Class Notes Nov. 15th (Ming)

Class Notes 11/15

(ellipses = times I may not have gotten it all down, or all down right)

Ellen- Barbra K-G's website--> “Mayor July” online exhbit; example, since the town is no longer like it's being shown here (depictions from when Mayor July was a kid) of a virtual site of a place that has actually become virtual. Discussion of turning away from the more “Natural History Museum-esque” tradition.

Amy- Next week is turkey week; next up for us is The Review That Gets It Wrong. We'll post reviews of the performances we've seen. We'd like you to address not just “this guy is wrong because he didn't like it and I did," but to get past the immediate aesthetic arguments to what it means to get it wrong, how you define getting it right or wrong, etc, with attention to the particular lenses and investments the reviewer brings to the table. If you didn't see the performance, find reviews of a performance you did see and work with those.

Ellen- Turning the dance experiment inside out in an effort to hopefully deepen your sense of “getting it wrong” by being aware of rhetorical structures embedded in the form that lead someone to misassess or misconstrue...how thoughtfully we can engage with responses to responses...what kinds of knowledges in terms of history, criteria...

Amy- not just “I liked it” or not, but a rich critique not just aesthetically speaking but rhetorically, perspectivally, with attention to underlying assumptions...What's conveyed, stated, unstated, a historical remove that can help from saying just “he hated it and so he's wrong”. So, reading for today: we have two chapters from digital cultural heritage; at risk of stating/prolonging the obvious, what does it mean when we talk about the “object” in/of a museum? Based on the shared museum experience of the “You Are There” exhibit in the Indiana History Museum, let's talk about traditional and non traditional knowledge-making exhibits and how what we saw fits into them.

Whitney- Taking into account an object like the heart machine, which was not an “object” in the way of the traditional treatments of object for museums, was purchased, so there's maybe an in-between space.

Ellen- The prompts come from a photograph collection...

Amy- Curation they were engaged in included filling those bottles with M & M's instead of pills; where does the “getting it wrong” fit in.

Jenna- In that context I couldn't tell the difference between 'object' and 'prop'. I agree with Whitney that the only object is the photo and everything else is interpretation.

Derek- Re: Whitcomb, when museums used replicas they were considered legitimate for their purposes of education.

Jenna- I'd agree that's perfectly okay.

Deredk- Does that delegitimize it as a museum object?

Jenna- For me, yes.

Amy- What about the 'objects' in the prohibition exhibit? Dan talked about the replica of the KKKflier that was repeatedly stolen by visitors. The authenticity of the object is rotated in a different way somewhat when it's clearly a copy...

Dorothy- Authenticity of an object or artifact to do with the intellectual property of it than the thing itself..bad idea preservation-wise in the eyes of an archivist to put something within arm's reach

Ellen- Jenna's example of the EKG: that it doesn't work indicates its authenticity. The “you are there” quality would shift if it could. If the person next to you in your anthro class could actually administer an EKG right there...design of undertaking not about what it seems to be about...unspoken understanding among us all...

Amy- How would either of today's authors think about the mist?

Ellen- And how did you all think of it?

Jennifer- I hated it. I walked around it.

Jenna- I got a kick out of it.

Jennifer- I don't like things coming down on me.

Derek- I did feel like I was walking into a photograph.

Amy- What would Whitcomb think of the mist as an object? Which category?

Whitney- That of multmedia as exhibit. Affective work of transporting.

Dorothy- What would it have been like if it were instead a misty dark doorway? I didn't get the images in the photo from their projection onto the mist; I got it from the photo right outside.

Derek- I thought of it as an invitation preparing me to enter a space where I would be interacting with real people, leaving behind the museum and having an emotional reaction—or it could be an emotional reaction. Museum vs. affective experience.

Andrea- Re: Whitcomb, reinforcing label of “exhibit.”

Ellen- Strong analogy between Whitcomb's example of gallery...and logic of history center? Parallel? Identical?

Iris- You don't feel like you can ignore the actors. Felt a need to enter their world in a more active way.

Justin- 'What have you been trained to teach me?'

Jess- I agree. We know they're actors. We end up trying not to say anything awkward, though that happened.

Jenna- Jess almost got us arrested by essentially saying she was a lush.

Derek- Re: p. 39/40, a “label” tells us what's going to occur...ingredients or contents...I related that to the mist, as is it positioning you to “enter the exhibition as a civil person”

Ellen- What about that exactly relates to the mist?

Derek- I don't know about the fogginess of the fog...You can't literally step into a picture frame. Only metaphorically.

Ellen- “Stepping through the mists of time...”

Dorothy- What I connected 'civil person' to was that we were almost guilt-tripped. These people are people we not only can't turn our backs on but we have to listen to them... “dignity...to listen to these voices...”

Ellen- Your take away?

Dorothy- Recontextualized for me personally; I'm annoyed...

Whitney- If museums are for taching vs. changing from un-knowing to knowing.

Dorothy- Historically “I don't have to listen with dignity” was the case...

Sara- I worked at a kids museum and there was a machine that broadcast whatever you said into it. I learned from what I saw kids and adolescents do with the unscripted, impulsive moment before even thinking about it. Though script does close those interpretive doors...re: Sedaris story where everyone who comes into a shop puts fake eyeballs up to their own eyes and the storeowner is unimpressed.

Ellen- I thought the projection worked.

Sara- Materiality of photo istelf—light particles bounding off of the photo—off of the actors—off of us—is all we have with which to “touch another time”. Re: Hodgdon, where what's staged in the photo almost certainly never happened.

Ellen- Epistemic shift of photos in first essay, what photo 'era' does...

Amy- What is meant by the term from our reading 'post-photographic'? Rehearse his argument

Andrea- Photos changed how museum goers looked at objects in a museum and their supposed purpose. Authenticity of replicas/copies; example: Gutenberg Bible—you're still learning something...

Amy Ref: p. 28/29 Even the most educated people had only seen a tiny fraction of the art out there. Now you can see what's on display in Florence. Gotta say I hadn't thought about that huge impact of photography of knowledge creation around art, history, nationhood.

(Justin read from p. 29)

Ellen- I don't want to say only mechanized reproduction makes value visible...

Amy- How can we understand the meaning of the photo on the mist? What experience are we being asked to have?

Dorothy- Your contemporary time and time of photograph “being one”..you know you could say “look at my iphone, it's from the future”; you don't forget either plane of time, you're on both.

Amy- the only thing that makes the two is indiana. Both happened here.

Whitney- The temperance woman asked if we knew a particular street. And we said we did, I think it was Indiana Ave.

Sara- Indiana Ave only underwent an urban renewal project recently, with hoity toity victorian homes; until then it was the most dangerous road in Indy.

Amy- So using the terms of the article- knowledge creation, generation, location, how did these happen through the performance of the actors?

Kelly- The experience depends on what you asked...

Justin- We walked in on schoolkids where actors were leading the discussion

Jess- I was uncomfortable. The whole set up was not for adults. I like taking the passive route and we were expected to 'perform'

Ellen- Representationality crucial to curation...This period, geographic location, museum artists, core sample, two axes we expect...so f the photo is a prompt to an idea of past photographic...either lateral or vertical..usually museums are an experience of, “Oh, I need to look at all the things.” as the thoughtful ruminator, ready to sedimentalize. Note how things are emblematic of their moment. I thought I was there to look at things, an didn't expect the actor, and was called onto the red carpet. “You're on!” You've gotta create something for this experience. Point of clash between post photographic museum and post world wide web museum.

Dorothy- Probably very successful with kids. Question is, what is the museum for? Having critical thinking skills is not necessarily what museums think museums are for. Example: museum in New Mexico where a collector was amassing and archiving these objects from a culture of people who still used those ubjects and wanted them back—to still use—and were told no, you can't have them back because they're for looking. The people said we'll give them back to you when they're done being used, with the wear and tear of ritual and shamanism.

Whitney - for whom and to what purpose we do this—our current research methods are not walking through the stacks physically but much more like entering keywords. Completely self driven and I don't know that the old way was more successful, but I left not having asked what I need to.

Justin- I didn't go through the room that preps you for the experience; wasn't herded.

Whitney- (didn't catch it)

Iris- I missed being herded.

Jess- I felt, “I'm not doing this right.”

Iris- I felt, “I need to make you [the actors] happy.”

Jess- It was a little like floating nebulously in an in between space.

Dorothy- I participated but I wanted to know about reactions to adults. From their view, participating, given that I am an adult and am hip to what's going on, probably seemed snide.

Ellen- Like when the actors dropped their roles they were chock full of narrative. We have a LOT of questions about that, but maybe kids don't frame questions that way.

Dorothy- I was buddies with the character of the temperance lady. We had a good conversation about hatchets etc.

Amy- Re: p. 36 about multimedia installations--> contemporary democracy. Two ways of political effect/implications: meaning making and release of memory, ____of self through touch. Was there either?

Dorothy- When I looked at things that were not part of the interpretive process but the environs...know what's going on...'learning what it feels like is not learning'

Whitney- I was intrigued by the release of memory because it seems to work against knowledge-building.

Jennifer- I didn't know what was up and I wa sin a state of mind where I wanted to argue with her. I had to walk away from her because I found her so supremely irritating and it disrupted the experience for me.

Iris- Aso, spatially speaking, you had to walk past temperance lady to get to the other space where the cop and jailed woman were.

Jess- It lent itself to feeing a little trapped between what was going on, the lady, the temperance card, the woman in the cell...

Jenna- I asked them about the Indy 500 because there was a poster for it and they all said it was horrible because there'd been a death of the guy who won it soon afterwards.

Dorothy- The slave chains my dad has students wear when they are discussing slavery is a kind of meeting of the two because it's a memory release as it enriches their knowledge of the experience.

Amy- How about democracy building; how does all of this inform that aim

Jennifer- Democracy is based on a mututal understanding of others

Dorothy- Which runs counter to the colonializing effect of the old museum

Kelly- 'Go back' to present day

Amy- There was that exhibit about polio and the vaccine—I mean, talk about nation-building

Dorothy- It was a really big deal to these people, things like suffrage and temperance, but if we idn't understand it the actors just seemed to be nutty characters

Ellen- I liked the temperance ladies going hand in hand with the suffrage movement

Dorothy- The temperance lady stood out because the other characters didn't have such difficult personalities...

Jenna- She's constructed to be this irascible person...

Ellen- And there's no question she was set up to be so. Clearly allowing overt discussion/KKK character would not go over well with the parents of kids visiting the exhibit.

Iris- Maybe we didn't ask the right questions...

Dorothy- They told me maybe I could vote in the next election.

Ellen- I just saw 'Wreck It Ralph' with my 5-yr-old. The fantasy persists of a theater inside the machine ...this whole movement we saw in the museum illustrates the way in which technology is touted as intellectually valuable. The virtual leads us back to performance and the land of non-fact. It opens the door back to us, people who do what we do, to say things about how we see these things targeting certain demographics.