New Educational Exhibit! getting inside Godzilla

Well Well Well!

It looks as though the Director has finally decided to get her hands dirty!

Here was I thinking that she would be searching the arid inlands of Mesopotamia, given that that's what she TOLD us, in the memo she left in my wastepaper bin, whilst all the time she has actually been big-game hunting in Japan.

And then she has the temerity to send her trophies back to me in a state of partial... partialness. Not that I'm pointing fingers, but it looks to me like someone got a little peckish.

Perhaps had a little midnight snack?

Gamera schnitzel, that I understand... but Mothera steaks!?

Anyway, as always, I struggle on, making the best of what I'm given. The museum must come first. Etc. etc.

However, in this instance, I think that you will agree with me when I say I made this particular sow's ear into silk pyjamas.

Taking the mutilated corpses, I have presented them as an educational exhibit. This exhibit will afford young visitors a thrilling learning experience.

A proper understanding of the anatomy of monsters has been too often overlooked in the past. But this ignorance is putting our young people into deadly peril.

This new exhibit An Anatomical Guide to Monsters, is appropriately supported by an especially commissioned publication of the same name (An Anatomical Guide to Monsters, 1967. Text: Shoji Otomo. Illustrator: Shogo Endo.) Each individual exhibit displays a full range of useful and educational signage and wall-labels. This isstate of the art new museology I'm making here!

My exhibit is bound to be a tremendous success, attracting that lucrative school audience to the Museum. Director de Plume will HAVE to give me a payrise now!

I expecting such huge interest, that I've commissioned a special structure for the exhibit. The Hunting Lodge will both commemorate the Director's prowess and provide a safe buffer for the more fragile exhibits in the rest of the museum.



Please view the rest of the exhibition An Anatomical Guide to Monsters at The Hunting Lodge



The historically inclined amongst the audience may also find this specimen A Hairy Monster, prepared by anatomist Tom Gauld, of more than passing interest.

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Dust to Dust

It has been several months since the Director left on an extended exhibit-finding trip (or, at least, that's what she said she was doing). We haven't heard a word from her although, from time to time, something turns up addressed in what seems to be her hand.

Now, I'm not one to complain and I pride myself on my consummate professionalism, but it has been very hard to maintain standards around the museum with no direction or resources. It's all very well for Ms de Plume to send back the occasional box of fragments... but would it kill her to label them? Provide some documentation? Even just tell me what the hell they are? Or what she wants done with them?

But I struggle on.

Don't get me started on the quality of "staff" she left me saddled with either... a brace of mangy and uncontrollable spongecats and their supposed keeper and Minister of Defense, Inky-Blinky who, if truth be told, I haven't seen hair nor legs of in the last year. I have to do EVERYTHING! It's as much as I can do to keep up with feeding the spongecats and keeping the place open -- although I have to admit that she was right about the marketing and promotions. Not doing any has really seen visitations drop off... which is just as well, because if I was running the ticket office, I simply wouldn't be able to get anything else done.

Of course I was beginning to worry slightly about the dust... Dust in exhibits is all very well and proper, but the drifts have been piling up in the corners and under the furniture. It was beginning to be difficult to tell the human skin fragments apart from the diatoms or the butterfly scales. Luckily, I have found a solution that should provide a win-win solution all round.

I've invited a young fellow called Paul Hazelton to pop-over. He is a dust fiend. A particulate fanatic. Better (or worse, depending on your perspective), he's an artist. He makes sculptures from dust using a secret and patented method. Hazelton transforms piles of dust into... shaped piles of dust.

His themes are appropriate to the Museum... and appropriately meta-textual. Here's some examples.

Being and Nothingness

Vacancy

See what I mean?!

Dust mask

In return for his entire creative output I have agreed to allow him access to selected piles of our dust*. He seems to be appropriately pathetically grateful for the opportunity.

By the time that Director de Plume returns we should have a fine collection. I'm thinking of turning over a wing of the museum to it -- and, in recognition of my sheer genius, calling it the 'Administrative Dust Show'.

What happens if the Director disagrees? I hear you say. Of course I've got a fallback plan -- I've acquired one of Hazelton's earlier works (below) and already have it packed and ready to go. I can be out of here in under a minute.

Carrier

More about David Hazelton's art here >
His Saatchi art site -- with many more egs here >

*Obviously NOT the diatoms or the insect scales! Imagine... The Director would have my guts for garters!

PS Mr Hazelton just dropped in with his first contribution to the new exhibit. I don't know that the Director is going to like it much, but I think that it is just fine. And that damned arachnid slacker can think what he likes....

A spider

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General memo: re; Atlas Obscura

Dear museum staff,
Sure I should have written sooner. Yes, ALRIGHT! It’s been over a year since I have sent word, but that is absolutely no reason to let standards slip so badly.

Nobody’s done a thing around here since I left, perhaps a little precipitously, following a new and urgent clue as to the whereabouts of the Skin Armour. Yes, ALRIGHT, I may not have found it – at least not in the strict sense of the word, but this has not been time wasted. So, you might see me seem to follow a false lead, a fool’s errand, but I could see the feint within feint, the plan within the plan. I may now be no closer to tracking down the Armor, but I’m starting to get a feel for it.

But I must admit, I’m exhausted. I think you will agree, I need to revive my spirits, re-engage with the problems and my longterm plans here in MoD. So I’ll be leaving immediately on an extensive study tour of our sister institutions around the globe.

Imagine, I didn’t even know that some of them existed.

If it hadn’t been for Atlas Obscura, the collaborative guide to the “singular, eccentric, bizarre, fantastical, and strange out-of-the-way places that get left out of traditional travel guidebooks and are ignored by the average tourist.”, I would still be ignorant of them. Of course the Atlas includes many that are already enrolled in our Fellowship plan and have become fully signed up subsidiaries to MoD, but there are many that wait to be brought into our protection.

So could someone in admin start booking my steamer tickets soonest? I’ve got bone churches, miniature cities, anatomical Sleeping Beauties, architectural follies as well as numerous collections of the desirably odd kind to visit.

By the way... I’ll need money! Lots and lots and lots of money. I can feel a shopping spree coming on. Just reading the descriptions of some of the things on offer – ranging from philosopher Jeremy Bentham’s stuffed hide to Galileo’s finger bone and teetering pagodas – is inspiring me to start purchasing for several new collections.

Someone pack me a clean change of clothes and the necessities, and leave my trunks, money and tickets at the usual place. I’ll take it from there.

And when I get back, I want to see that there’s been a real change of attitude around here. I want to see the Diatom mural salvaged, the Oubliette thoroughly cleaned, and my new collection of shadows cataloged at the very minimum.

Jump to it.

Atlas Obscura >>

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Inky SPRUNG! Aunt Aggie's Bone Garden

It is completely obvious that Inky will say and do anything to get attention.

Even claim credit for ideas that are SO not his own. Yes, you -- like me -- may have secretly found his putative 'Xmas Bonetree' intriguing, even endearing. And you, like me, probably gave him full marks for originality and effort. But now I know the full truth, I have a good mind to drop the whole thing down the deepest hole in the darkest Oubliette that MoD boasts.

Not only was he ripping the idea off -- he ripped it from a DEAD woman... who had been a slave to boot!

Somehow he must have found out about Aunt Aggie's Bone Yard, a former roadside attraction in Lakeland, Florida (That's in the United States of Amerika for those who are geographically challenged... Inky you know who I'm talking about...).

Aunt Aggie's bone yard: Lake City, Florida ca. 1915. Aunt Aggie Jones on the right with a visitor. Photograph from Imagesof Florida's Black History

As you can see, it was quite sight and between 1900 and 1918 it was very popular with courting couples and young families (apparently the kids loved autographing the bones... tagging has a very long history). Then, they bulldozed it and put up a school on the site. Typical. Now all that is left is a small display about it at the Columbia County Historical Society.

Aunt Aggie (Aggie Jones) was born into slavery but when she and her husband gained their freedom she set to creating not only her remarkable garden, but also a natural history museum inside, which contained snakes preserved in jars and alligator skeletons, as well as a human skeleton hung in the hallway. Although she planted conventional plants and laid white sand walkways, its raison d'etre was "amazing gateways, arches and trellises from bones, wired together to form fanciful structures." Aggie Jones never charged entry, but she sold produce and food, made customised bouquets and reputedly worked a little magic, telling fortunes using the time-honoured cup, key and bible combination. On special occasions, she donned an Indian outfit and danced.

Slightly more info at Roadside.America.Com

Anyway, given that Inky has paved the way with his appropriation... I'm considering recreating at least a section of the Bone Yard in the grounds of the Museum. But that will be an homage... not a rip-off.

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A Shrine to the Glory that WAS Intersol

Few realise that the 16th of December marks the day that the famed realm of Intersol fell to the nefarious forces brandished by the Weedking.

I have not been unaware that certain mean-spirited denizens of MY museum have murmured that I profited from Musrum’s overthrow and exile. It is true that the Iron Castle Museum was probably my only real competitor. But I feel really really bad that I accidentally left the postern door ajar, thus allowing Weedking’s forces ingress. No one regrets that mistake more than I. It breaks my heart to see the rusting remnants of the Iron Castle strewn around the grounds of Museum of Dust… especially when I consider the treasures that were destroyed or made off with in the hubbub. The clear superiority of my own museum buildings, activities and collections goes a little way towards reconciling me to Intersol’s tragic destruction.

Everything happens for a purpose.

To help us remember the glory that was Intersol, I personally, all by myself, with no help financial or otherwise from anyone thank you all so much for caring (yes, Inky you know who I mean), alone and unaided have founded the colony of New Intersol .

Sure, it’s in Greenland but that is just a hop skip and a jump away with modern transport technologies. It’s a simple life in New Intersol, but as more people visit and settle it will become the hub of modern international design.

And a great tax haven.

PS You can build your own pixel art settlement with myminicity.com

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A Handy Guide to the 100 Most Popular Diatoms

Visual artist Heather Barnett and performance poet Will Holloway aren't as frightful as they sound. In fact they are endearingly enraptured with the very very small and have collaborated in an entire on- and off-line exhibition celebrating their shared passion. Small Worlds - the art of the invisible was a exhibition supported by Oxford University's Museum of the History of Science that drew attention to the Museum's microscopic holdings. Research staff on the project are completing a catalogue, with photographs, of the Museum’s large collection of microscopes and microscopical specimens that will also be on-line.

In the meantime, 100 All Time Diatom Greats is a magnification of a slide prepared in 1871 by J.D. Möller. A handy roll-over feature allows one to see both the scientific Latin names of these microscopic marvels, and the translation into English provided by Will Holloway.

It's going to come in very handy in identifying some of the elements of MoD's latest acquisition:


Magnificent isn't it! This magnified view was taken by Martin Mach from an historical slide by W. Watson&Sons, London. Without magnification, you can see only a faint ash-grey spot in the center of the black lacquer ring.

BTW Barnett and Holloway also provided me with the following fascinating fact which is currently providing fuel for much philosophical pondering.

Diatoms were also popular for testing the accuracy of microscope lenses – the creatures being used to investigate the microscope, rather than the other way round.

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Lust in the Dust

I may be in love! Just don’t tell Inky (as you know, he’s ridiculously easily upset …which can have catastrophic results for everyone else).

Whatever … thank jedi for the WorldWideWeb (yet another benefit that arachnids have given us, as Inky constantly reminds me)! Without it I would still be in ignorance of my soulmate, spiritual twin and fellow apassionato of all things dust. G. Carboni who, I must emphasis, I have not yet met in person… but it is only a matter of time and hunting him/her/it down, is a person who is wholly attuned to the quotidian beauty and infinite variety of micro-particulates.










Masquerading as a cheesy ‘science is FUN’ site, Carboni offers advice about how to collect dust as well as what to do with it once it’s in your possession. But, best of all, this doyen of dust has a terrific collection of particulate-porn – much of it gathered in the immediate environment.

All of this sub-micro splendour, however, simply provides the filigreed setting for what may be one of life’s enduring mysteries, possibly on a par with those of the Voynich Manuscript and how anyone of sane mind and goodwill could vote conservative. You will have spotted it immediately – as I did – yes, there in full 400X glory, Figure 8 is a scale from the wing of the butterfly that is the centrepiece and, arguably, emblem of Sir Hans Sloane’s Lepidoptera collection (currently housed by the NHM). The question is, “How did a fragment of this treasure end up on Carboni’s floor?"

Never one to resist a challenge (at least not if it won’t hurt and may involve food), I have taken it upon myself to solve this mystery. Luckily I think I can do this in parallel with my other duties (such as preparing new exhibits for MoD and tracking down the Skin Armour). So I’m off to the British Natural History Museum to find out what egregious breach of security allowed this minute sliver of history loose upon the world…

Would someone mind telling Inky where I am – and remind him to feed the diatoms?


PS Good scans of the Voynich Manuscript are hard to find. These are from the Yale Library and have been made more easily available as a flickr set by the public-spirited Daniel and Sarah Drucker, who are not only, respectively, studying the neural bases of similarity spaces and high-level vision, and psycholinguistics, but are also married and awesome. Really! They are! They are 3edges >

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Celeste Olalquiaga

Dust is what connects the dreams of yesteryear with the touch of nowadays. It is the aftermath of the collapse of illusions, a powdery cloud that rises abruptly and then begins falling on things, gently covering their bright, polished surfaces. Dust is like a soft carpet of snow that gradually coats the city, quieting its noise until we feel like we are inside a snow globe, the urban exterior transmuted into a magical interior where all time is suspended and space contained. Dust makes the outside inside by calling attention to the surface of things, a surface formerly deemed untouchable or simply ignored as a conduit to what was considered real: that essence which supposedly lies inside people and things, waiting to be discovered. Dust turns things inside out by exposing their bodies as more than mere shells or carriers, for only after dust settles on an object do we begin to long for its lost splendor, realizing how much of this forgotten object's beauty lay in the more external, concrete aspect of its existence, rather than in its hidden, attributed meaning.
Dust brings a little of the world into the enclosed quarters of objects. Belonging to the outside, the exterior, the street, dust constantly creeps into the sacred arena of private spaces as a reminder that there are no impermeable boundaries between life and death. It is a transparent veil that seduces with the promise of what lies behind it, which is never as good as the titillating offer. Dust makes palpable the elusive passing of time, the infinite pulverized particles that constitute its volatile matter catching their prey in a surprise embrace whose clingy hands, like an invisible net, leave no other mark than a delicate sheen of faint glitter. As it sticks to our fingertips, dust propels a vague state of retrospection, carrying us on its supple wings. A messenger of death, dust is the signature of lost time.

Celeste Olalquiaga: The Artificial Kingdom: A Treasury of the Kitsch Experience, with Remarkable Objects of Art and Nature, Extraordinary Events, Eccentric Biography, and Original Theory, plus Many Wonderful Illustrations Selected by the Author and from the publication below.

"The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy by Eric Kraft, is one large work of fiction composed of many interconnected parts. Its parts are the memoirs and collected works of a fictional character, Peter Leroy, who tells an alternative version of his life story; explores the effect of imagination on perception, memory, hope, and fear; holds a fun-house mirror to scenes of life in the United States; ruminates upon the nature of the universe and the role of human consciousness within it; and prods and probes the painful world of time and place in search of the niches where hilarity hides. " More at the website ->

(And thanks to one of MoD's numerous (and sometimes numerate) minions for drawing our attention to this dusty fellow traveler. Mr Stewart, custodian of our 'Zymoglyphic Museum' sub-collection, take a bow.)

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The Inkman Cometh

I'm sure you all have read about my exciting adventures in "The Inkyssy" - an Internet novel recounting my journey home after a fruitless search for the Illustrious Khan. I imagine you were all enthralled during my sword-fight with El Cacaracha Libre in the flooded bowels of the Museum, and laughed out aloud at the section when the Starfleet decided to live by the tenets of the Amish while in Deep space. You cheered when I led the rebellious crowd and chased the eight-legged tyrant from his lair in the Kingdom of Sealand. You all heaved a contented sigh at the end of the chapter in which all the staff of the Museum, the peoples of its neighboring states, and all the cyber-world wept and sang my praises for releasing them from the evil tyranny of El Cacaracha Libre and his minions thus returning the world to peace, harmony and prosperity. The penultimate chapter brought tears to your eyes as I went in search of my soul-mate Cog and found her incarcerated in the deepest bowels of the museum. Finally, you were all deeply touched by my modesty and humility in refusing a Triumph worthy of a Caesar and merely requesting instead a short holiday to pursue interests close to my heart.

Those of you who haven't read the novel will either have seen the movie, flipped through the illustrated novel or taken part in one of the countless chat-room debates. Needless to say, everybody is pretty much up to date about my activities over the Festive Season.

After my exploits of the previous month I decided to spend January wandering alone throughout the land. Disguised, I walked amongst the people talking with them, sharing their labours, and sharing their pleasure at the new freedom and happiness they enjoyed. I decided that never again must the cyber-world be dragged to the brink of total war by the actions of madmen like El Cacaracha Libre, William Shatner, Dick Cheney et al. I have decided to dedicate my life to the pursuit of peace and will destroy anybody who attempts to stop me.

PS: To all those conspiracy theorists out there. I can assure you I have El Cacaracha Libre tightly sealed in a jar of formaldehyde on my desk! I wish I could say the same about Cheney, but he was spirited away by the so-called "Coalition of the Willing" disguised in a wig of Britney Spears' hair and an ill-fitting track-suit lent by John Howard; Curse him!

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Diatom Diatribe cont.

The flood of inquiries I have received about my diatom mural has been astonishing! Who would have thought that so many out there share my love for these astonishing microscopic lifeforms. But what’s not to love? Diatoms, like my other all-time favourite, slime mould, are neither fish nor fowl. Which is to say that they are neither plants nor animals, and are not bacteria or fungi either.

In fact they are one-celled protists which, like plants, contain chlorophyll but, uniquely, diatoms are encased in an asymmetric silica shell that is like a shoebox with a bottom and a slightly larger top.

Only infinitely more attractive and multimorphic.

Diatoms are, in fact, a major group of eukaryotic algae, and are one of the most common types of phytoplankton. Most diatoms are unicellular, although some form chains or simple colonies. Some even move around under their own power, although others rely on the kindness of the currents to keep them suspended where they’ll thrive. Not only are there more than 100000 species of the cute little critters, they are found everywhere that there’s water including on and in soil. Of course the average person’s closest noticable contact with them live is as the slippery brown stuff on rocks in rivers, but some lucky folk get to experience their efflorescent ‘red tides’. Dead they have a thousand and one uses around the home including making nail polish shiny. They make superior dust of course. They also have a fossil record stretching back to at least the Jurassic. Only slightly longer than my own, I’d like to point out.

Anyway, I could go on and on about them – especially since pointy-headed science types are now looking at using them as components of nano-machines, but it was the mural and diatoms use in cultural activities that have excited most of my correspondents.

I wish that I could claim to have invented diatom art instead of simply being its (potentially) greatest exponent, but unfortunately other’s achievements in the area are too well known. As everyone knows, diatom art has been HUGE since Victorian times, when well-brought up young ladies would produce kaleidoscopic slide mounts to delight and amuse their friends and family. Indeed, I myself learned the art from one such microscopic enthusiast. MoD, naturally, has a collection of these Victorian mounts – although it is small, I can safely claim it as unparalleled by any other held by a public institution. The example above provides an indication of the sheer visual excitement of these specimens.

Additionally, we have a small collection of note-worthy but unattributed pictorial mounts. This, of course, is housed near our collection of pictures constructed from butterfly wing scales.



I have to fly – there’s been a reported sighting of El Cacaracha Libre lurking near the Chambre Ardente! (Inky swears he’s dealt with the putative revolutionary, but frankly, I have my doubts). But when I’ll be back, and then I’ll show you around a few modern diatomic creations.

Diatom Art >
Nature’s Blueprint: Mimicking Nature's cleverest designs >
"Scientists Learning To Create Nanomaterials Based On Micro-Algae Patterns"
in Spacemart >
Becker's Diatom Index >
Montana Diatoms (mounted arrangements showing the effect of imaging under different conditions -- recommended! Also the home of the micromanipulator) >

PS A note to Norman Ingram Hendey: next time you want to donate a large number of diatoms to somewhere, I would much prefer it if you came straight to MoD rather than going to obscure institutions such as the Natural History Museum in London. Just because you're dead at 101 is no excuse! A forensic scientist of your calibre SHOULD have known better!

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