a take on Rodin’s The Thinker. The “robot” is holding a Jacob’s Ladder, which produces sparks of electricity, meant to symbolize the spark of an idea. The Jacob’s Ladder activates every few minutes, after which the robot sits up and the light above it turns on as a way of showing the full formation of the idea.