in the museum is a cabinet with record player and i can;t remember what it’s called ! might it be a radio gram ?
i’ve got to place a record on it and play the record !!!
this was an accompanying activity to my time on the hub yesterday. the hub is the name of he area where the curatorial staff clean items in the collection. the item i was able to clean was an early 20th century telephone.
i used the time on the hub to explore the record collection. to my delight i found a promotional copy of an album by ian anderson. the opening track filled me with joy, i started to dance around the museum, complete with purple nitride gloves on my hands. the energy level rose and i did smile lots.
our fellow maker steve is starting to make me smile. he’s been wrestling with the challenges of the residency and is beginning to start to make sense of them for himself.
his explorations with casting process seems to be easing his cognitive dissonance, something i’ve been working through too. yesterday his aim to get messy in the museum was another source of renewable energy in the museum. maker graeme once again stepping in to quantitive ease the situation.
so what of my progress ?
well …
i’m starting to feel like i understand a little bit better the interns of the re-imagining process. through my experience on the hub i now have a more informed position about what is being planned for the renovation of the building. it’s going to take a few years and while it’s happening the whole building will be closed. this makes sense of what we’re being asked to explore within the residency.
my first exploration is what to take to the big bang schools science fair on june 30th. i’m making an interactive that speaks of the museum’s aspiration to get it’s visitors more hands on with the collections.
three of us have worked on creating a laser cut box.
the small black mark inside the representation of a hand is a hole with a light dependent resistor (ldr) inside it. using a small arduino set up i’m bluetoothing the voltage change value from the ldr to my laptop. this data is then used to generate a visual response that is further manipulated by two hands placed over the leap motion controller. a month into the residency and my interactive will be part of the representation of the museum to school children. i feel this is quite unusual for a residency but then i guess re-imagining a museum is quite unusual.
in the moment of running around the museum to ian anderson with purple nitride gloves i saw many smiling faces among those in the museum. the space felt energised and a happy place to be. i’d like it to feel like this more often.
my residency is starting to challenge my personal perception of museum.
