About the Project

I recently visited Clark Planetarium in Salt Lake City with a friend and. One of their popular displays is called Newton's Daydream. This display resembles one of those old gumball machines that sends your gumball racing through an elaborate track before releasing it for your chewing pleasure. The machine is two stories tall and has multiple tracks with ramps, weights, pulleys, wheels, and other doo-dads and what-nots for the golf balls to cycle through.

For added fun, there are levels and wheels that extend from inside the machine to the outside where small hands can participate in the fun by altering the courses of the balls. As I found myself entranced by the bells and whistles of the display, I watched a small child, no more than three or four years old, grab one of these levers and begin playing with it. It was not long at all before he realized exactly what that lever did, what he could control, and began to alter the paths of the balls on the track. What was truly fascinating was the look on his face as he got an idea, made a plan, and patiently began waiting, focusing for a good ten minutes while he let the balls build up so he could release them all at once.

How many adults, dragging their children for a "fun" day at the planetarium, stop to observe this miraculous display with more than a glance? How few children wouldn't be entertained for hours watching for where the next golf ball will land and searching for its point of origin? What many adults would spend the time to play with the wheels and levers after quickly discovering their function? How few children wouldn't gather their peers to try pulling all the levers at once?

This is precisely the purpose of this project. Children see things differently than adults. They are absorbed by simple joys and pleasures. To an adult, this machine is a mathematical equation - quickly solved and forgotten. To a child, this machine is a brand new discovery - fascinating, complex, eye-catching, and worth testing over and over again. How different would a photographer's perspective be if he could discover the world around him as if it were brand new every single day? The way a child does?