Like most people who work in museums, I have to go to a lot of less-than-scintillating meetings. The single most effective way to alleviate the daily grind is to take the extra couple of minutes en route to the next meeting to walk past some of the most exceptional demonstrations of human endeavor in LACMA's galleries. It's been especially pleasurable of late because of the possibility of bumping into one of the more than forty artists and performers who are rehearsing in LACMA's galleries for our upcoming Machine Project Field Guide to LACMA.
A few weeks ago, Corey Fogel came in to try out acoustics for his combined drumming-and-putting-on-a-suit-made-of-peppercorn-cans performance. Jason Torchinsky has been getting wet in the Dorothy Collins Brown Fountain as he measures up for his hydropticonium (a made-up word for a wonderful flipbook-like contraption), that will be powered by the fountain's water flow. There have been quite a number of LACMA staff and Machine Project collaborators helping Jessica Z. Hutchins and Dawn Kaspar refine their murder mystery trail through LACMA's permanent galleries.
And last week, musicians, including Heather Lockie, each stood in the elevators in the Ahmanson Building playing string instruments, their music connecting, dispersing, and then tumbling out of the elevators as the doors of their respective elevators opened at different floors. Here's one of the videos that filmmaker Jim Fetterley has been making of the rehearsals for Machine Project's day-long Field Guide to LACMA on November 15.
[vimeo vimeo.com/2067135]