A murder-mystery for LACMA patrons to solve  over the course of two dozen clues within the museum!

Yesterday’s Field Guide to LACMA by Machine Project is one of those spectacles that make me want to discuss it with others. It’s so thrilling in principle and so fun in execution that I get the urge to tell other people and track down those that were there to try to make head way as to what happened.

For one minute, every hour, this guy plays the most shredding of metal. After the one minute face melter, he retires for the next 59 minutes. Oh yeah, this is in a Gothic archway on top of a building and can be viewed via telescope if necessary.  

At first, Rhea and I flipped through the extravagant booklet of additions made to LACMA for a single Saturday and felt overwhelmed. The number of activities, installations, and events was daunting. Eventually, I chucked the book and started to wander. That’s when things took a turn for the awesome.

The roving guy in the black pepper box suit found performing a jig in one of the wings of the museum. 

What I liked most about the day was that in many ways Field Guide was still really about accentuating what LACMA has to offer. Machine Project put its signature spin on various activities, but it was in order to encourage visitors to experience LACMA – not necessarily to see Machine Project stuff in a bigger space. Once we started walking through the museum, we would haphazardly discover an automated replica of a painting or a roving colorful constellation of people or shuffling wooden tables or a murder mystery in progress.

That looks familiar!

Machine Project’s one day Field Guide to LACMA allowed for new interactions with a space already familiar to most Angelenos. Like one of my other favorite places in the city, the Museum of Jurassic Technology, Field Guide helped visitors re-imagine the possibilities of a museum, its function and its expectations as far as social decorum. (As we were buying tickets, Rhea handed my a letter announcing that, “Today, November 15, 2008, all visitors to the museum are invited to clap for the pieces they enjoy.” I’m pretty sure she regretted informing me of this development as I made frequent use of the invitation to the bemusement of those other, quieter patrons. I must say that BCAM has some seriously great acoustics going on in there!)

Rhea’s favorite part of the Field Guide: a full sized recreation of one painting entirely out of fresh flowers!

Like a healthy portion of other visitors yesterday, I came to LACMA specifically because I wanted to see what Machine Project had been planning. However, the many patrons that happened to be coming to LACMA on the same day as the Field Guide are privileged to walk into a temporarily open, interpretive version of the museum. Though cerebral in concept, all of the activities were engaging for visitors, regardless of age or theoretical interest.

As much as this was a fun day, I think it also speaks to how we critique and interact within the confines of a museum. I cannot overstate how much work this project must have taken and I’m thrilled about reading other accounts and seeing what else took place yesterday. (Our good friend Dorka-tron was on site taking pictures all day along with a small army of photographers. She snapped a great pic of a young child looking curiously at the long-haired chap playing the shredding metal for one minute every hour behind a shroud of smoke. Pulitzer, you’re on notice!)

Continuous “elevator music” throughout the day. We were treated to two different drummers, a trombonist, a folk group, a trumpet player, and a baritone. (I took the elevator as much as possible purely for the thrill of being crammed next to an intensely concentrating musician.)

My only regret was not signing up early enough to get an Ambient Haircut – nothing like getting a trim next to a Theremin-fronted musical outfit.

(There is a strong pedagogical foundation within Field Guide. I’ll get back to that sooner or later.)