Since I grew up in Pittsburgh, a visit to the Carnegie Museum of Natural History tugs me directly back to my childhood. I spent a lot of time at the museum as a kid—it feels that way, anyway, since the whole building smells familiar and every exhibit carries a set of long-rooted connotations for me. Moving through the museum, I tried to select and photograph displays that were both visually interesting and held possibility for making connections.
The items I selected—a diorama of a Pennsylvania bog, a hunk of quartz, and some fossilized scallop shells—all sent me off in different memory-directions. All tied into my childhood. I used to collect seashells on the beach, I used to pick up rocks everywhere and check them with my dad to see if they were anything interesting (like quartz), and I’ve gone hiking with my family in Pennsylvania and elsewhere since I was pretty young. I approached the description-writing assignment with these connections in mind, and allowed the official science and history of the objects to be generally quiet.
Tumblr and Pinterest are entirely new to me. I’ve collected what I feel like is an interesting Wunderkammer board on my Pinterest, but haven’t made it very far on my Tumblr—I’m tentative to make moves on that one, since as far as I understand, I won’t be able to re-order the objects and images I collect once I’ve collected them, and I feel like I want a very deliberate order. Pinterest wasn’t too difficult to use, and creates a pleasing collage of things I pinned.
I paid attention to some different themes in the construction of my Pinterest Wunderkammer, and intend to draw similar connections in my Tumblr version. There are lots of floral, bird-related, parks-related, seashell/beach-related, and Berlin-related images. Each is significant, and connected to either strong images I have from my childhood or strong images I have from more recent adventures. Everything ties in to my family in one way or another. In this way, it’s very personally arranged; heterotopic to the uninformed eye, but explicitly interconnected for me. Some images clearly repeat themselves, or tie in to other images (for example, the three parakeets, or the three images containing shells).
As I continue to develop my digital Wunderkammers, particularly my Tumblr, I’m going to see how understandable I can make my personal connections appear without entirely giving them away; and I’m going to get over my hesitance to get my Tumblr moving along.
Pinterest page: http://ift.tt/1C6ZAww
Tumblr page: http://ift.tt/1EMuadh
from diy « WordPress.com Tag Feed http://ift.tt/1C6ZAwy
from jammco.us and http://ift.tt/1COg4GQ
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