The original SF Exploratorium like you’ve never seen it before

“Trippy” is an accurate word to describe the film. The first few minutes resemble the surreal time warp in the Stanley Kubrick classic “2001,” with flashing swashes of color set to a dissonant drone soundtrack. There’s no narrative at all, just visual displays of sound waves, abstract optical illusions and short moments of visitors expressing delight or surprise. Before the first scene featuring kids posing in front of the flashing green light of the Colored Shadows exhibit, you could reasonably assume this to be experimental visuals for a psychedelic rock band instead of a film commissioned to promote a children’s museum.

With the museum currently closed due to the coronavirus pandemic, watching the film serves as a nostalgic reminder of one of San Francisco’s most beloved and timeless institutions. Originally conceived by Manhattan Project physicist Frank Oppenheimer after his career shifted to education, the Exploratorium museum opened its doors in the Palace of Fine Arts in 1969 (and relocated to Pier 39 in 2013). At the time, an experiential museum with an atmosphere more akin to a funhouse full of upside-down mirrors, sound installations and a pitch-black tactile dome was revolutionary… and hard to explain.

“It was just starting out at that point, and they had no way to show it to anybody,” says director Jon Boorstin, who was working with legendary designer and filmmaker Charles Eames. “This was before videotape, and there’s only so much you can do in writing. So [Oppenheimer] wanted to make a film that captured the spirit of the place, the philosophy, the ethos.”

Less a traditional look-at-the-art museum and more of a learning laboratory, the Exploratorium is all about hands-on discovery and learning through doing. The oversized curved mirror explains optical principles of focal points. An exhibit called Liquid Litmus uses pH-indicating dye to show how positive and negative hydroxide ions change as electricity flows through ionized water (and creates some beautiful eye candy in the process). Step onto the platform of the Blood-o-Meter to learn how many red and white blood cells are in your body. The exhibits became a perennial stop for school trips and family outings that were just as enlightening for kids as parents.

RELATED: The Exploratorium left in 2013. Here’s what the building looks like now.

And from those exhibits came a movie. Shot over the course of 18 days on 35mm film, “Exploratorium” mixed brief staged shots of actors with sensory overload montages and hidden camera footage of visitors. Boorstin’s background as a traditional verité documentary filmmaker was combined with the style of Charles Eames, which Boorstin described as emphasizing “beautiful little well-crafted images that juxtapose with each other and create a sense of wonder and discovery of the ineffable.”

Still, showing the spirit of the museum proved to be a logistical challenge. The film crew built elaborate lighting rigs to capture the laser and holograph installations, and getting truly candid footage of visitors took a spy-like level of subterfuge.

“We’ve always been a place that’s been like a laboratory developing new ideas, new exhibits, new programs, new ways to talk about subjects,” says Rob Semper, who joined the Exploratorium staff in 1977 and serves as chief science officer. “So they had to invent a lot of ways to film these kinds of phenomenological experiences.”

A 1975 article in American Cinematographer written by “Exploratorium” director of photography Eric Saarinen revealed more details about their creative approach. The crew built a seven-foot tall “black box” that they placed in the museum space with a sign on it that implied it was a new exhibit under construction. They hid inside, and a moving glass panel allowed them to shoot visitors unsuspected.

“When the museum opened the box would become surrounded by spectators who never had the slightest suspicion… They would be looking smack into the lens. Filming from inside was like being the invisible man. The box was painted black inside and we wore black clothing,” wrote Saarinen.

Plus, there was an additional level of secrecy off-screen.

“There’s a woman who plays a flute to the tree [in the film], and the tree lights up. And the same person teaches playing the marimba,” says direcot Jon Boorstin. “She has big blue eyes. Well, I fell desperately in love with her and had a passionate affair. And we just celebrated our 44th wedding anniversary.” (But according to Boorstin, they never snuck into the Tactile Dome.)

Although it lost out on the Oscar to “Don’t,” a film about the Monarch butterfly life cycle, “Exploratorium” has aged far better. It’s an experimental film at its core, but one that transcends the pretentious trappings that come with that label. The visuals are a real treat, abstract enough to create the same sense of child-like curiosity and wonder that one experiences from visiting a great museum. Boorstin went on to teach film at USC, publish the award-winning novel “The Newsboys’ Lodging-House” and write a film theory guidebook entitled “The Hollywood Eye.”

The final product served as the perfect promotional tool, not just to introduce the museum to people in San Francisco, but throughout the country. It proved to be a very successful payoff for the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Science Foundation, who funded the film.

“It worked incredibly well because it was so experiential, it really lets you feel what it’s like to be at the Exploratorium. It’s not a documentary of what the place looks like, as much as it is the way it felt to come and visit,” says Semper. “One of my first jobs was to help people start science museums, and that film was a way to stimulate interest.”

Boorstin’s film still played on loop in the new Exploratorium location before it shut down in March due to the coronavirus. Given the hands-on nature of the museum, they weren’t able to reopen in the fall like many other San Francisco museums, but they’ve doubled down on their online programming and seen a huge increase in teachers and families using materials at home, including a learning toolbox about the virus.

They hope to reopen as soon as possible, but just because the government gives them permission doesn’t mean it’s the best course of action.

“We’re a science organization, so we want to follow the science very carefully,” says Semper.