Recap

17 Jan 2009

My father and I spent several hours this afternoon in The Museum of Jurassic Technology, which is an incredibly odd place. The best simple way to describe it is as a museum about the idea of museums; sort of a simultaneous parody of and homage to curated exhibits, or as a monument to human attempts to make sense of the world.

There are all sorts of weird things in it. Diagrams of geometric logic operators:

Strange electrical doodads:

Exhibits about string games:

A tea room, with a samovar:

Mice on toast, as part of the room full of physical models or dioramas of old folk remedies

An entire room dedicated to Napoleon. Pictured here is what I think is an oud, and what I know is a painting, although I’m not sure of whom:

There were many additional things that I couldn’t even begin to list. One of them was an entire room of letters that people had written to the Mount Wilson astronomical observatory when it first opened in the 1930s. Some of them were commendations, some were asking for money, some were total crackpot theories. I got a shirt that says “No one may ever have the same knowledge again – Letters to the Mount Wilson Observatory The Museum of Jurassic Technology”.

What I think sums up the place pretty nicely, though, wasn’t even an exhibit. In the lobby, I observed that the display on the cash register at the check-in desk, which was below the counter, and could thus only be seen by the cashier, had the following text scrolling across it:

From the familiar to the unfamiliar
Like a chain of flowers

To me, this is sort of symbolic of the whole place. Rather than have a “message” or something, the museum forces viewers to find their own. It is almost as if someone said, “I have a brilliant idea that I don’t want to tell anyone. I will build a strange museum to make people try to decide what it could be.” This, I suppose, implies that there is a central idea to the museum that you have to “figure out”, which I don’t really think is the case, but there is a level of concealment present.

After the museum, we went to dinner with my relatives at a rather loud and packed open-air mall. I obtained what may be the largest pickle known to mankind:

Note the relative size of the pickle compared to my hand. Or should I say the relative size of the MANPICKLE?!

While at dinner, I articulated what it is that makes that type of place (the mall, not the Museum) rather overwhelming and unattractive to me. It is the feeling that the place was designed to make people do a certain thing, and that you are doing it. Make no mistake, I don’t have a problem with functionality. My favorite places are those that serve their purposes well; they are comfortable, efficient, and pleasant to exist in. But there is a difference between this type of efficiency and the feeling that a space is designed to create needs rather than address them.

I did have a very good time, though; I met my aunt’s soon-to-be-husband (fiance, although that implies an indeterminate time [they are getting married the day after tomorrow (hence my being here)]), who is very interesting and I like very much, and I saw some relatives I haven’t seen in a while.

Also, I am still enjoying the weather. It is still unfair that some people get to have this weather all the time.