Name of Project Members
Zachary Hutchinson, Kaycee Conaway, Guillermo Rodriguez
Unifying Biological
Concept /Theme – What is the biological
concept around which you will organize your wunderkammer?
Discuss a little bit how you plan to use
the cocept to connect and synthezie objects and aspects of the museum in an
interesting, novel, informative, and potentially eye-opening way for visitors?
We are interested in a few things, the horns and antlers of the animals and the way taxidermists pose the animals and the way it effects the ways we can research these animals. We hope to create an audio tour that some one can listen to while walking through the museum. Hopefully this audio tour would be easy to download onto any Smart phone/MP3 player.
Rationale for this
Concept /Theme – Why ar you interested in
this theme? Why is this a meaningful natural history supplement to a museum
experience? What will a mseum goer learn / experience / think about that they
wouldn’t otherwise? (100-200 words)
This theme is interesting because the effect humans play on stylizing and anthropomorphizing animals shows us glorified versions of what we want the animals to be. So asking questions about the positions we force them into after death is something important. Do they really look so pristine in the wild? Do they really interact like they do in the wild? How much artistic liberty are the taxidermists take when creating the displays?
With our tour of the museum we can create a tell-all about these glorified representations of animals. We can shed light on the aspects that needed to be talked about. How long ago were these animals put through the taxidermy process and what does the time they were created relate to how we want to view them and other questions as such.
Media format of the
project – What are the components
in terms of text, diagrams, audio, video, etc that you will likely use and
why? How will this be accessible to the
general public.
Easily downloadable audio with a map of the museum guiding the visitor on a specific path that goes by highlighted animals.
Possible, specific
items or components to include in your wunderkammer
(so far)
Perhaps the older animal displays, definitely the Elephants.
Hello!
ReplyDeleteI think this is great- I actually think we have similar interests in the way humans put a forced characteristic on certain animals. I like that your group is looking into the way that the displays symbolize this because it is, afterall, due to these display cases that we get to see some of their personality and how they may have been like if they were alive.
Perhaps you can also note how they have been thought of differently now as opposed to when they were under the taxidermy process( such as the elephant- we know much more of their intelligence/their social characteristics now than before...I wonder if they would have displayed them differently had they known these facts?
sounds like a good project to me!
Wow... this brings up a lot of things I've never thought about before!! I did notice some of the animals I've been researching are much better looking in the museum than on the google image page.
ReplyDeleteCan't wait to hear more! I feel like researching for this project may be hard if you try to approach it traditionally. I almost feel like a "poll" of two pictures of an animal - one from the field and one from the wild - would give you a good sense of which animals are generally seen as more or less attractive... lol like HOT OR NOT sort of??
This is super interesting! You guys might want to consider a couple of things. Taxidermy is an art. ITs not just a preservation, it takes a lot of skill to make an animal look like it did in real life. Therefore, a lot of the older taxidermy is not quite right. Especially when it comes to coloration of beaks, legs, ect, because the taxidermist may have recieved a skin and never seen the animal in life! There are a lot of cool backstories about how the taxidermists have put together the animals for example:
ReplyDeleteThe Tsavo lions were originally rugs before they were mounts. Because of this, the skins shrank. The lions on display are about 2/3 the size the lions were in real life!
Akely and his wife both shot the elephants that are on display in Stanely Field Hall. The elephant that Akely's wife shot was bigger than his, so during the taxidermy process Akely made an attempt to make his elephant look bigger! He did this with the pose, but also by stretching the skin.
Thats all I got for you, but I bet you could dig up more stuff like that.
- izzy
GUYS, I really like the idea of doing an audio tour and it was not something I thought about at all. I think this will be exciting as you added humor to your last project. I think it would be good to discuss how seeing these animals so lifelike at the museum is so different from seeing them in the wild or at the zoo still.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteHi Zach
Izzy comments are really on point, so make use of them!
How do the horns and antlers relate to the taxidermied posture of an animal? Not sure what you were trying to get at with that.
You will definitely need to do some research on depictions of T rex in museums and popular culture over the years. In fact, in the second floor are two videos about the posturing of Sue you need to watch, and perhaps incorporate in your tour. the reading for this next week ("Dinomania!") will also perhaps be useful along those lines.
Given that this is a three-person project, how is it going to clearly show it involved three-times the effort/investment of another project?
best
ay
I think this project touches on romanticization of animals through its associated human culture, thought the eyes of western interpretation. The potential in this project to categorize different geographic arias represented in taxidermy I feel will open up the conversation to the museums and taxidermist intentions in posture.
ReplyDeleteMagritte