Join Us at After Dark

A cutting-edge evening series for adults
The first Thursday of every month
6:00–10:00 p.m.

Experience life After Dark, an evening series exclusively for adults that mixes cocktails, conversation, and playful, innovative science and art events. Not a theater, cabaret, or gallery, After Dark contains aspects of all three. Each evening showcases a different topic—from music to sex to electricity—but all include a cash bar and film screenings, plus an opportunity to play with our hundreds of hands-on exhibits. Join us and mingle with inventive scientists, artists, musicians, programmers, and designers. Enjoy live performances, provocative films, interesting music, cutting-edge technology, unexpected extravaganzas, and more, depending on each evening's lineup. Leave the kids at home and meet friends or take a date. Where else can you find an intellectually stimulating playground for adults—with free parking?

This event is included in the price of museum admission.

To join the After Dark e-mail list and receive notifications of future events, contact .

Become an After Dark Member!

Purchase an After Dark Member Pass for $25 and receive free admission to First Thursday evening events — plus a 20% discount at the Exploratorium Store anytime during regular or evening hours. The After Dark Member Pass pays for itself in just two visits and lasts for one year from your date of purchase.

Already an Exploratorium Member? No need to buy an After Dark Member Pass; simply show your Member ID to receive free admission to these events.

Distortion

Thursday, March 4, 2010
6:00–10:00 p.m.
Bar opens at 6:00 p.m.

Experience altered states at Distortion. Working in collaboration with the Exploratorium's Cinema Arts Program, guest film curator Sean Uyehara of the San Francisco Film Society will twist your senses with a psychedelic animation by local auteur Kerry Laitala. He will also screen "visual music" by the late experimental filmmaker and musicologist Harry Smith (best known for his 1952 six-album Anthology of American Folk Music). Sean is a programmer at the San Francisco Film Society, who inaugurated KinoTek, a programming thread dedicated to exhibiting cross-platform technologies and emergent media. He is also the establishing programmer of the San Francisco International Animation Festival and lead programmer of film and music, live events, and multimedia performance at the San Francisco International Film Festival and SF360 Film + Club.

San Francisco's notorious band, Thee Oh Sees, will musically infuse tonight's events, overlaying '60s-era garage pop sounds with punky jitter and surf psychedelia to create a playfully harmonic-yet-chaotic aural disorientation. Long considered one of the best underground bands in San Francisco, Thee Oh Sees's live shows are legendary for their energy, due in part to front man John Dwyer's unparalleled ferocity on the guitar.

Be sure to pick up a pair of 3-D glasses at the door and look for experiments in feedback, caricatures, misrepresentations, and other distortions.

Risk Everything

Thursday, April 1, 2010
6:00–10:00 p.m.
Bar opens at 6:00 p.m.

No fooling! April's After Dark event speculates on the science of risk and probability with activities designed to test your threshold for taking chances. You can hazard comparisons of actual versus perceived dangers while tackling a 28-foot climbing wall. Or try your luck with professional dealers at blackjack, craps, and roulette tables as staff math gurus discuss gambling odds and strategies. There will be a variety of experiments to tempt both the reckless and reserved.

ʻImiākea: Navigating Polynesian Art and Science

Thursday, May 6, 2010
6:00–10:00 p.m.
Bar opens at 6:00 p.m.

To celebrate Never Lost, our upcoming Web site on Polynesian navigation, enjoy Hawaiian music and hands-on science. During the evening, expert ocean navigator Kalepa Baybayan will share some of the astounding non-instrument techniques that have enabled Pacific Islanders to cross the Pacific for thousands of years. Award-winning slack key guitarist Makana will also play. Only 31, he has toured the world numerous times with regular appearances on the mainland United States (including a recent White House performance for the Obamas).

Time

Thursday, June 3, 2010
6:00–10:00 p.m.
Bar opens at 6:00 p.m.

As springtime ebbs and the summer solstice approaches, After Dark considers time. Throughout the evening, you'll be able to experiment with stopped, slowed, quick, detectable, and undetectable time through special exhibits, artworks, and presentations, including a mind-bending tour of Einstein's theory of relativity by Senior Scientist Thomas Humphrey.