Slides (water, or otherwise) are generally reserved for specific demographics.
If you’re a kid, go crazy. If you’re accompanying a kid, go crazier. But late-teen to looking-for-your-first-house years? A little suspect.
Then something comes along like, I don’t know, a massive science experiment in an Italian palace, and all those careful rules go hurtling out the window.
The installation arrives by way of German artist Carsten Höller and Stefano Mancuso, a scientist who studies neurobiology in plants. It’s an unlikely pairing, and an unlikely landing in Florence’s 15th-century Palazzo Strozzi.
Operating now through August 26th, Höller and Mancuso’s “The Florence Experiment” will host visitors looking to shoot down either of a pair of 65-foot chutes, from the palace loggia down to the courtyard … all while holding a bean plant. Then it’s off to the laboratory, where scientists will analyze the plant’s “molecules emitted” during sliding down with a companion, as opposed to having previously slid down alone. There’s also a room where participants react to horror films, and the scientists assess how the emotive reactions affect the growth of a Wisteria.
It all sounds … interesting. What can’t be debated, though, is the euphoria that will likely wash over you while channeling your halcyon playground days in the very heart of Firenze.
Tickets are available here.
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