Black and the city

When I first glimpsed this crowd of people dressed in back, I though it was a funeral march. Only then I realised these must be office workers chased away from their desks and meeting rooms by a fire drill or perhaps an actual fire alarm. Remarkably monochrome, the only colour in this scene came from the fluorescent vests of the fire wardens.

I was on my way to Tate Modern to see How it is, the current Unilever commission in the Turbine Hall. The massive black container by a Pole Miroslaw Balka reminded me of a crematorium. Walking in was felt to me like marching for a meeting with the death.

Walking toward the darkness was a powerful experience. The environment inside was paceful an quiet, the voices of fellow visitors muffled by the soft lining on the walls. The interpretation suggested that the piece should evoke the fear of unfamiliar but I found it soothing. Inside, I felt more like in a womb rather than a grave. Both these places are small and cramped, which is perhaps ajar with the dark vastness gaping at you when entering the piece, but it doesn’t take long to reach the back wall of the container, at which point the experience is cut short. I wish the installation was deeper.

The website is interesting. It’s a confusing environment with very little content (or maybe it was hidden and I missed it), raw and intriguing.

Taking a ‘projection bath’

During my visit at the Museum of London I watched a bunch of rowdy kids running around in the quest to find something to entertain themselves. There wasn’t much for them in the permanent galleries but they invented their own creative ways of enjoying the exhibits.

They found this projection on a round tilted table plinth exceptionally captivating. Not that they would be interested in the content or using it in the way it was intended by the designers. They just crawled all over it and rolled in the light as if taking a ‘projection bath’. I was reminded of the physical qualities of projection and the magic of projecting onto moving objects such as people. What a shame these qualities are rarely exploited intentionally in museum context.

Behind the scenes

I never miss an opportunity to have a peak behind the scenes of a museum! And I believe that I share this nosiness with the majority of museum visitors and even non-visitors – those who find precious objects in glass cases boring. My favorite museum spaces are stores and when there is an access to the reserve collection in a museum, I head there first. But obviously, museums are not only about objects but also the people who look after them.

Recently, I visited the Museum of London, which is undergoing a major refurbishment and only few galleries are currently open. They came up with an imaginative way of letting the visitors know what’s going on, building their excitement about the new galleries and at the same time, revealing a bit about the people who are currently working hard behind the scenes.

Flashback is a small exhibition in the foyer of the Museum. Photographs by Tom Hunter feature members of the museum staff who are currently working on development of Galleries of Modern London as well as community members who contributed to the content of the exhibition, donated artifacts, etc. The people are dressed in fantastic costumes and surrounded by wonderful artifact from the Museum’s collections. Pictured here is Gail Symington, the leading designer, dressed as a fashionable aristocrat from 1770s with a Vespa scooter from 1950s.

Museum of Mundane Life by Sir John Sloane

Finally, after almost 5 years of living in London, I have visited the museum many call the best in the capital – Sir John Sloane’s Museum. Johan Sloane was a successful and rich architect who lived between 1753 and 1837 and created his house as a museum for himself, his students, friends he liked to entertain and members of public. Late in his life, having buried one of his two sons and fallen out with the second one, he was concerned with preserving his unique creation. So had a private act of parliament passed that guaranteed that the house would stay intact and continue being a museum open to the public. The title of this post is obviously ironic because, judging from his house, Sloane’s life was anything but mundane.

The labyrinth of rooms and anterooms, parlors and colonnades, staircases and corridors, cells and crypts spreads over three houses and evokes a massive stage set. Although, unlike a stage-set, you can enter and walk around and anywhere you look you will be surprised by clever vistas into other parts of the house and puzzling optical illusions. The numerous architectural fragment salvaged from the buildings Sloane worked on are juxtaposed with plaster casts of ancient column-decorations and original works of art that are displayed in the unusual ways, invented by Sloane. Although, in a way, this a ‘museum-conserve’, it makes for a refreshing experience that is strikingly different from a visit to a conventional museum full of showcases.

There is hardly any interpretation in the Sloane’s house and what little there is, is very discreet. So instead of ‘please don not sit’ labels there is thistle on each chair. I found this ingenious and touching. Not only the message was instantly clear to me but it also made me alert to the preciousness and fragility of the objects inhabiting those remarkable interiors.

Learning through a work-out

My brother and I once put together a dolls house with furnishing made of reused packaging and other waste. It had lighting throughout the house and a mini-washing machine, all powered with energy generated by pedaling on a static bicycle. It was an educational aid meant to make you physically experience the demands of producing electricity. The result was rather intricate and exquisite but probably too fragile so I fear it didn’t serve its purpose for long.

Recently, I have seen a couple of museum exhibits based on similar principle that struck me by their simplicity and clean execution. The Eco Homes at the Geffrye Museum featured a machine with hand pedals that powered either a conventional light-bulb or the most common energy-sawing bulb or the new LED bulb. Switching between the bulbs was like switching gears on a bicycle. An immediate physical experience instead of having to read a label and think about what is says.

In the Centre for Life in Newcastle I saw another exhibit, this time a bit more complex. The idea was to supply a city with all the energies and services it needs to function while also removing all the waste.

A nicely stylized model had a handle, a lever, a pump, pedals.., each representing a different need of the city: water, electricity, transport, waste removal… When you started pumping, indicators showed, accompanied by appropriate sounds, that waste was being removed from the city.

Obviously, this exhibit would be best enjoyed by a group so all the needs of the city can be attended at once. I wonder whether there is any special surprise to be had when it’s done. Unfortunately, I was visiting on my own and there was no one else anywhere near in the gallery so I didn’t find out.

Materials library – volume I

My favorite part of Eco Home at the Geffrye Museum was a collection of sustainable materials suitable for interiors. I marveled at the beautiful bamboo surfaces but here I want to share few interesting ones I never came accross before.

This concrete-like slab is made of ShetkaStone. It’s made of pre and post consumer waste paper and although it looks like concrete it is a lot lighter and has a sort of warm quality when you touch it. I started dreaming about printing onto this.

This translucent Eco resin comes in various designs created with embedded natural materials like leaves or petals. Magical! In museum context, there is a potential to use it as a part of interpretation as the embedded materials can tell stories. It reminds me of amber that often has small plants or even insects trapped inside.

Weirdest of all, this humble-looking felt-like fabric is made of milk-protein fibre. Apparently, this is no new arrival as it has been invented by Germans during the World War I.

Green manifesto

In the last couple of weeks I have seen two exhibitions that started off, unusually, with a statement about the exhibition design. Both Radical Nature at the Barbican designed by Sara De Bondt and Eco Home at the Geffrye Museum designed by Oliver Heath Design (3D) and Sally McIntosh (graphics) made the point of being designed in an eco-friendly way.

This eco statement accompanied Eco Home. In Radical Nature, I got told off when I wanted to take a photo of a similar thing presented as ‘Manifesto’. As far as I can remember, it said that the information panels were printed on the back of old unused Barbican posters, recycled paper with soy-based inks were used for the exhibition guides and the gallery seating was made of the discarded walls from the previous exhibition. The benches with mismatched paint and fragments of text looked really good. I sneakily photographed one but the picture doesn’t do it justice.

Although both the exhibitions dealt with ecological subjects for which the pronounced ‘eco-firendly’ look is appropriate, it makes me wonder how sustainable is the manifesto approach. If sustainable practices and materials were already the norm in the exhibition design, it would be pointless to make eco statements. And printing panels on the back of old posters is hardly the way forward.

Fact and fiction

My for yearning for a truly wild and provocative ideas at the MuseumNext (un)conference was fulfilled in the Quest for a centrepiece presented by Ferry Piekart from The Netherlands Architecture Institute in Roterdam. It plays with mystery and fiction in the museum narrative and comes up with a suggestion of fabricated story released to the media that would then slowly unfold and draw sensation-seeking visitors to the museum. Watch the initial pitch and the reporting back:

What’s Next?

Couple of days ago I returned from (un)conference MuseumNext in Newcastle. While I usually leave conferences and talks feeling energised and inspired, this unconference left me exhausted and confused. It was a very fast-paced 24 hours tightly packed with frantic participatory activities. Much of these were in a done as group discussions around a table – a familiar form, well-practiced in the office meetings, that may seem participatory and inclusive but on closer inspection this can easily be challenged. The only talk – keynote by Nina Simons on design frameworks for participatory museum design was enlightening with many interesting examples and it was fascinating to see how many of the discussions that followed drew on its points.

The main programme revolved around six ‘wild ideas’ pitched by the delegates with a specific problem or a series of questions they wanted to pose to the other delegates and get their input. Each delegate then choose one of the ideas to work on as a part of a group. The ideas proved to be a lot less wild than I expected. Most of them were pitched by institutions in a very specific situation who often had a concept already well thought-through. This put me off a bit so I went for a pitch where no particular idea was on the table. The following discussion turned out to be very politically-charged, perhaps also due to the particular focus of its participant and I didn’t find much to contribute with.

The focus of the event was very much of solving real problems and coming up with plans of action. While those might not been immediately relevant to me, it was probably truly beneficial for those whose ideas got worked on. It will be interesting to follow how these projects turn out and I would be curious to hear whether and how were these results shaped by the work done during MuseumNext. I suspect that legacy of this event will unfold in what comes next.

The even kicked off with series of creative mini workshops run by [Re]Design. In a fast pace we moved around tables and activities and at each stop we created something small, played with waste materials or got to try one of the wacky machines [Re]Design developed.

It wasn’t all just hard work. I welcomed the opportunity to take a break from the discussion and play a game outside. A blind-folded ‘runner’ was finding his way through a maze navigated only by humming of other players forming the ‘walls’. Being the runner and orientating myself according to noises was such an uncommon sensation for me. Something like this should be a part of any conference.

The delegate packs came with a textile markers so each delegate could customise their bag. Nice touch.

Wonders of Ars Electronica 09

During the first September weekend, when we visited the festival, Austrian Linz was packed with cultural events. Despite of my expectations of the city being taken over by a uniform Ars Electronica crowd, the streets were flooded by Linz citizens of all ages. Right after we arrived we got entangled in a crowd of puppet animals that later turned out act in a public performance on the theme of Noah’s Arch.

This is Geminoid HI-1 by ATR Intelligent Robotics and Communication Laboratories. It’s modeled on its designer Hiroshi Ishiguro – his android twin. I have read about the robot and seen a programme where he featured but nothing could have prepared for meeting him ‘in flesh’. He looked like wax figurine came alive. I couldn’t stop staring at him with that uneasy feeling as if I was staring at a disabled person.

Without doubt, this was the most popular exhibit of the show, constantly surrounded by a curious crowd that stared like I did. The brave ones dared to talk to him, other got their pictures taken next to him like in Madame Tussauds. Some even tried to touch his face at which he twitched. I felt compelled to touch him too but couldn’t bring myself to do that.

My fascination with the artificial man was partially diminished when I found out that he was remotely controlled from a booth upstairs. I was offered to have a go but I shuttered at the though of becoming a part of the monster so I refused.

The inconspicuously looking Touch the small world by Hideyuki Ando blew my mind. It’s a touch screen that, when touched, gives out vibrations that simulate the surface represented by the graphic on the screen. Under you fingertips, you can feel the steps, the screw-like spiral, the roughness of sand paper. This technology has such a tremendous potential! The raised drawings, that museums produce for their visually impaired visitors, immediately sprung into my mind. A tactile digital image!

My best of selection is becoming somehow monotonous. Another Japanese – artist Kazuhiko Hachiya created the charming Table of the Coloblocke. It was a relatively low-lech installation based on a monitor without the polarisation layer. Search with a polarisation filter revealed a tiny fairy-like character that was moving around and interacting with a physical environment positioned bellow the screen. Sometimes, she hid under a leaf and then you would have to look for her again. Sometimes, her friend came out to play too.

Shrink by Lawrence Malstaf, part of the provocative Human Nature exhibition was another disturbing exhibit. During this performance, a person crawled into each of the three vacuum frames and stayed there for some 20 minutes. The air was constantly being sucked out while fresh one blew in through a thin hose. Just looking at it was like having a plastic bag pulled over my face. The nearly motionless bodies hanging over the aghast audience. Luckily, each of the three performers has a guardian in an orange vest that kept watching their face for a sign of any struggles with breathing.

Rain Dance by Paul DeMartinis was just magical. It wasn’t a part of Ars Electronica but of OK | HÖHENRAUSCH, exhibition of Art on the Rooftops of Linz. You had to stand under a shower to listen to the music transmitted through water and made audible by an open umbrella.