So, here’s the hugemongous mind map at the end of day two. We mostly spent the day making nose trumpets, but our mind map also grew a little bit.
Hugemongous mind map at the end of Tuesday
Here are the two cards that we’ll be taking as our cue for Wednesday’s investigations:
If there were no museum assistants, how would people teach us?
If there wasn't anyone to teach us would we forget about the past?
We think it’s important that the MoR takes steps to protect us from forgetting about the past, so for Wednesday’s investigations we’re going to be making memory machines and seeing if we can find a way of preserving what we know.
We’ll be running drop-in sessions for you to come and help us figure out how we’re going to do this – 11am to 1pm and again 2pm to 4pm. See you tomorrow!
From the hugemongous mind map yesterday came the ideas that if there were no museum assistants coming to work at the museums then there might not be anyone to switch the lights on and everything would therefore be in the dark and we wouldn’t be able to see the paintings. Following on from this someone suggested that we might smell the paintings instead of looking at them. This came with the added bonus of not breaking the “do not touch” rule – excellent!
For our investigations today we explored the idea of using nose trumpets – contraptions to help us smell better. (A bit like ear trumpets, but different…)
The MoR headquarters was a hive of activity for the 4 hours we were open, with many, many Inspectors making fully-functional nose trumpets.
Nose trumpet manufacture
Nose trumpet manufacture
Here is a tiny selection of the results:
After making their nose trumpets the Inspectors then went out to explore the museum and see what different smells they could hunt down. Several people took clipboards and paper with them so they could record their findings. Here’s a nice range of smells from Inspector Anna:
A list of smells found and examined in the museum building
Being stationed back at the nose trumpet factory I didn’t get to see much of them being put into use, however there was at least one sighting of nose trumpets over on the other side of town!
Inspector Joshua also shared some great photos with our project Flickr account and we have this one of him out and about with his trumpet and clipboard:
Inspector Joshua. Ministry of Rules.
Thanks to Joshua and to everyone else who joined us at the MoR today – we’re really looking forward to tomorrow’s investigations!
The Ministry of Rules is a fictional organisation that will be based in the Play Ground exhibition over 21st - 25th of February.
You can join the Ministry for a series of short, free activities to investigate ideas around rules in art galleries and museums.
The Ministry of Rules is coordinated by artist Nikki Pugh, but you, the Ministers, will be able to guide the investigations.
Join us in the gallery throughout the morning of Monday 21st of February to make the enormous ideas wall that will start off the investigation. What rules do we follow? Which rules would we like to break? Which rules shall we re-write?
