Museum of Jurassic Technology! *image heavy*

[JoitheArtist]

I spent my afternoon in what must be the repository of at least half of the world's supply of pure AWESOME.

http://www.mjt.org/

It's the most bizarre place...one whole set of rooms dedicated to the work of Athenasius Kircher, a room of exhibits of bizarre superstitions, an oil portrait gallery of all the dogs in the Soviet space program, and room of bizarre letters to the Mount Wilson Observatory in the early decades of the 20th century.

SO. FREAKING. COOL.

(photos posted on Facebook at the moment; Photobucket won't let me upload from this computer for some reason--I'll try to find an alternate option in a few minutes)

[BookstoreEscapee]

OK, that sounds cool. I gotta go to bed but I'm gonna bookmark that site and look at it some more later.

[Andara Bledin]

(photos posted on Facebook at the moment; Photobucket won't let me upload from this computer for some reason--I'll try to find an alternate option in a few minutes)

If you don't care about other random people potentially using the images and the inability to delete anything, go with tinypic. I use it all the time, particularly for throw-away forum posts.

^-.-^

[Green_Fairy]

is it bad that when i first saw the title, i thought of dinosaurs with hammers?

[JoitheArtist]

Updated--IMAGE HEAVY!

Pics!!!

Ok, here's the entrance to the museum. It's in this slightly seedy part of LA. When you face the door, there's a fountain and random ostrich egg, on the right is another random display. It almost feels like entering a secret society or something.

[JoitheArtist]

I wish I'd gotten some pics of the guy who was at the desk: he was a young guy with a great beard, odd voice, and wearing a waistcoat!!! He was AWESOME!

The door leads into the museum store (on my way out, I bought a bestiary, translated from a 12th century Latin text!), and then into the museum proper.

We went for the Athanasius Kircher exhibit first. The rooms were inky black, with pools of light on the exhibits: incredibly atmospheric and absolutely stunning to look at. My photos don't capture it at all.

First off was this ring of water-filled glass globes, with little homunculi in them. It was some sort of contraption to show magnetism...or something. I wasn't clear on the concept, and half the exhibit info is invented BS anyway. But it looked COOL.

We could hear this weird jingling sound, mixed with a lovely medieval song, and went into the next room to see...STUFF!

There was this AWESOME bell wheel: it would move, and all the bells would ring. I'll post a vid of that later. And then these little empty dioramas, that when you looked in through these two plates of glass, little glowing figures would appear!!

And a whole thing about how Kircher demonstrated that if the Tower of Babel had succeeded in being built to the moon, it would have knocked the Earth out of its rotation.

[JoitheArtist]

After leaving the Kircher exhibit, we went into this little narrow room with random prints on the wall, and a line of microscopes down the middle. When you looked into the scope, there were these TINY little mosaics made up of butterfly scales!!

Then there was this room all about trailers and parks, using the Garden of Eden as a metaphor for the trailers. And two maps, picked out in lights: one showed the locations of trailer manufacturers, and the other, the location of parks. VERY cool. There were four display cases for things like pincushion collections and weird bottles, and the cases totally look like alien pods.

And then an exhibit by Ricky Jay, about dice decomposing! It was subtitled 'Rotten Luck." The dice were all falling apart in such weird ways!

[JoitheArtist]

Next there was this awesome room with ghostly flower pictures inside, and metal 3D glasses hanging in the doorway. The pics were taken with x-rays, and when you looked through the glasses, these ghostly flowers would just pop into view!! And the floor was pressure-sensitive, so you didn't even know what sort of flower you were seeing till you stood in front of it and the name appeared.

Then there was a room of early 3D images; not classic stereopticons, but vectorgraphs!! VERY cool, and pretty effective.

In the back was a big room full of weird superstitions: some were illustrated with little dioramas, some were just exhibits of a part of the idea, and some were animations projected on glass in the walls. I took photos of the ant's eggs (to drive love away) and myths about teeth!

[JoitheArtist]

You guys would have LOVED this room: http://i39.tinypic.com/209ga3l.jpg (I am an idiot and forgot to upload it on the original message) It made me think of GK's "Hot Tips for America" line. It was a collection of letters sent to the Mount Wilson Observatory in the 20's and 30's. It was actually a relief to see so many that could have come straight off Planet Feedback: even then people were writing in scream-o-vision with no punctuation! Made me feel a little better about the modern era. Anyway, those letters were hysterical!

There was also a Foucault's Pendulum in that room, but my pic of it didn't turn out.

Then there was a room filled with memorabilia from this singer, who was apparently pretty bad.

And an exhibit ostensibly about cones, but also had recordings of the singer's music playing over it.

And this little window with a teacup and madeleines, and some tubes...I think you were supposed to smell something there, but I couldn't get it to work.

There were a few other exhibits, then we headed up the narrow staircase...

[JoitheArtist]

What was at the top of the staircase?

A gallery of oil paintings of the seven dogs of the Soviet space program! Laika's portrait had a candle burning in front of it. Off to the side was a small theater where they would show some short Russian films (no show at the time we were there).

And I didn't get pics of it, but past the gallery was a tea room, with tea from a samovar (I think) and a Russian lady serving, and this big skinny dog. Oh, and cookies! Lots of little nooks and crannies to sit in, too.

And that's the Museum of Jurassic Technology!

Oh, and a video that I took, just to give you the atmosphere: View My Video

[Andara Bledin]

I'm local, and I've never even heard of the place!

And now I want to make myself a bell wheel. I love bells.

^-.-^

[JoitheArtist]

I'm local, and I've never even heard of the place!

And now I want to make myself a bell wheel. I love bells.

^-.-^

Same here. You should totally go see it, it's really a fun place! Free admission, though they do request a $5 donation.

[BookstoreEscapee]

If I ever find myself in LA I'm gonna have to check this place out.

[Green_Fairy]

it's like, 5 hours away from me. i'll have to make a daytrip out of it at some point.

[crazylegs]

I've popped an *image heavy* tag on the title for the benefit of those members on dial up...