August 14, 2021
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While the creator of the Giant's House has throughout her career successfully emulated Nature, flowers from the Wellington Botanical Gardens or animals from the Auckland Zoo don't even have to do that. They need just to be because they ARE Nature.
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...The touch that made my day, in particular, was the Lady Norwood Rose Garden. I am not sure if she had promised it to anybody or just delivered without promising but the garden is there, and it lets one’s imagination run as wild as it gets.
To start with, there are monochromic flowerbeds, and the red-roses, and the yellow-roses beds are placed right next to each other. If only green roses were not so rare, the lady could create a traffic light alley! It would not be too far from a party alley where pink roses are having a ball – quite literally so as they seem to be holding each other’s thorns and swaying together as if dancing – and white roses are clearly into a masquerade because they are conspiring with several stray red sisters to pretend being pohutukawas. There is at least one science flower bed where each rose is multicoloured, and the list goes on and on…
August 21, 2021
...The kiwi-house in the zoo is a seemingly impossible compromise. The zoo itself is a regular establishment of the “9 to 5” type (the hours may vary a little bit but it makes no difference) while kiwi is a night bird, and it simply does not tolerate daylight. In other words, under normal circumstances no zoo visitors should ever be able to see the resident kiwis other than asleep. A kiwi zoo without kiwis would be completely preposterous – so the management had to find a solution, and whatever solution they might have contemplated had necessarily to include complete darkness. That is how the unique environment of the kiwi house was created: daylight lamps are on when it is nighttime outside, and as long as the zoo is open to the public, the area is pitch black (for the sake of the birds) but somehow covered by some sort of infrared light that allows the visitors to discern shapes and movement. Tourists are tourists, and they would take pictures whatever is happening around them while using flash inside the kiwi house is obviously an absolute taboo. It is not difficult to guess what pictures taken there could possibly look like – Malevich’s “Black Square” must be the most popular image in the Auckland area! At the same time, the picture is not completely black as some shapes and silhouettes can be distinguished – just enough to stir one’s imagination and perpetuate curiosity to make one try to figure out the kiwi.
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August 28, 2021
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While Man is but a student trying to emulate Nature, the ultimate Master, there is something only Man can create - namely, concepts. Only Man can resize, rearrange and rethink existing things in order to render them a new meaning.
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...That relatively small exhibition, located in the basement of an ordinary building in downtown Victoria, is a whole world combining just about everything: history, literature, daily life, you name it! At the exhibition, medieval London is rubbing shoulders with modern one, and WWII armoured vehicles are right next to a neat train running down the recently created Pacific Railway, while Napoleon’s soldiers in tricolor uniforms seem to be saluting their counterparts from the Allied Forces descending on the same German town a century-and-a-half later...
The variety of that – I have to repeat myself – relatively small exhibition is quite stunning, but so is its precision. Social historians could probably write a big article (if not a small book) about English manors in the times of the Tudors, their only source of information being the 20 or so exhibits depicting one such manor in every imaginable detail. Likewise, architects and city planners could study medieval building styles and materials, or various layouts of medieval towns, just by looking at respective exhibits. All in all, the presumably “children’s museum” turns out to be yet another microcosm of our whole world at large – and a very special experience for anyone who appreciates talent, creativity, and imagination.
September 4, 2021
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Rendering things a new meaning can sometimes prove to be a double-edged sword because some of those meanings are imaginary rather than real. None is more so than the Glass Floor in the CN Tower in Toronto.
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A human mind may play all sorts of amazing tricks with its respective body. For instance, shipwreck survivors perfectly equipped with food, water, and warm clothes might die of sheer terror within a couple of days, if not hours. Yet, it takes something pretty special to make a perfectly healthy person freeze, unable to move a step on a perfectly straight floor – and that’s exactly what happens from time to time in an ordinary hall located on the top level of the Tower. This hall is usually filled with casual tourists happily stretching their legs after having waited for about 45 minutes in line for the elevators. Many people find themselves in front of a piece of glass serving as a part of the floor during the very first stroll. If, driven by a natural curiosity, they cast a glance at the glass, they will see almost nothing but colourless air, as miniature human shapes and sidewalks looking like grey bands are so distant that they can be easily overlooked or fully ignored. The glass area looks like a grey hole, and – though it’s explicitly stated that the glass is super-reliable (it can withstand the weight of 14 large hippos!) – one’s mind perceives it as such. Consequently, the mind issues a harsh command to the legs, and they stop in midair.
September 11, 2021
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While some new meanings are quite challenging, either emotionally or intellectually, others are just pleasing and soothing. Such as, for instance, art - when it's applied to such seemingly routine and uninspiring places as airports.
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...Folklore is a powerful creativity booster, and Iceland made sure not to waste its potential. The first object one cannot help noticing right after getting through Passport Control at the Reykjavik airport is a life-size statue of what is similar enough to a leprechaun for some visitors to start worrying that they have somehow landed in a wrong country! The confusion is embarrassing enough to stop and actually pay attention to an invitation to “capture a photo moment with the Yule lads”.
Folklore characters are meant to please airport guests and lighten their mood, as many people are reminded of some happy, trouble-free moments of their own childhood when their parents would read aloud a fairy-tale to them.
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By Alan Lebeda - ttp://www.airliners.net/photo/Braathens/Boeing-737-405/0795011/L/, GFDL 1.2, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16934724
September 18, 2021
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The above examples demonstrate how new meanings can help to explore a natural phenomenon or improve a routine experience. However, the most imaginative of them can go as far as creating a new social reality.
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...While it was Nature that shaped Norwegian landscape for everyone to enjoy and admire, Norwegians were left to decide, HOW to transport their guests into the country. Their choice has proven to be very much out of the ordinary: most visitors are brought in by a royalty! Each and every of the 33 planes belonging to Norwegian main airline “Braathens”, has a proper name. The name can be descriptive (like “Ingeborg Svensdatten”, which simply means “Ingeborg, who is Sven’s daughter”), complimentary (I, for instance, flew to Oslo by “Hakon the Good”), or neutral (it was “Sigurd Muur” who carried me all the way back). The name can even be stigmatizing, like “Erik the Bloody Axe”. I hope this one is allowed to carry no passengers, only cargo – otherwise, staying clean during the flight might turn into a real problem!
Assigning names to certain inanimate objects is, in fact, a rather established tradition but naming a whole national fleet on the same principle is, probably, unheard of – totally unique. Those planes look like flying history books, they really do!
Freiburg -Colombischloessle.
Copyright -FWTM-Mende-1_
September 25, 2021
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Norwegian "Royal Fleet" created a new social reality based on the most basic "why not?!" principle. Once you realize there is no reason not to do something that has never been done before, the sky becomes the only limit (in "Braathens" case, quite literally!).
For instance, people usually live in homes, relax in parks, enjoy art in museums - and yet, some multimillionaires wouldn't think twice about turning their homes into museum-like art exhibitions. So, why not follow suit and turn parks into homes?
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Freiburg, a town in Germany, found no answer to the seemingly rhetorical question, and…there appeared a whole quarter, whose residents have every right to claim they live in a park. That, of course, doesn’t prevent them from living in modern apartments teeming with modern technological devices. They just step out onto a grassy lawn, not a sidewalk – and their path to the town proper winds around a beautiful lake rather than following a noisy main road. Scattered all over the park, garden-houses peacefully coexist with old-fashioned phone booths while handy bicycles rub wheels with cars waiting for their owners in a specially assigned parking lot. A cozy beach and a mini-stadium are just around the corner as well.
KLM-Travel Guide.
Gustav Vigeland's bizarre sculpture park
October 1, 2021
The "Open Air Museum" concept is a perfect example of how a creative idea spreads wings and turns into reality. First there is a meaningful incentive – in this case, it is one’s desire to live a life that's comfortable and exciting at the same time . This incentive sets minds in motion and eventually results in a trailblazing concept, like bringing various and seemingly unrelated joys of life under the same...sky (rather than roof). A park serving as a home becomes the first step in this direction. Once the new combination has rooted, adding a museum to it follows quite naturally...
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...In Vigeland Park the Open Air museum comes in shape of just one very long sculpture-lined alley. The sculptures, located on both sides of the alley, represent common people - men, women, children - adopting a whole variety of postures, some of which would require superhuman strength and flexibility, while others are so natural and familiar that many tourists amuse themselves by mimicking the closest sculpture. The alley blends into a staircase crowned with a fountain looking like a merry-go-round - but for traditional horses being replaced with more sculptures. Those are constantly sprinkled with water, and they are gleaming under the sun like golden nuggets. On the other side of the staircase there is a small glade merging with another climb that leads towards a huge statue known in the history of art as the "Monolith"...
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Norwegian Museum of Cultural History.
11484 bestourism.com
October 8, 2021
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While Vigeland Open Air Museum is a small part of a big park blended into a residential district, the Norwegian Museum of Cultural History IS essentially such a district. There are streets and squares, dwelling houses, stores and public gardens there - as well as a functioning pharmacy and a dental clinic. There is also a Sunday church offering weekly sermons and a Friday summer school for children. Visitors are welcome to entertain themselves by riding a horse, savoring a traditional Norwegian flatbread "Lefse" or watching a show in the "Green Theatre". All that combined would easily qualify that museum to be called a full-fledged village but for the fact that it would be a Potemkin village because nobody has ever lived there. So, the place is always closed for the night.
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The easiest way to better understand this social and cultural phenomenon would be to enter several houses and watch their temporary residents for a while. Most of them are young people in their early 20s but, judging by the way they are dressed, one could think they were born about 200 years ago! Their activities only corroborate that conclusion because they are doing what their great grandmothers would be doing day in and day out - namely, grinding coffee beans, baking "lefse" (and selling it on the spot for a purely symbolic fee), singing imaginary babies to sleep (and doing it so well that one can't help applauding), weaving, or ironing using a hand-made clothes iron serving as both a practical tool and a symbol of a romantic tradition. Young men in love would make such an iron as a gift for their prospective bride. If the gift was accepted, a wedding would follow soon. If not...Well, the poor chap would have to make an exact copy of the iron for another candidate and hope that she will be more impressed with his craftsmanship...
October 15, 2021
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All the houses on display in the Norwegian Museum were built as exhibits, and nobody has ever actually lived in them. As opposed, each and every building in "Gamle Bergen" (Old Bergen) had been inhabited for centuries, and their past owners would be very surprised and flattered to find out that their property became a museum exhibit. There was nothing historic about those very typical, very commonplace houses - and, ironically, it was their typicality that secured their place in history, as each and every of them was taken apart, transported (plank by plank) to a new location and reassembled there exactly as it used to be...
Ordinary as each of those buildings might be, together they work a miracle of bringing to life a prosperous medieval town full of contrasts and flair. A town where a baker and his entire household would live like cavemen, sleeping between 6 pm and midnight and working for the rest of the time with short breaks for meals. Only the lady of the house/baker's wife would have some semblance of leisure between selling bread and bookkeeping - just enough time to sit in front of the window and people-watch, sew or repair clothes. The baker's servants and apprentices would sleep in massive iron chests with heavy lids. The guide never mentioned if any of those lids were prone to snap shut on their own accord...
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A neighbouring barber-shop would also stay open until late but barbers and their assistants worked shifts there. The main room was always kept clean and orderly, customers' seats were somewhat hard but rather comfortable. Many customers would return to the shop month after month, and they were considered almost family and treated accordingly. Occasionally, if not often, people would drop by the shop simply to chat and share news rather than have a haircut. All in all, the place looked and functioned quite like a modern cafe or a social club...
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