Get on the magic school bus! Okay, it wasn’t a school bus, more like a VIP tour bus. Nevertheless, it was a full day adventure visiting an array of LA’s quirkiest museums. First we went to Chinatown, which had an air of reminiscence about it (although I’d never been there before). This feeling occurs quite often due to the plethora of films that have been shot all over this city. Our first stop was Fringe Exhibitions, which had a decrepit coy pond in front of it full of decaying quarters and pennies. I wanted to stop some of the members of our group from bombarding the surviving fish with more coinage, but I didn’t have the heart. Let their wishes come true, I say. Moving on, inside the museum there was an assemblage of breakfast pastries: chocolate croissants, an assortment of bagels, and muffins with icing. I chose the wrong muffin; it was lemony and gross. The actual exhibits themselves were intriguing. A video projector downstairs showed an obscure submerged entity in bondage just floating around. It was eerie as the human like figured jerked and twitched to electronic pulses. The upstairs exhibit was nothing special, digital photography that looked like Japanese ink paintings.
Telic Arts Exchange (also in Chinatown) had an interesting instillation by Ki Chul Kim. A series of speakers hung from the ceiling with translucent fishing wire. Each row of speakers played a different sound recording of rain falling off a temple in Korea. The wires at certain angles under the lighting gave the illusion of straight lined rain. I imagine the instillation would’ve been rather peaceful if it weren’t for the fact that 48 students were crammed into the exhibit. We tried taking turns, but that idea flopped.
Next we traveled to Echo Park to see Machine Projects, which was by far my favorite space/gallery! We watched a PowerPoint presentation of past events given by the curator, and I knew immediately that I would have to return. Some of their projects included the following: an Easy-Bake Oven contest (in which someone turned an old Mac into an oven with 100 Watt light bulb), a flower volcano and floral recreation of the Eagle Nebulae, being buried alive, a mechanical human bull riding torso, a unicorn skeleton, a medieval battle, and puppy disco ball. They also offer a number of workshops and courses for artists wishing to explore different fields (i.e. incorporating technology in their work). The food there was almost as good as the presentation. I had a delicious box lunch with a turkey sandwich, pasta salad, fresh fruit, and a ginormous, scrumptious chocolate chip cookie. They had some leftover lunches; I should’ve taken them. Foods a big deal for me, especially if it’s delicious free food.
Lastly we trekked over to Culver City to see the Center for Land Use Interpretation and the Museum of Jurassic Technology. CLUI was (kind of) cool. I looked at some images of different underground caves morphed to accommodate human viewing pleasure, and some airport information transmitters scattered across Texas. The Museum of Jurassic Technology was like getting lost in grandpa’s closet. The lights were dim and it had this air of mustiness and the unexplored past. You sort of stumble around in this half-light picking up phones, while staring at displays of some forgotten 19th century invention. Upstairs they had a tearoom, where we sipped tea (and ate cookies!) while discussing the museum’s philosophy. It really was an offbeat museum full of some of the most bizarre inventions and pastimes of the somewhat recent past. An exhibit on Geoffrey Sonnabend (“an associate professor of neurophysiology at Northwestern University”) explained his cryptic theory of memory, and how it is like a cone intersected by a plane. I kind of want to read his book
Obliscence, Theories of Forgetting and the Problem of Matter (catchy title), but unfortunately the library doesn’t have it. All in all a good day, full of good food (except the lemon muffin, which was nasty).
Telic Arts Exchange (also in Chinatown) had an interesting instillation by Ki Chul Kim. A series of speakers hung from the ceiling with translucent fishing wire. Each row of speakers played a different sound recording of rain falling off a temple in Korea. The wires at certain angles under the lighting gave the illusion of straight lined rain. I imagine the instillation would’ve been rather peaceful if it weren’t for the fact that 48 students were crammed into the exhibit. We tried taking turns, but that idea flopped.
Next we traveled to Echo Park to see Machine Projects, which was by far my favorite space/gallery! We watched a PowerPoint presentation of past events given by the curator, and I knew immediately that I would have to return. Some of their projects included the following: an Easy-Bake Oven contest (in which someone turned an old Mac into an oven with 100 Watt light bulb), a flower volcano and floral recreation of the Eagle Nebulae, being buried alive, a mechanical human bull riding torso, a unicorn skeleton, a medieval battle, and puppy disco ball. They also offer a number of workshops and courses for artists wishing to explore different fields (i.e. incorporating technology in their work). The food there was almost as good as the presentation. I had a delicious box lunch with a turkey sandwich, pasta salad, fresh fruit, and a ginormous, scrumptious chocolate chip cookie. They had some leftover lunches; I should’ve taken them. Foods a big deal for me, especially if it’s delicious free food.
Lastly we trekked over to Culver City to see the Center for Land Use Interpretation and the Museum of Jurassic Technology. CLUI was (kind of) cool. I looked at some images of different underground caves morphed to accommodate human viewing pleasure, and some airport information transmitters scattered across Texas. The Museum of Jurassic Technology was like getting lost in grandpa’s closet. The lights were dim and it had this air of mustiness and the unexplored past. You sort of stumble around in this half-light picking up phones, while staring at displays of some forgotten 19th century invention. Upstairs they had a tearoom, where we sipped tea (and ate cookies!) while discussing the museum’s philosophy. It really was an offbeat museum full of some of the most bizarre inventions and pastimes of the somewhat recent past. An exhibit on Geoffrey Sonnabend (“an associate professor of neurophysiology at Northwestern University”) explained his cryptic theory of memory, and how it is like a cone intersected by a plane. I kind of want to read his book Obliscence, Theories of Forgetting and the Problem of Matter (catchy title), but unfortunately the library doesn’t have it. All in all a good day, full of good food (except the lemon muffin, which was nasty).
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