Lecture 2-5-08

Mark Dion

So, because of the intense overcrowding, I had a seat on the floor very close to the tv screen, at an angle that put the glare from the window right through the middle of the images, so it was REALLY hard to see exactly what I was looking at. Luckily, I'm pretty sure it wasn't entirely necessary to see the images clearly, because he seemed to emphasize the process much more than the result. However, seeing the image might have helped me understand what he was doing better, because for a while, I couldn't tell if he was actually doing an art project or simply documenting scientific specimens. The 3 Fictional bureaucracies to organize nature was where I started getting confused. When he began to break out of the natural history tract, I started to understand his concept. I thought it was a really interesting idea the way he was "compressing history" and integrating the viewer into that history. The Venetian project did make me wish I could see the images better, because I was very curious to see the mixture of artifacts. I also thought it was a fun idea to arrange the items by artistic standards such as color and form instead of historical standards such as usage and time frame, because it took him further from acting as a scientist, and put him more in artist's shoes.