Blue Man nursery school
Two of the three founders of Blue Man Group have started a nursery school. The Blue Man Creativity Center opened last week with 43 enrollees aged two to four. It sounds like a cross between a Reggio Emilia school and an acid trip. From The New Yorker:
Every day at the center will end with a ritual called Glow Time, during which the shades are lowered, the regular lights are turned off, and black lights are turned on, illuminating the parts of the room (including work created by the students) that have been painted with special UV paint. The collection of Blue Man-inspired educational gewgaws on hand is a far cry from flash cards and Play-Doh. There’s a hypnotic Bubble Machine, with kid-controlled colored lights; a futuristic Water Machine, with a mini-whirlpool; and a trippy installation, left over from the B.M.G.’s 2003 tour, of giant computer-animated dragonflies that can be made to light up, flap their wings, and fly. The Tree House, whose slide deposits kids in the Texture Pit, looks like fun. So does the OMi-Beam machine, a computerized rig made up of eight ceiling-mounted halogen lamps, loudspeakers, and a video monitor (there is only one other OMi-Beam machine in the country, at Madame Tussaud’s). Colored beams create pools of light on the floor, and by waving a reflective wand through the beams kids can produce any number of sounds, from musical instruments to the calls of barnyard animals and samples of pop hits from the nineteen-eighties (one is Fatboy Slim’s “Rockafeller Skank”).Link


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"Rockafeller Skank" is not from the "nineteen-eighties". (Who says that? Besides the New Yorker, I mean?) It's from 1998. That would be the "nineteen-nineties".
screw the kids, I wanna go
Sounds fun, but did they have to put the Blue Man brand in the name? Gimme a break.
Putting their name on it might be useful for getting additional funding.
Aw, c'mon. The Blue Man Group is hardly hurting for cash...
For those interested in the OMi-beam system mentioned in the article, check out
http://www.optimusic.com/
The OptiMusic system of interactive lights is an amazing technology for entertainment and education www.optimusic.com
I foresee this venture going out of business after the children repeatedly break all of the pretty electronics.
I can hardly wait for the Blue Man Educational Interactive Toys catalogue that is sure to follow . . .