On "Animal" by Erica Fudge

Animal. by Erica Fudge. Some notes and thoughts.

In the introduction, she talks about all the contradictions in our relationships with animals, saying they are both "loved and eaten" and this reminded me of Pinchy on the Simpsons and how the moment where Homer is eating Pinchy because he accidentally boiled him for dinner while trying to give him a hot bath on the stove is perhaps one of the greatest jokes and chyrsttalline representations of animal-human relationships I can think of.

"Pinchy would have wanted it this way!"

"Oh god, he's so delicious. I wish Pinchy were here to enjoy this!"
(Here's the full, poorly recorded segment, on youtube)

She begins her first chapter, "Visible and Invisible: Questions of Recognition", with the story of Ham, the chimpanzee who went up in a spacecraft to test any potential problems before the first humans were launched into space. Her telling at the beginning is delightful, noting how NASA folks described him as being a "loveable fellow" and in "good spirits" when he was recovered from the spacecraft, and that he lived 20 years after his flight and was honored with a gravestone at the International Space Hall of Fame. The cover of the book, actually, is his iconic image, huge smile, reaching for an apple.

She immediately illuminates the story with a counter-description of the events, showing how Ham wasn't even a real name, but an acronym, and before he was just a number. His pioneering flight was just a "final check to man-rate" the craft, and he doesn't really even get credit for going to space the way Alan Shepard did a few months later. She also points out that his "smile" could easily be us seeing what we want to see, since teeth-barring is common in chimps for many reasons, including fear, and that there were numerous problems with the flight including the fact that he experienced longer weightlessness than planned, landed in the ocean a ways off from his projected place, and had to wait "100 minutes" to be rescued, while water had entered his capsule. She notes how Ham was a counter to Laika, the Russian dog sent into the space "who died . . . in 1957 when her oxygen supply ran out" . . . and uses these examples to show how we often conveniently mis-interpret animals, or fail to recognize them at all.

In the process of investigating these issues of recognition, she discusses pets, and asks the question of whether they are really an animal at all. It's an interesting question, because she points out that we can easily attribute what we want pets to be thinking to them (the idea that your dog never judges you, unlike your spouse or friends) and that they are comforting because of this, but that we will never know if they are judging us, and we simply get to say whatever we want. (She describes it, not as a refusal to judge but a "breakdown in communication" -- we'll never know what they mean) So they aren't really an animal because we think that they decided not to judge us, that they choose not to, and therefore in some way they are an "ideal human" . . . better than the others around us. This was particularly searing to me as I can recognize my own deep desire to imagine the kindness or purity of dogs and their unconditional regard for us. I, too, desperately want them to love us, just as we want others to love us, and since dogs can't "tell us things we don't want to hear" they are this refuge. But just because we don't hear it, doesn't mean those criticisms aren't there. So what are we to make of this? I also think, in this way, we continue to mold and create dogs into beings of our desire and design, even beyond the very physical notion of breeding them a certain way. We not only have created them to be the animals they are, but we actively create them when we interact with them, to be the kinds of conscious beings that we want them to be. We make their inner world as well.

"About our failure to be god"? I wonder? This always makes me think about love itself -- if we could dismiss their presumed emotions for us as something either generated by our own imaginings, or created through breeding, that they were made to love us, then how is our own sense of love and companionship any different? Weren't we made to love each other, in the sense that we evolved to form lasting, stable bonds in order to best survive? It all seems so very sad to me.

She next discusses the situation, a notably British one I think, created by rabbits, because unlike many animals, which have clear roles within a culture as "edible slash inedible", if you will, rabbits are both food AND pet. She describes how, as a child, her mother re-named rabbit pie "chicken pie" so as not to disturb her daughter, who had rabbits as pets. "A dog is not for eating. . . " she says, but points out the strange paradox of feeding bits of pork to a dog at the tableside.

One little side note in here is her explanation of the origins of the fact that we call live cows "cattle" but their meat "beef" and so on . . . and apparently this came from the Norman invasion, when the people who tended animals spoke English (because they were Saxons) and the people who chiefly ate these animals were French, whose words were adopted into English. I thought that was kind of fascinating. I always assumed that was some kind of intentional trick to separate living animals from food, but it appears that it was a happenstance that simply "aids" in our distinction (36)

She goes on to talk about the example of veal cows -- byproducts of the dairy industry -- that were shipped from the UK to the "mainland" where raising veal wasn't illegal. There, the little calves are kept in crates for like 6 months and fed this iron and fiber-deficient diet, so that they are tender and pale. She describes the uproar of protests about these animals, which I think very much parallels the story of the military testing on beagles described in Singer's Animal Liberation, in contradiction to overall attitudes about meat. She then speculates as to why this curious self-contradiction exists, pointing out that "Fish and chickens, for example, do not have big eyes and long eyelashes, and this is perhaps one reason that the battery farming of eggs is often protested against only by those who have a wider influence in animal welfare." (40) This is going to sound dumb, but I really really really want to make a mounted fish with huge, beautiful taxidermy cow eyes and enormous lashes.

Later in the chapter, she describes a "new anthropocentrism" that has emerged in response to these kinds of protests -- an attitude that vehemently embraces a human-centered standpoint. The examples of this are really obvious, I think, (like PETA . . .people for the eating of tasting animals) and somehow seems to overlap, to me, with a similar reclaiming of manly ideas too . . . like "I like meat! Men like meat!" Tim-the-toolman-taylor style meat consumption . . . the in-your-face-giant-turkey legs of the state fair? I can see the appeal. I think I sort of eluded to it in my essay about taxidermy -- that there is something appealing about reverting to a time period in which it was not necessary or expected to be sensitive to animals or to think morally about your food, when meat eating was celebrated, when you could dismiss concern for animals as an overly sympathetic or sentimental mindset. Like the shark drawing. There is something manly, masculine, strong, empowered, powerful about taking charge and doing-with-what-you-want that has some real origin, I think, and that holds some attraction. Having said all of that, I don't necessarily think that's a good thing, of course, but I admit its appeal and think the term "new anthropocentrism" is a good tag for it. It also seems to align with the same reactionary conservative politics . . . if leftys are veggies, then conservatives love them some meat. Stereotype. So many ways this is reinforced, though, with regard to big business and factory farming and its relationship to conservative politics. Arg.

Anyway, that was a bit of a rant. Back to the book :)

She recounts Peter Singer's very logical argument for a reduction of meat consumption, which I could probably just read myself, but I haven't yet, so I'll say here . . . basically he says that since grains product 10 times as much protein per acre as meat, if Americans were to reduce their mean consumption by only 10%, the grain saved (from being used to feed animals) from all the affluent nations would be enough, "if properly distributed", to essentially end world hunger. I have heard this calculation repeated many times, so I don't think his figures are inaccurate, even though they are very optimistic. She brings this up to show how Singer demonstrates that a very logical argument based on ineffective use of resources is very possible to make without being susceptible to the criticism of "sentimental" attachment to animals or animal cruelty. I like this, partly because it seems less refutable, but also because it helps to free us from the very uncomfortable position, I think, of trying to sort this out on an emotional level. Though I don't necessarily think basing one's decision on emotional responses deserves as much criticism as dismissal as it gets, I do think it can be problematic to keep emotions in check and to understand them. This seems more manageable, and also somewhat more flexible in terms of how to live one's daily life as a less-meat-eating person rather than a strict vegetarian or vegan (at least for the time being in our current state of affairs).

56 - She brings up the question that I've wondered about before regarding fur and indigineous cultures that depend on fur trade (or here, I suppose we could insert whaling, or some other 'cruel' animal practices) and the tenuous position we have put ourselves in as people who feel both obligated to respect native cultures AND obligated to protect animals. She does not offer a solution, and I agree with her that it doesn't seem likely that we'll arrive at a very satisfying one either. But it does seem to be an important question.

70 - on the issue of children and animals, she quotes Freud, who said "Children show no trace of the arrogance which urges adult civilized men to draw hard-and-fast line between their own nature and that of all other animals." Freud seems to say that kids are more akin to animals, anyway, in terms of bodily functions, etc. Though I think this is a good point in that the need to categorize, or the basis for our current taxonomy, is not readily apparent, it must be learned, and so association of human wtih animal is not such an affront to a child, but becomes such to an adult.

76 "We might argue that the desire to comprehend and communicate with animals is infantile, but if we do not have these narratives of communication (and not all of those narratives are written down, of course) then we will lose contact with a large part of our world." She makes the case for anthropomorphism as possibly the only route to which we can have some kind of access to animals, and without the possibility of communicating with them, what is to make us think about how we treat them?

84 - She talks about several movies and books that represent classic children's stories about animals, and one of them, Old Yeller, I had nearly forgotten about. Watching that movie at an early age cemented my extreme desire to be around dogs and probably also firmly first introduced me to a sense of loss and death. Her interpretation of what Old Yeller is meant to teach us is, I would say, not very generous, and I definitely thought differently about its take-away lesson when I was a kid. But what she suggests is really interesting. So, the backdrop is of course that the 15 year old boy, Travis, is left in charge of the farm and his mom and little brother, Arliss, when their dad goes off to fight in the Civil War. The dog arrives, first as the companion of Arliss, but then becomes Travis' dog. "Travis, gains a workmate, and at the end of the film, Travis's shooting of the beloved dog is kind of a liminal moment between childhood and adulthood. Travis has passed the test set by his father, he has run the farm and protected the family, and his helper is no longer needed. . . . To emphasize Travis' journey into adulthood, at the very end of the film, we see that his pup, Young Yeller, comes to replace the lost companion. . . . This disturbing film . . . also recognizes that that relationship cannot last [between child and dog]. At the end of Old Yeller, Travis has learned that all dogs are interchangeable, that an animal may die, but animals live on." Later, she says its about keeping things in perspective: "There is a real (as opposed to fictional) relation to the animal [ comparing it to Lassie Come Home ], this film seems to say, and it is always as well to keep that real relation firmly in mind. The trained dog may be talented, just as the brave dog may be valuable, but dogs, like all animals, serve, and then they die." (Remember, Old Yeller gets rabies after fighting off a rabid wolf to protect the family, and this is why Travis must shoot him.)

Now, my interpretation of this, as a kid and even now, is that being a grown up means taking responsibility for the well-being of something else. That, even though it is hard and painful to have to kill something, a grown up knows then that is what is best for that thing. In other words, its about mercy killings, and knowing that the dog will suffer and eventually die anyway, the right and adult thing to do is to take that responsibility . . . even if it will hurt you more than them. Erica Fudge's interpretation is rather more calous, I think, but might really be accurate. At the least, it does seem to say that the attachment to animals is sentimental.

(side note: This is more or less exactly what I imagine James Herriot to be, perhaps with a little Jimmy Stewart in there for good measure)

Anyway, she goes on to have a refreshingly generous response to Babe (or The Sheep-Pig, as it was originally called in Dick King-Smith's novella). I kind of thought that Babe was great for a number of reasons, but it always seems to be given a critical eye, focusing mostly on that problematic visual comparison to the holocaust. Thankfully, Fudge doesn't even mention this. Instead, she gives a nod to the fact that the story tries to teach "inclusivity" (all animals talk to one another), manners ("Babe wins sheep over through his politeness), "the importance of merit (a pig can be a sheep dog if it can herd sheep; it should not be limited by its species), and, most tellingly, of acceptance. The apparently innate hatred of dogs for sheep, and sheep for dogs, is shown to be based upon a complete lack of understanding on the part of both species." She suggests a parallel between sheep-dogs and sheep and humans and other animals, a notion of "shepherding" or "stewardship" that really means dominance. She also makes mention of language: "At the end of the story, when farmer Hogget and Babe get full marks in the sheep-dog trials, the world is full of noise--from Mrs. Hogget watching it on television at home, from the sheep-pen, from the crowd. King-Smith writes, 'In the hubbub of noise an excitement, two figures stood silently, side by side.' The silence is broken by true words from the monosyllabic farmer, "That'll do." [Which, as an aside, actually made my cry when I read it, and threatens to make me cry now, and I don't know why.] "Saying nothing, but saying everything, the farmer and the pig are an image of a perfect relationship between human and animal; the words are few, mean little, but speak volumes." . . . "an adult who communicates with animals, not through anthropomorphism but through understanding." (87)

There is an interesting discussion, of course, of the role of eating meat in this story as well, and of the function of animals. She talks about the sub-plot of the duck, Ferdinand, who takes it as his responsibility to start crowing, like a rooster, so that he has a function. If he has a function, he reasons, he won't be eaten for dinner. ("Christmas means carnage!!") I also think this idea of becoming a living clock is really great in comparison with the "like clocks" issue. (90)

Also, just the mention of the word "animatronic" . . . somehow it slipped my notice before that the root word of being animated is animal . . . and as we discussed the definition of what exactly we think an animal is the other day, I wonder what roll motion or "animation" has in that definition. It seems . . . seminal? Is that the right word? And yet, other things move and are not even alive, and not all animals really have great control over their motion . . .

In her final chapter, about animals and intelligence, she investigates a lot of the standbys in animal research, including Clever Hans, Kanzi, Nim Chimpsky, sweet-potato washing in Japan, Alex, etc. She points to previous discussions which make the distinction between the "capacity to make sound" or even to communicate feelings or intetions and the capacity to actually have "articulate speech" . . . which I suppose somewhat comes down to the issue of syntax?

In terms of language research (128), she reminds us that it is indeed odd that our efforts only go one way -- that these animals seem so dumb for not being able to understand human language, but if we are so smart, why are none of us fluent in any animal languages at all? Why do we not try to learn their languages instead? This also reminds me of the idea, probably already written about or imagined, of conceiving of the history of primates in research or primates in science from the perspective of THEM being the explorers. That They come to a foreign place where the language is indiscernible, and good-naturedly try to participate as best as they can within the native culture, trying to set up the table for a meal, following the customs of sharing (as Savage-Rumbaugh was describing in Kanzi: Ape on the Brink . . . ) and how truly flexible they have been at acculturating themselves to a strange way of being. So much like early ethnographers or something. So there are all these pioneers, those who first broke the code of human gestural language, who first understood the way we use signs, etc. Its sort of like the way JM Coatzee, via Elizabeth Costello - walks us through the possible thoughts and logic of a chimp faced with the bananas on a string problem: "Why would they put them up so high? Do they not want me to have them? What have I done to make them mad at me and put my food so out of reach? Did I do something wrong?"

133 - In her discussion of culture, she brings up various definitions, and includes Imanishi's "proposal that culture should be defined 'not by technical achievements or value systems, but simply as a form of behavioral transmission that doesn't rest on genetics." I do agree with this, and really like that definition a lot.

138 - Hey, look, a quote of Noam Chomsky! "If you want to find out about an organism, you study what it's good at. If you want to study humans, you study language. If you want to study pigeons, you study their homing instinct." Fudge talks about the issue of us designing our experiments to test only the kinds of intelligences that we as humans posses, and also about the problematic idea that to call something an "instinct" immediately removes any possibility of us considering it as an intelligence (even though we could never get home without a compass or a map, but a pigeon can, easily)

152 - In her discussion on animals in art, she suggests that depicting animals is within this idea of gaining control or dominion over them (which I think I've kind of heard before) and says the intriguing statement, "Framing, in this sense, equates to caging." Not something I'd thought about before.

155 - Discussion of monkey paintings (really, ape paintings). She talks about how Thierry Lenain, someone who studied primate paintings, noted a few important differences between them. "Lenain writes, 'it is not aimed at created a tangible object that will have continuing visible presence after the act of producing is over. Monkeys are totally indifferent to their paintings the moment they're finished.' Later in his study, Lenain argues that 'monkey art is primarily an aspect of play." This is interesting to think about with regards to our inability to approach painting in the same way -- as children, we are capable of that kind of play, but we very quickly develop concern for the "aesthetic qualities" of the finished object. Apparently, an artist named Ranier, investiaged this idea by attempting to re-create paintings done by Chimps to mimic them. (156)

In her conclusion, which she flatly begins with "We should think about animals as animals" which seems awfully concise . . . she makes a really well-said point on 160: "We must have in our minds the fact that our perception is based on our limitations, and the fact that their lives exceed our ability to think about them."

Concerning Bladerunner and Electric Sheep

Alright, after hearing Bladerunner mentioned in scholarly ways for quite some time now, I figured I should revisit the 1982 Harrison Ford film that my brother was obsessed with and see why on earth a dark, rainy, futuristic movie featuring "replicants" was so darn important.

Let me acknowledge that all of this going to be a thing everyone else knew and I somehow missed, but bear with me anyway.

First, some on the movie.

The beginning is like a really bad detective story in which the narrator tells you things that are already going on. A lot of exlpication. "I was a bladerunner. blah blah" with this sultry music. "I'm not on the force anymore. You know I quit." etc. And sometimes the take-away messages are a little over-the-top, too, like "Too bad she won't live. But then, who does?" (repeated by Edward James Olmos in an echoing voice-over at the end. Or "I don't know why he saved my life. Maybe in his last moments, he loved life more than ever, not just his own, but every life." After the android dies.

(Dead replicant, "retired" after she blasts through a whole bunch of plate glass windows, wearing nothing but a bra ensemble and a clear plastic coat, so you can see her wounds even through the coat) Also, what lovely colors, eh?

Something I'm not sure how to make sense of is the love scene between Deckard and Rachel, because he kisses her, she tries to leave, he grabs her violently, shakes her and says, "tell me to kiss you" and, as she is crying, she is obedient. So this idea of her being a slave is really overbearing and I wonder if she is supposed to seem like she has free will at all. She certainly has a vacant expression and much less tenacity than the other androids, especially, in the end, the German-looking one who shows real deep emotion or empathy or something. Rachel cries, but she is still pretty vacant. Anyway, when he returns to her sleeping on his bed/foldout couch whatever, he says "you love me." She dutifully replies "I love you." "You trust me." "I trust you." There is definitely the feeling that she is just saying that. How happy can she be? Apparently, this is a major difference with the book (Deckard is married in the book and does sleep with Rachel, but I don't think they end up together in any way.) In this movie, he takes her with him in a car and they drive to some magical sunshine hilly place, probably in california since I think they might be in San Fran or something for the tokyo/gotham-city-like rest of the movie. Anyway, is he just telling her what to think? Is that any different than the way they are programmed otherwise? Does "love" mean anything to an android? And yes, I'm sure someone has written a dissertation on this already but I haven't thought about it before. :)

(Sad replicant, returning to the side of his newly shot girlfriend)

The android howls, btw, when he is overcome with emotion at the loss of Priss (Daryl Hannah), and continues to howl throughout the rest of the film until he dies and, somewhat ridiculously, releases a white dove (or pigeon?) he's grabbed at some point on the roof. Anyway, he is also inexplicably wearing nothing but tight boxer-briefs or mini shorts for the remainder of the film, and he says a lovely thing about how all the things that happened to him in his life will disappear like tears in the rain. (It is perpetually raining). So are we to gather that being emotional is to be like an animal? It's also interesting the parallels made between Deckard and the android in the ending scenes, because the android breaks 2 of Deckard's fingers as payback for the death of the two female androids, and then lets him go, and shortly, the android jams a huge nail into his seizing hand, presumably to stop the death (?) that is beginning to set in? (he says "not yet!" and inflicts pain on himself perhaps to stay alive). Or perhaps just to feel? At any rate, both of them clutch and sieze their hands, and the hands seem to be awfully important, since the android earlier killed Tyrell, the inventor, by crushing his head with his bare hands, and then tightly grabs Deckard's hand in order to pull him up from the edge of the roof and save him. Anyway, they are both alternatively moaning or howling as well, Deckard when he tries to re-set his fingers, and the android, in his crazed running around the building, wolflike.

 

Also, the music (which was generally disturbing since it felt like a seedy saxophone solo in a bad dective movie most of the time, probably intentional, or just a product of the decade) was by Vangelis . . . and Vangelis, of course, did the music of Cosmos . . . and so Vangelis is now the soundtrack to science fiction or something. :)

Ok, so here's the big reveal to me. I had no idea that this movie was based (somewhat loosely) on the novel "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" (1968 science fiction novel by Philip K. Dick) (AHHH! That's why this movie is so maniacally important to philosphers, etc.) And after reading more in detail about the synopsis of the book, I see why this has been so significant in terms of the identity and characteristics of humanity, as well as the identity and characteristics of animals, and why animal scholars throw this one out a lot. I also wager it has something to do with that wonderful title.

Here are a few important snippets from the wikipedia page:

"The novel is set in a post-apocalyptic near future, where the Earth and its populations have been damaged greatly by Nuclear War during World War Terminus. Most types of animals are endangered or extinct due to extreme radiation poisoning from the war. To own an animal is a sign of status, but what is emphasized more is the empathic emotions humans experience towards an animal." and "The U.N. encourages emigration to off-world colonies, in hope of preserving the human race from the terminal effects of the fallout. One emigration incentive is giving each emigrant an "andy" — a servant android.

The remaining populace live in cluttered, decaying cities wherein radiation poisoning sickens them and damages their genes. Animals are rare and people are expected to keep them and help preserve them. But many people turn towards the much cheaper synthetic, or electric, animals to keep up the pretense. Rick Deckard owned a sheep, but it died of tetanus, and he replaced it with a synthetic sheep." . . . "As android technology improved, bounty hunters had to apply an empathy test — the Voigt-Kampff — to distinguish humans from androids, by measuring empathetic responses, or lack thereof, from questions designed to evoke an emotional response, often including animal subjects and themes." "Deckard's story is paralleled by that of J.R. Isidore, a driver for an animal repair shop who cannot qualify to leave Earth and so lives alone, with little outside contact other than his Empathy Box. Pris Stratton moves into the building and the lonely Isidore attempts to befriend her. Pris proves to be a runaway android, identical in appearance to Rachael Rosen.

Deckard eventually retires all of the illegal androids, earning him a citation for the record number of kills in one day. He returns home to discover that Rachael Rosen killed his (real) pet goat by pushing it off the roof. He understands that Rachael was taking revenge, and is thankful that the loss is financial; the android could instead have killed his wife."

Finally, here is a totally lovely spinoff-- "Electric Sheep is a distributed computing project for animating and evolving fractal flames, which are in turn distributed to the networked computers, which display them as a screensaver. . . . The name "Electric Sheep" is taken from the title of Philip K. Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. The title mirrors the nature of the project: computers (androids) who have started running the screensaver begin rendering (dreaming) the fractal movies (sheep)." (From wikipedia)

I love all of this. There are myriad cultural uses of the phrase "electric sheep" but kind of obscure and hidden in band lyrics. I feel like it calls out for more.

On Stuffed Animals and Pickled Heads

Stuffed Animals and Pickled Heads: The Culture and Evolution of Natural History Museums,
by Stephen T. Asma

The book is a fairly enjoyable, narrative sort of history of museum information, comprising information on science, anatomy, dioramas, displays, art, various important historical figures in the development of the museum, preservation techniques, and major institutions like the Royal Society and the Field Museum. At first, I was a little turned off by the book because I feel like the author writes how I would write this very book (with a little bit of forced humor and some equally forced narrative to drive it along . . . like "I wondered how they prepare specimens, so I went to the museum to find out,") but it's gotten better. :)

In the introduction, he mentions the similarity between science-based museums and art museums. This is a good point, I feel, to keep in mind. . . that this museum exploration bears an important relationship to the way we cordon-off artwork as well.

"The odd thing about a specimen is that it's a kind of cipher when considered in isolation. Specimens are a lot like words: They don't mean anything unless they're in the context of a sentence or a system, and their meanings are extremely promiscuous." xiii

He clarifies the distinction between a homology and an anlalogy in terms of physiology. So a bird's wing and a butterfly are analogous, but derived from similar selection pressures rather than from a common genetic background. Vs. a human hand and whale fin, which does have a homology. I don't know why I felt the need to post-it-note that in the book, but I did.

Somewhere in there, he describes what the embalming process is actually like for normal dead bodies in America, and that completely confirms my desire to be cremated, and to forget everything I read about that so I don't have to associate this incredibly violent procedure with anyone i ever know that passes away.

Apparently, there is a collection of suitcase-shaped diorama cases that the Field Museum used to take around to different schools. "Each of the nine hundred dioramas is housed in a Plexiglass-fronted polished mahogany case, about 23 inches high, 25 inches wide, and 7 inches deep." There are in the "education department" of the museum and educators can apparently still check them out. (32) I should make these! :)

He talks about evolution and how we are good at looking for patterns because those that could recognize patterns of danger left more offspring. (Our ability to simplify things. . . which I talk about in drawing class) 35

"In 1883 William T. Hornaday built one of the first lifelike exhibitions for the National Musuem, one of the first in all of America. The exhibit, called "Battle in the Treetops," displayed two male orangutans in a territorial fight, and it was an early attempt to break away from the dry taxonomic displays that previous curators had arranged for scholarly audience. Hornaday folowed up this popular success in 1888 with his "American Buffalo Group." . . . I just love that title, for some reason. (42)

Later it talks about how he went to Montana to gather "authentic materials" and that makes me think of how I should use local soil and rocks or whatever if I do some kind of installation like that.

Field musuem is named after Marshall Field, btw. I guess I should have known that.

68 - talks about one method of preparing a specimen in which "Animals were relieved of their viscera, blown into three-dimensional balloons, and shellacked for display." BALLOON ANIMALS. I love this. Can I make this? :)

OK-- several months after first posting this (03.08.2011), I stumbled upon the exact realization of this idea.

Hanging animals from the rafters! A whole room of animals dangling from the sky becasue there are so many of them? Possibilities.

Robert Boyle (of Boyle's law) was involved with the revolution created by the microscope and understanding crystalline structures, stuff like that, so he wrote a book that I just love the title of: "The Origins of Forms and Qualities" which revealed the underly microstructures of everyday objects. I think that would be such a great name for a show about evolution and visual things and animal and . . . yeah. (73)

"If science be manifestly incomplete, and yet of the highest importance, it would surely be most unwise to restrain inquiry, conducted on just principles, even when the immediate practical utility of it was not visible. In mathematics, chemistry, and every branch of natural philosophy, how many are the inquiries necessary for their improvement and completion, which, taken separately, do not appear to lead to any specifically advantageous purpose; how many useful inventions, and how much valuable and improving knowledge would have been lost, if a rational curiosity and a love of information had not generally been allowed to be a sufficient motive for the search after truth." -- Thomas Malthus (1776-1834) - quoted on p. 81

Here is a beautiful and lovely and wonderful Latin phrase: "Pulvis et umbra sumus" = "We are dust and shadow." I LOVE THIS. It was used in some morality play things (like a plackard held by skeletons). (92)

Ok. How great is this:
"Aldrovandi's book on chickens includes a chapter entitled, "Concerning Freak Chickens" where in he sets for credible embryological abberations . . . At one point, he states, "If any bird should be called a freak, it must be the rooster which I observed a few years ago, when it was alive, in the palace of the Most Serene Grand Duke Francesco Medici of Tuscany; it struck fear into brave men with its terrifying aspect." This conjures up a wonderful image of burly grown men trembling in the presence of the dread chicken of Tuscany." !! (93)

end there temporarily ----

101
"Remember that the cosmos were understood, at this time, as a giant machine. Clocks were a favorite metaphor of the day. If clocks have thier orderly structure because intelligent minds have designed and built them, then the clock itself is a kind of proof of a designing mind. By analogy, the orderly cosmos is evidence for a designing God."

In talking about evidence of evolution, he says "Next, the existence of seemingly useless organs and structures is unintelligible without evolution, but quite coherent with it. Wisdom teeth and the appendix are well-worn examples of structures that served a function in prehuman history, but some lesser-known cases include the useless femer and pelvis in whales (indicating their terrestrial quadruped ancestors), a similarly useless pelvis and femur structure hidden within the bodies of primitive snakes such as boa constrictors (indicating that snakes evolved from four-footed lizards . . . etc." 161

167 "Of course, there is no real acme to evolution. Evolution is not progressive, because the idea of 'success' or 'better' is completely relative to enviroment rather than absolute." (in this context, he talks about an exhibit in France that is actually pretty funny where it shows a progression of skulls, culminating in DesCartes (the top is a Frenchman! :)) and then having a box where you can see yourself in a mirror to see that evolution affects you too. :)

171 Recounts a museum display that has benches (part of the Grande Galerie de l'evolution in Paris) that holds "retractable plexiglass slates of scientific information" in the benches. Interesting.

172 He talks about how man's destruction of nature is a nearly constant part of today's moral rhetoric of the museum saying "When you start out, you read the bench slate: "Relations between man and nature: Human activity has transformed the evolution of the natural world, causing rapid, profound, and sometimes irreversible modifications to the environment." This really translates to "Tour the astoundingly many ways that humans rape the planet and find new and interesting reasons to loathe yourself and your species." :) He goes on to mention some dioramas that I should perhaps look at "Like Fredrick Ruysch's dioramas, which called upon his eighteenth-century audience to repent their sins. . . " etc.

Great sentence about the goal of museums, and perhaps dare I say the goal of art things as well: "No curator believes that patrons will drop to their knees in moral epiphany. Moral sentiments will not suddenly materialize where there previously were none. But dormant moral sentiments (of responsibility, duty, guilt, compassion) can be rekindled by such museological rhetoric, and exhibit imagery can play a powerful role in this mission." 172

"tiny replica of our planet" -- like a jewel. Like a pin top. Like Carl Sagan's pale blue dot. (talking about a room at the end of the Paris museum dispaly I think. It's a circular room with an "intense beam of light strikes the tiny orb" and there is new age music so he says its too melodramatic and funny.

He describes the whole experience of walking through the Paris gallerie of evolution exhibit, which is multiple floors and sounds really amazing. He actually spends an entire chapter, called "Exhibiting Evolution" comparing and contrasting I think three major exhibits of evolution. It's really great -- easily the best chapter in the book. It gives a lot of ideas for how to present things, but also what those kinds of decisions mean, or the ways that one idea can be so differently expressed through emphasis and omition. In the future, it might be useful to re-read and photocopy this entire chapter. :)

Anyway, on 174, he's talking about how the whole space gets darker with fake lightning and rainstorm sounds ("it's how a thunderstorm would be if nature were managed by Cirque de Soleil") . . . which sounds cool, and then goes on to describe "small diorama chambers built into the walls" that he describes as "historical chapters" . . . I like this idea of building them into the walls. He also relates how there is a portion of the exhibit that is repeated later in the museum, and that the first time it is just a collection of odd things, but later it is presented with context and explanation. So this idea of introducing something and repeating it later. I like it.

He discusses the organization -- starting with the "oceanic environment of level 1" he describes all kinds of floating fish and cetaceans. He says it starts with this open-water thing, so they are all suspended from the ceiling with nothing below but open ocean. And then it moves into shallower water, etc. and eventually opens up onto this plain of mammals. He then talks about the way that space is used to convey information "For example, in the display windows of the abyssal zone, the specimens are placed very far apart from each other. These relatively sparse cabinets (almost empty) are visual representations of the rarity of life in these regions." 176 and describes this as a non-discursive format. Good point.

He contrasts all of this with the New York American Musuem of Natural History and it's emphasis on taxonomy. "it wants its patrons to appreciate the order of nature." But, unlike some exhibits which are arranged temporally, this one is arranged by primitive animals and more complex ones, which does not mean that it goes from extinct to living. For instance, contemporary sharks are right at the beginning, because they are primitive animals event hough they are still alive. So it's a "primitive to advanced" organization. He says this has to do with the cladistic approach to taxonomy, which I do not fully understand even though I spends a fair bit of time discussing it. (This is actually the most rigorous part of the book, I think --this chapter--which I think is part of why its good. I complained about the beginning being too dependent on trying to make an interesting narrative, but this part is actually really intellectually intriguing).

He explains how and evolutionary taxonomy is different from other "artificial" taxonomies because you aren't grouping things by certain priviledged characteristics, you are grouping by picking out "temporally and spatially extended individuals." 186 "Reconstructing a historical narrative is not entirely objective, but such a narrative does not try to group events together because they have outwardly similar features. It groups them together because earlier ones gave rise to specific later ones. . . " He says that people try to claim that evolutionary taxonomy is the same as other arbitrary designations, but he thinks it isn't. (contrasts it as geneological vs. other internally consistent systems.)

". . . scientists are not, and have never been, theory-free spectators; they can't be, because without expectations or background beliefs or assumptions, every one of their sensory experiences would be equally significant--which means that the experiences would be equally insignificant." 189

190 "Relativism is an inflammatory word, and scientists get nervous around it because it is often used as a synonym for "fabricated truths" or "subjective ideology." Some humanities scholars have chosen to reconceptualize the sciences (and their findings) from the uncontrained perspective of literary criticism. Everything is a text. Everything is political." this sounds familiar to me. Further, though, "If we can move beyond this draconian version of relativism (and for the still-bristling scientific community, this will probably take awhile), we can actually see a deeper strata of healthy relativism. He describes how many taxonomists still think they are making maps of reality, but they acknowledge that different mappings can be accurate (so there are really lots of different taxonomies that end up being useful for different kinds of studies).

He points out an interesting backstory about Darwin and how he is so highlighted in the London exhibit but barely mentioned in the French one. He illuminates this to be more than just a matter of national pride, to explain that it goes to a debate on natural selection vs. mutation as which is the more important "mechanism of transformation." The French felt that mutation was more important, and saw Darwin as merely building on already established ideas of mutation that the French had established long before. (Darwin exhibit doesn't mention any of his intellectual predecessors). Anyway, the way the French thought of it, change was possible within an individual (very quickly) rather than the long-term, slow change of natural selection. They saw natural selection as too brutal and lawless, or chaotic, and adopted a more "optimistic" idea of individual response. So they highlight mutation rather than environmental effects. Interesting (and interesting in the way that this kind of relates to the whole fundamental attribution error. :) I think anyway . . . ) 199

209 - talks about distaste for randomness. Scientific dislike of randomness is "everything happens from a cause" ("events are not un-caused") and a moral dislike of randomness says "everything happens for a reason" . . . which is interesting. But I also like that maybe the idea of randomness is a good way to invert or subvert the traditional means of museum display or scientific perspective?

210 He traces the resistance to evolution back to this fear of being like animals, being "mere" animals, and he says that this fear goes back to Plato. "If we are just material creatures, without a spiritual infusion, are we free?"

211 More on why Pope JPII was weirdly progressive: "In the late 1900's, a few years after he apologized to Galileo, Pope John Paul II delivered a written message . . . stating that the Catholic Church formally recognizes the truth of evolutionary theory." There are, I'm sure, nuances to this, or provisions. But there you go.

Here is something amazing. There is a "humorous interactive display" in the Field Museum (or was anyway) in the "life Over Time" exhibit called "Happy Birthday Homo sapiens in which you can place your head in a hole in a wall and find that you are looking into a big mirror with a reflection of a mural of a bunch of apes and pre-humans with cake and a table. I LOVE THIS. I could also build something that you look in that way . . . Hmmm.

"The upshot of all this is that I end up playing an editorial role, always starting with way too much content and editing down and editing down and editing down and seeing what's left. Someday I'd like to do an exhibit where you start with some basic ideas and basic rules, and then you build that to the appropriate level starting from nothing, more or less. Rather than starting with everything and editing down, I'd like to build up from basically where visitors are starting, which is with some very basic ideas that they might remember from school and newspapers and TV." Eric Gyllenthal from the Field Museum, interviewed by the author. This sounds like an interesting idea. 230

Also, I should say that all the description of the way exhibits are designed and put together -- this team activity of working on a project to convey information to people -- sound unbelievably fun, and I suspect that I might be happy being an exhibit designer.

In talking about museums, he says ". . . there has been a continuous dialog between image-making activities and knowledge-producing activities. Unlike texts, natural history museums are inherently aesthetic representations of science in particular and conceptual ideas in general. . . one begins to see that a display's potential for education and transformation is largely a function of its artistic, non-discursive character." 240

Francis Bacon apparently described art as "feigned knowledge" which is fascinating. In my case, it might be true. But it is also an alternative way of knowing.

A story that might be interesting to look at in the future is Jan Van Rymsdyk, who illustrated all kinds of things alongside the Hunter Brothers, but whose "life and death are shrouded in mystery" . . . .

Illustrated one book called "The Natural History of Teeth" which is just great. Isn't it? . . . he also wrote (or maybe his dad did?) a book that they called a "museum on paper" that was unapologetically random. Here is a page of "exhibits" composed as tables:
"A brass spear-head from scotland . . . arrow heads, another with 15 different ova or eggs, "table VI contains, among other things, a spanish dagger" another "different spider nests", another "a brick from the tower of babel" another "illustrates all manner of gambling dice" and another "Lachrymatories, or tear vials, to contain the tears of weeping friends, and which are buried with the dead." 231 This has the charm of the old Chinese encyclopedia, or maybe even the Cress taxidermy museum.

He talks about how museums are extremely associational -- that, "perceiving a causal connection between things is really just acknowledging the most routine of impressions. So, according to Hume, the very best of human knowledge (science, as an example) and the very worst of human knowledge (prejudice) originate from fundamentally the same process." 258 I thought that was a really interesting and compelling sentence.

263 - gives some examples of humor used to appeal to modern, critical and ironic audiences, including one that shows a tiny person and says "homo sapiens : model (not actual size)" :)

Finally, a couple of books he recommends at the end that I might want to read: Museums and the Shaping of Knowledge, the Poetics and Politics of Museum Display, Museums, Objects, and Collections: A cultural study, and Objects of Knowledge

Several animal-related blog posts/videos: Shaking fur and WE WILL DESTROY YOU!

This video was on the NPR blog. It' so great that so much numbering and science is going into this, (like, the phrase "the shaking is sinusoidal" might be one of the funniest things I've ever seen) but also how fascinating the images themselves are AND how much likte glitter the bear shaking is . . . also how incredibly cute the rat shaking is. Holy cow.





And, in contrast(?) here is a random but totally great blog post called 6 Cutest animals that can still destroy you.

And, perhaps even better, the fantastic FU Penguin, which is of course now a book due to its wild popularity. It makes me happy.

Small World: I WILL learn to spell the word "diorama" . . .

Small World: Dioramas in Contemporary Art. Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego. Essays by Toby Kamps, Ralph Rugoff. 2000. (Dates of the show were Jan 23 - April 30 2000)

The essays were short, but still interesting and I gleaned a few bits out of them.

[ think of travels in hyperreality! ]

In the Toby Kamps essay, I was reminded that dollhouses, model railroads, and museum displays all fit within this idea of "diorama" and that they can be miniature or life-size and that they are capable of "didacticism" and "free-wheeling fantasy" which I like. "Simulated environments"

7
"They engage our sense of depth perception and, with it, a bodily awareness of space, which encourages us to make the imaginative leap into their construct. The static nature of most dioramas also contributes to their uncanny effect. Human vision is keyed to motion , and seeing environments and beings entirely devoid of movement is disconcerting and fascinating--like stop-action photography in three dimensions. Another thrill of dioramas is that they are intrinsically morbid. To arrest life, they must necessarily kill it (literally when taxidermy is involved.)"

Apparently, museum displays of "habitat groups" were developed in Sweden and the U.S. I wonder what the Swedish ones looked like and why those two places?

Donna Haraway wrote an essay called "Teddy Bear Patriarchy: Taxidermy in the Garden of Eden, New York City, 1908-1936"

"In an age where many artists are fluent in several different media, the process of creating discrete universes allows them to bring all their skills to bear. Dioramas allow their makers to be painters, sculptors, landscapers, and architects, as well as scientists and curators. In them, artists can practice painstaking craftsmanship and realism in a time often satisfied with schematic or provisional ideas. " 10

!!!! YES!

---

In the Ralph Rugoff

He brings up some historical examples that I hadn't seen or thought of before, including Ed and Nancy Kienolz (this room that I really like "Sollie 17") . . . I like the room because of its' window and ceiling and completeness and I kind of want to make a room. :)

People whose work I liked in the show:

Michael Ashkin - "tiny no-man's lands" on table tops . . . empty swimming pools, deserts, etc.

Matt Collishaw did a miniature English town with a pub and stuff and then projected little videos of a bar fight on them. Kind of neat.

Tony Matelli - did life-size displays like one where three boyscouts are throwing up called "lost and sick" and one where two pre-hominid creatures try to re-attach their tails (that they are loosing through evolution.) I really like this idea because it takes an aspect of science and amplifies it to a really humorous level.

"Tony Matelli specializes in strange "David Lynchean" storytelling, as in his installation Lost & Sick, 1996." (from http://www.artnews.com/issues/article.asp?art_id=1150)
Here is a link to his gallery, Leo Koenig.

Clara Williams built a desktop landscape on a miniature train scale that covers and entire desk in an office cubicle.