*Stacking and Volumes Continued : MATERIAL JOURNEYS

*Material Journeys through Other Realities
*Materiële Reizen Door Andere Realiteiten
*Voyages matériels à travers d'autres réalités 
(Weird French translation? "Physical Journeys"?)



https://wbo.ophir.dev/boards/bZAYqzE--NZwKl0MSvxgH0-yczs9p9LUT5S5fAiwA0A-#218,3,1.0

cylinder = vitrine
diameter = just larger than your height


*HEADS
Circling your own head, entering the room one by one, you will slowly start to see the total number and the total volume of all the objects that in this museum collection falls under the category “heads”. Now, imagine a timeline of the past 2500 years condensed into 2,5 minutes. These heads are all entering their orbit based on when they were acquired by the museum.

Some heads in the museum collection are large and oversized, others small enough to fit inside your mouth. They are cold and mainly made out of rough stone or porous clay. Amongst the sculptural depictions you would quickly notice a few heads are unmistakably human, with stretched features of tight, dried skin. Others are silky caricatures, romanticizationsof ancient greek beauty ideals with straight noses and arching eyebrows. … That was the last head to enter its orbit. You are now the centre of a universe made out of all the heads that belong to the museum collection.


*COINS
If you look up you will see that there is a slot in the ceiling above you, and something is dropping out of it. Gradually you will start to notice, around your feet there is a pond forming. This is the collective mass of all the coins that belong to this museum collection. A pond of metals, clays and minerals, some fabrics. Different materials that within the context of each their own society reflected value, are being blended into one coin-salsa. Look at the puddle rising. The small coins are in uneven shapes and forms, most of them round but some have odd, unconventional shapes, like small knives, keys and triangles. Values of other places and times unified and slowly watered out by each other.
The cold puddle of coin material is now complete, try not to stir the water when you choose to you step out.


*UNIDENTIFIED RAW MATERIAL
Look carefully at the ceiling of the vitrine and you will see it moving. This is because the room is slowly being filled in with the largest material category in the museum collection. Approaching you is the collective volume of all the objects which in the museum collection were given the label «Unidentified, raw material». Neither fish nor fowl, these materials are imperfectly, insufficiently or only partially known. Incompletely identified compositions that were made into all sorts of objects, tightly packed. 

Shrinking the space you stand in you see a mix of waxes, pigments, lacquer and textiles. It approaches your head, and pushes over it and continues down, until your neck, shoulders and chest is all wrapped in. You might notice the smell of unusual resins and old paper-like fibres that gets more and more dense. 

It has now reached the floor you stand on, and your body is completely incorporated into the volume of “unidentified raw material”. 


*ANIMAL RESTRAINTS
Look above. One connection at a time, you are being attached to the vitrine you're standing in. These links that you see represents a collection of leather straps, chains, harnesses and odd pieces of metal. You are currently being attached to all the different types of objects that fall into the category “animal restraints” in the museum collection, at the same time. 
There you go, you are now wearing them all.

The restraints are all different from each other, some leathery and light, others heavy, shackle like. Here and there one can make out the negative shapes of the creatures it has been built to control. Some are clearly made for large animals, like horses or even elephants, other fit you disturbingly well and are unquestionably made for humans. The tightness of all these restraints is slowly growing, straightening your back, pulling you up in the vitrine. Your feet slowly leave the ground and you are tightly suspended between the different connections, dangling your legs. Look around, slowly you are starting to be let back down again, and you can start to recognise that the restraints are moving as a pulse, like the muscles of a collective creature.


*BONES
Piercing through the vitrine you stand in, slowly building up, is an accumulation of bones.
What you are starting to see is the collective volume of all the bones that makes up objects now belonging to the museum. Bones of birds, fish and mammals.

There is a dry smell. Dust falls down in your neck as one moves past you. Many of these bones were engraved with elaborate patterns. Some of it became handles for knives, and others were hip-bones hollowed out to make rattles or other instruments. Smaller bits were used to make needles, hair pins or guitar picks. And while a few of the bones have entered the museum collection intact, embalmed as human mummies or as historically significant war horses, others have entered the collection as tiny particles - bone ash - mixed into delicate porcelain tableware.

The vitrine is now complete.
How much more dense do you think it would get if you added your own?


*FRUIT
You smell a sweet and deep scent. Look below you. There is a pile forming. This pile is made up of smaller, roundish objects. This is a heap of all the fruit that at some point was used to make objects that now belong to the museum collection. Nearly all you could pick up with one hand, some slightly bigger, but not much, pushing upwards under the soles of your feet.
Instead of being eaten or turning into compost, a lot of these fruits were made into small containers and bowls with polished, smooth surfaces. A few have been connected to sticks and strings and made into guitar-like instruments. They are warm under your feet as if they have been laying outside in the sun, in all their temporary beauty. Juicy, ripe and smelling like the end of a hot summer, or somehow, like all the seasonal changes in the weather that created them. While they were still part of a circular system, before they were transformed and transported into a linear one.

Perhaps it is time for this fruit to decompose and turn into mulch.


*HAIR
Look up. 
Growing towards you is the collective volume of all the hair that at some point was made into objects acquired by the museum.

Some of this is horse-hair, used to decorate hats and helmets, others are types of wool that was woven into carpets, or human hair, bleached and ironed into elaborate white wigs and toupees. The hair right above your head became densely woven baskets large enough to carry groceries for a big dinner, and the hair that grows a little further to the right became soft clothes, loosely knitted together, so that if you would pick one up and blow on it you would feel your own breath on your hand.
...Right about now you can probably feel it brush against your skin. 
Itching and tickling as it flows down.
At this point the hair is touching you all around. Can you feel how it envelops your body?


https://evasive.tech/11/
https://evasive.tech/31/

storytelling in a website inspiration: 
http://root.schloss-post.com


https://images.app.goo.gl/XqwbWY71oJbmJQp67
 https://images.app.goo.gl/ZR8wUv9r2yXmz9qeA
 . 
 | 
 - 
 0 
 oo 
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 ))))) 
 #### 
 $$$$$ 
 (((((((((               -------> -------> ------>

*Description in publication

Stacks and volumes of matter taken out of place when acquired by a museum collection, shown in its accumulative, collective form, the outlines of great piles, the mass of its body and your body together.
Bring your own hair and bones, come sit with us. We promise to guide you through it.


*Some points for conversation ?

It is about the accumulation of a collective mass of materials in a museum collection, 
and how to not only understand but somehow experience its size and meaning. 

We experience volume in relation to our own body.

Perhaps it is easier to experience a reaction to the raw material of, say, fruit, than the objects made out of them that are taken out of their context. 

What is a museum collection? 
Sometimes displayed, sometimes stored in boxes. 

Using non-visual language, trying to activate people's senses. 


rep

*Material categories


HAIR

• Animation cues: 
• Growing down in strains towards you.
• Audio:
  • If you use the screen in your hands to look up towards the ceiling, you will see that growing down towards you is the collective volume of all the hair that at some point was made into objects acquired by the museum.
  • Some of this is horse-hair, used to decorate hats and helmets, others are types of wool that was woven into carpets, or human hair, bleached and ironed into elaborate white wigs and toupees. The hair right above your head became densely woven baskets large enough to carry groceries for a big dinner, and the hair that grows a little further to the right became soft clothes, loosely knitted together, so that if you would pick one up and blow on it you would feel your own breath on your hand.
• ...and right about now you can probably feel it brush against your skin. 
  • If you choose to move the screen up and down in a combing motion,
  • you can comb out and untangle all this hair into a sleek carpet that will cover the entire floor.
  • Can you feel how soft it is under your feet?

V2 - Online

• Animation cues: 
• Growing in strains towards you from all sides.
• Audio/text:
  • You have now been shrunk down to a size of .....
  • Look around. Growing towards you is the collective volume of all the hair that at some point was made into objects acquired by the museum.
  • Some of this is horse-hair, used to decorate hats and helmets, others are types of wool that was woven into carpets, or human hair, bleached and ironed into elaborate white wigs and toupees. The hair right above your head became densely woven baskets large enough to carry groceries for a big dinner, and the hair that grows a little further to the right became soft clothes, loosely knitted together, so that if you would pick one up and blow on it you would feel your own breath on your hand.
• ...and right about now you can probably feel it brush against your skin. 
  • At this point the hair is touching you all around. Can you feel how it tickles?

COINS

• Animation cues: 
• Dropping coins one-by-one, forming a ring on the floor that is half inside the room and half beyond the wall. Keeping each ring. The slot blinks as it "drops" a coin, and a ring added in its centre. It forms something like a cross-section of a tree.
• Audio:
  • Use the screen in your hands to look in front of you. From a slot in the wall something drops out. 
  • Gradually you will start to see the collective mass of all the coins that belong to this museum collection. 
  • It forms a pond of different metals, stones, and ceramics in front of you. Blending different materials (materials that at some point and in some society reflected value) into one. Look at them fall.
  • The small coins are in uneven shapes and forms, most of them round but some have odd, unconventional shapes, like small knives, keys and triangles.
  • Values of other places and times unified and slowly watered out by each other.
  • The cold puddle of coin material is now complete, try not to stir the water.

V2 - Online

• Animation cues: 
• You have now been shrunk down to a size of .....
• You are inside a piggy bank. Dropping coins one-by-one, forming a ring on the floor. Keeping each ring. The slot in the roof blinks as it "drops" a coin, and a ring added in its centre. It forms something like a cross-section of a tree.
• Audio/text:
  • Look above your head. From a slot in the ceiling something drops out. 
  • Gradually you will start to see the collective mass of all the coins that belong to this museum collection. 
  • It forms a pond of different metals, clays and minerals around your feet. Blending different materials that within the context of each their own society reflected value. 
  • Look at the water rising.
  • The small coins are in uneven shapes and forms, most of them round but some have odd, unconventional shapes, like small knives, keys and triangles.
  • Values of other places and times unified and slowly watered out by each other.
  • The cold puddle of coin material is now complete, try not to stir the water when you choose to you step out.

HEADS

• Animation cues:
• starting to orbit around your own head, slowly building up a solar system that goes beyond the walls of the space.
• Audio:
  • Use your screen to look around you.
  • Circling your own head, entering the room one by one, you will slowly start to see both the total number and volume of all the heads that belong to the museum collection.
  • Imagine a timeline of the past 2500 years. 
  • The heads will enter their orbit based on the assumed date of origin. 
  • They will then start to change colour in order of the date they were acquired by the museum.
  • Some heads are large and oversized, others small enough to fit inside your mouth. 
  • They are cold and mainly made out of rough stone or porous clay.
  • A few heads are unmistakably human, with twisted features of tight, dried skin. 
  • Others are silky reproductions of antique sculptures, a romantisation of old beauty ideals with straight noses and arching eyebrows.
  • That was the last head to enter its orbit.
  • You are now the centre of a universe made out of all the heads that belong to the museum collection. 

V2 - Online

• Animation cues:
• starting to orbit around your own head, slowly building up a solar system that goes beyond the walls of the space.
• Audio:
  • Use your screen to look around you.
  • Circling your own head, entering the room one by one, you will slowly start to see both the total number and volume of all the heads that belong to the museum collection.
  • Imagine a timeline of the past 2500 years. 
  • The heads will enter their orbit based on the assumed date of origin. 
  • They will then start to change colour in order of the date they were acquired by the museum.
  • Some heads are large and oversized, others small enough to fit inside your mouth. 
  • They are cold and mainly made out of rough stone or porous clay.
  • A few heads are unmistakably human, with twisted features of tight, dried skin. 
  • Others are silky reproductions of antique sculptures, a romantisation of old beauty ideals with straight noses and arching eyebrows.
  • That was the last head to enter its orbit.
  • You are now the centre of a universe made out of all the heads that belong to the museum collection. 

FRUIT

• Animation cues:
• Compost heap, mulch - starts to collapse as you move the screen around to look at it. 
• Audio:
• • You smell a sweet and deep scent.
  • Use your screen to look in front of you, there is a large pile forming.
  • This pile is made up of smaller, roundish objects. 
  • Nearly all you could pick up with one hand, some slightly bigger, but not much. 
  • This is a heap of all the fruit that at some point was used to make objects that now belong to the museum collection.
  • Most of them were made into small containers and bowls with polished, smooth surfaces while others stayed rubbery and soft. A few have been connected to sticks and strings and made into guitar-like instruments. 
  • They are warm as if they have been laying outside in the sun, in all their temporary beauty. Juicy, ripe and smelling like the end of a hot summer, 
  • or somehow, like all the seasonal changes in the weather that created them. Perhaps it is time for this fruit to decompose and turn into mulch.

V2 - Online



ANIMAL RESTRAINTS (animal equipment + restraints)

• Animation cues:
• One by one, make a line between the person and the room, "attaching" them to all the animal equipment in the collection.
• Once done, the tension starts to build, lifting them up above the floor. Shout to make the tension let go and put yourself back on the ground whenever a loud enough noise is made. During silence you are always pulled up.
• Audio:
  • Use your screen to take a look around you. One connection at a time, you are being attached to the room you're sitting in. 
  • These links that you see are leather straps, chains, harnesses and odd pieces of metal. 
  • You are currently being attached to all the different types of animal restraints in the museum collection, at the same time.
  • There you go, you are now wearing them all.
  • The restraints are all different from each other, some leathery and light, others heavy, shackle like. One can make out the negative shapes of the creatures it has been built to control. Some are clearly made for large animals, like horses or even elephants, other are unquestionably fitted for humans.
  • The tightness of the straps is slowly building, pulling you up, and then letting you back down again, like the muscles of a collective creature. 

V2 - Online



BONES

• Animation cues:
• 3 cones (mammals, birds, fish) slowly increasing in size.
• Audio:
  • 3 conical pillars are slowly growing around you, you can see them through the screen in your hands.
  • This stalagmitic build up is an accumulation of bone, all the bone that make up objects now belonging to the museum.
  • There is a dry, animalistic smell. 
  • Dust falls down in your neck as one cone extends past you and if you look up you can see that it also goes beyond the ceiling. Three solid towers of bones from birds, fish and mammals are rising up.
  • Many of these bones were engraved with elaborate patterns. Some of it became handles for knives, and others were hip-bones hollowed out to make rattles or other instruments. 
  • Smaller bits were used to make needles, hair pins or guitar picks.
  • And while a few of the bones that make up these cones have entered the museum collection intact, embalmed as human mummies or as historically significant war horses, 
  • others have entered the collection as tiny particles - bone ash - mixed into delicate porcelain tableware.
  • The cones are now complete. How much do you think they would they grow if you added your own?

V2 - Online



UNIDENTIFIED RAW MATERIAL

• Animation cues:
• Two sides of the room are closing in towards you.
• Audio:
  • If you use the screen in your hands to look to your left and your right side, you will see that the walls are slowly coming towards you, this is because the room is slowly being filled up with the largest material category in the museum collection.
  • Approaching you from each side is the collective volume of all the objects which in the museum collection were given the lable «Unidentified, raw material». 
  • Neither fish nor fowl, these materials are imperfectly, insufficiently or only partially known, 
  • incompletely identified compositions that were made into all sorts of objects. 
  • Shrinking the space around you a mix of waxes, pigments, laquer and textiles enters the room.
  • You might notice the smell of unusual resins and old paper-like fibres that gets more and more dense. 
  • But as it can not be sufficiently identified, making trouble for our material catalogue, the material slips between our fingers and leaks out of the room again.

V2 - Online

*2019 technical details

CODE Stuff...

1. Calibration
- Use device camera to capture image of calibration object (KETAI Library)
- Analyse central area of image, looking for specific colour (measure by %...or 'average')
- set camera based on location of calibration objtect in space
- load VR space from file (MONO)
2. Event
- based on calibration object, load correct event scene (geometry/animation/ audio etc)
- play audio (Processing Sound library)
- play animation (within virtual space)
- user interaction (if required) through inline mic (Porcessing sound library, with callibration)
- user audio translated to mesh distortions/ timeline changes/ etc (perlin noise etc)

compatibale devices
https://www.maxboxvr.com/phones-work-compatible-google-cardboard



Budget
https://ethercalc.org/77vfdf530n4v

Updated practical description
There is a start-table with 2 tablets connected to headphones, sitting in charging docks, and instructions. Around the room are 7 chairs and in front of each one an acrylic cylinder filled with liquid and ambiguous shapes. If one follows the instructions to take a tablet, sit down in a chair and hold the tablet over the cylinder in front, it activates a piece of audioguide coordinated with a stripped back VR visualization. The VR visualisation will only illustrate volumes, numbers or force of objects, nothing more. The audioguide will try to trigger a sensory imagination to fill in the gaps.

Space and setup

• Pianofabriek floor plan http://www.pianofabriek.be/IMG/pdf/plan_alexandria_ziguinchor.pdf
• [building up from 8 October]
• Opening: 10 October @ 18:00
• DiVersions v1 will run until 26 October.
• https://diversions.constantvzw.org/wiki/index.php?title=Agenda

Physical objects of the installation

• 2 x Tablets and headphones
• 2 x Charging docks
• 1 x small table
• 1x Instructions
• 7 x acrylic cylinders with caulking silicone objects, coloured liquid and coloured lids
• 2 x chairs  bench
• (+ catalogue entry)

Overview of selected categories with quantity + what the contents of the jar is inspired by
*        Coins - 470 - annual honesty plant
*        Objects made of hair - 705 - distorted brush comb 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nudibranch#/media/File:Berghia_coerulescens_(Laurillard,_1830).jpg
http://www.seaslugforum.net/find/polychaete
*        Heads - 585 - https://www.1stdibs.com/furniture/tables/side-tables/contemporary-unique-puffy-brick-column-stool-side-table-soft-baroque/id-f_12524621/
*        Fruit - 639 - branch
*        Animal equipment + restraints- 1090 - creature-like https://www.flickr.com/photos/dbroberg/3114108749
*        Bone - 1138 - skin  https://www.pond5.com/stock-footage/73796055/gorgonian-fan-coral-branch-subergorgia-mollis-close.html
*        Unidentified raw material - 1291 - unidentifiable shapes


Text catalogue/publication

*pictures from virtual piles and perhaps a cylinder*

• • Stacks and volumes of matter taken out of place when acquired by a museum collection, 
  • shown in its accumulative, collective form, the outlines of great piles, 
  • the mass of its body and your body together.
  • Bring your own hair and bones, come sit with us,
  • We promise to guide you through it.

Text info-label
About the project (ca 3-5 sentences):

Material Journeys Thourgh Other Realities

Each collumn represents a material category from the online catalogue of the Royal Museum of Art and History, Brussels. 
Follow the instructions to unluck the real, collective volume of each category.
Bring your own hair and bones, come sit with us,
We promise to guide you through it.

Artists: Mia Melvær, Philip Langley
Collection that was worked with: Carmentis, the online catalogue of the Royal Museum of Art and History, Brussels.

Instructions:
1. Sit down on the bench.
2. Pick up a screen and put on headphones.
3A. Hold screen over one of the columns so that the colour on top fills the entire screen to activate a material guide (Each collumn will activate a different guide)
3B. Press the button that corresponds with the symbol on top of a collumn (The symbol of each cullomn will activate a different guide)


Threads we could pick up: 

*Poetic Quantification / Physicality
*Materialising volumes - building stacks
*Cutting across the current categorisation of the museum catalogue - creating other volumes based on existing groups such as material
*Translating this into something more experiential - for example relative to body (As was tried with audio guide)
*Making something non-physical seem physical


*Tectonics of "stuff"
*Lifespans visualised as volume (Tying together with previous thread) ----> Material and time 
*Materials movement around the world
*Natural (e.g. rock or animal) 
*Life (animals plants)
*Societal use (i.e. 'performance' )
*Cultural retirement (the museum)
*Creating a score - dance/movement of matter
*Bones around the world as living material - dead, carved, collected, transported, swarmed together at the museum (and still not "together-together")
*Packaging - Volume during travel vs. arrival
*What is needed for one object to arrive at the museum?


Possible outputs / Mediums:
*Audioguide ----> Audio something
*Gift Shop ----> Material density, telling a story of material journeys through stacks and volumes. 
*Dance scores / score of movement / notation meets burolandschaft architectural plans ---> To be reproduced by what or whom?
*Score turns into tour / track /  "Parcour of stone" "Parcour of bones" ---> Back to an audio-guide perhaps. Maybe an imaginary tour?
*Maps of where oneself is "in the stack" of materials ----> Bringing it back to being relative to your own body-size, as in: You are of a certain material and age, and you have travelled through space and time, how does that compare to the objects that surround you at this very moment in the museum, including floors above and below you?
*Creating something that points out that by going into the museum you walk into a kind of "stack of materials", that compared to how spread out they used to be are now highly contensed. ---> Making the building a transparant container.

Narrowing down outputs material journeys, prototype :

• Visualisation of material journey - in form of a print or document
• Visualisation printed on transparent paper, to be able to layer journeys of different materials
• Visualisation combined with an audio-track / guide
• Visualisation or map combined with a geo-located audio-track / guide (Recho'ish?)

Links / References / Research:
*Dance notation Wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dance_notation
*Examples:
*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dance_notation#/media/File:Zorn_Cachucha.jpg
*https://www.britannica.com/topic/Schrifttanz
*https://hu.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rigaudon#/media/File:Feuillet_notation.jpg
*https://i.pinimg.com/736x/88/0e/e7/880ee71266bf2a27fa2f36ef49da09fd--la-dance-th-century.jpg
*https://i.pinimg.com/236x/cb/ab/bc/cbabbcb738899ea4108e07ef5dc84a06.jpg
*Burolandschaft as notations of movement and activity http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-efexTLuPFjU/UY584G2Y_UI/AAAAAAAAHYo/beRB3rk02K8/s1600/Osram-Munich_1965_plan.jpg
*The crowdedness of a gift shop / material density ---> Stacks and volumes in the gift shop https://www.google.be/search?client=firefox-b-ab&dcr=0&biw=1280&bih=649&tbm=isch&sa=1&ei=J3sFWpDkBqnfgAbthqaADA&q=gift+shop&oq=gift+shop&gs_l=psy-ab.3..0j0i30k1l9.19358.19358.0.19605.1.1.0.0.0.0.134.134.0j1.1.0....0...1.1.64.psy-ab..0.1.133....0.dm_CN6bToLg
*Mary Douglas' theory definition of dirt as "dirt is matter out of place" is a current obsession of mine that seems like a reference to include as well https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purity_and_Danger

Comments
*Saskia from music information - extensive information
*The difficulty of movement
*Origin and  - provinence and relation is the way that collection is created. 
*Archeological material - classification - Piles - groups. 


Practical:

*Meetings:
*03.11.17 - Internal stacking chatting meeting #1
*10'ish.11.17 - Internal stacking chatting meeting #2
*30.11.17 - Informal group meeting 14-17h  in The Museum Jubelpark/Cinquantenaire
*Mid February - present the prototypes  - Phil finishes his PHD

*Budget:
*Total €800
*Costs
*Phil travels to Brussels


Some old notes to keep track of: 

* stacking as a whole and generating a "physical" artefact of the digital database     
--- poster or book through generating A4 documents

Categories of mass and material
*        Heads - 585          (visualised)       
*        Coins - 279       
*        Bone - 1138
*        Objects made of hair - 705            
*        Boxes - 444       
*        Fruits - 639       
*        Animal equipment - 1090          (visualised)       
*        Unidentified raw material - 1291  

Shapes and size discussion:
*Threedimensional box     †
*spheres - bubbles - fleeting     
*Weight     
*Size     
*Creepy size 

Reality:
*Women - 173 ?       
*Tools -1126        
*vs hands - 173 :-/         
*Islamic art aquired through time       
*Embroidery - 978       
*Phil's lifetime - 2083
*
Collections:       
*Carriages collection - 2735         
*Preciosa and silverware - 3584         
*Precision instruments - 277