Fred Wilson’s arrangements had
interesting concepts behind the aesthetic choices: those based on form and
visual relational qualities. It is a nice way to view objects in order to learn
about them in a global context. However it makes for complications in geographical
microcosms and historical/temporal context. It creates a kind of white-wash
generalization. It succeeds on a purely on ornamental qualities that have
arrived on similar forms through drastically different processes and
environments. It reads like a painting, but not as an accurate historical map
in the mode of categorizing and classifying within the context of their
environments and co-existing elements. One thing it does succeed at is
revealing quite another thing: A sort of analogizing of separate isolated
entities in their visual forms, which relays a kind of global harmony. It
follows classically along the lines of Wunderkammer in its assumed relatedness
of things from an improvised intuitive ordering of objects brought together
from different contexts.
The
Jurassic Museum is also particularly interesting in it’s strategies of creating
confusion and unsuspended disbelief for the sake of questioning and learning. The
subject matter is so extremely different, but equal in its extremity. They focus
around perceptually unimaginable or unbelievable developments, such as insect
brain spores, bats flying through lead, and human horns. They are interesting,
but confusion does have a downside. It is true that confusion causes one to
question and yearn to find out more, but it also robs a person of direction.
The opulent, sound-rich audio tour recordings are over laden with embellishing
noise to the extent that the actual information is all but lost. The museum
seems to operate on a sort of exotic/touristic spectacle of showmanship that is
different from a natural history institution in its disorienting
“misinformation in disguise.” In a Wunderkammer context, it does effectively
create a place of curiosity and exploration, but buried under layers of confusion
and mysticism.
“Colors”
by Joseph Grigely is perhaps my favorite of the three because it reads as a
more whimsical piece. Perhaps this is because my connection to words is less
than my associations with physical objects. Yes, both can be misused given the
weight that the associations carry, but words I feel, allow for a more
malleable engagement of play. It is also because a lot of the words invoked
aren’t actually objects such as white lies, gentrification, and cloud 9, which
are more like concepts that have no real completely embodying physical forms.
It would be difficult to cage a concept in glass and put it out on display, as
even art is slave to bias interpretation. It is also because it plays on the
lexicological contextualization of “white” as concept. From these different
interpretations, it explores the different interpretations and sockets them
into rather humorous categories. Usually Wunderkammers have physical spaces in
which the viewer physically enters to see objects. Here, the page is the space,
and the experience is based in the mind.
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