29 September 2011 – 1.24pm
It’s a sunny Thursday with lots of people popping past the front façade of Te Papa. What better conditions in which to transform the exterior walls of the national museum into a piece of impromptu social art. Tape artist Erica Duthie and her partner Struan Ashby will spend the next four days constructing images out of tape on the front walls of Te Papa. Once finished, the art will cover the two walls that create the boundary for the front entrance and forecourt (opposite the Circa Theatre).
Erica’s specialty is portraits of people – and that means everyone’s invited to come down and take a look… and even join in the fun. Here you can see Erica with one of her first portrait subjects Henriette. Both Erica and Struan say having people involved is a great thing, and that children will definitely be allowed to touch, in fact the pair will see people touching the tape and sticking it back up where it peels off as a matter of crucial maintenance.
“Oh, you’ve got to catch the weather here” says Erica. The project has actually begun a day early because of forecasted rain on Sunday. In previous media articles, she’s told reporters that she’s going to have to contend with Wellington’s famous wind, in one of the capitals windiest months.
We’ll be following the tape art as it goes up and then as it comes down in a big fun public tear-the-tape-off deinstallation on Sunday.
Where: Front walls of Te Papa (near the main entrance)
When: Thursday to Saturday
Why: Festival of Carnivale
Who: you… pop on down have a look, and see if you can get your portrait up there… and follow the posts or share your own pics to https://www.facebook.com/#!/TePapa
Erica Duthie, with one of her first portrait subjects, Henriette
It seems like New Zealand museums are setting a new trend for staging scientific dissections of big interesting animals and getting the public involved in them online.
It’s a great way to engage visitors with the scientific activities of natural history museums – it takes the behind-the-scenes stuff out into the public arena. And it can be a real boost to public knowledge and understanding about animal biology and conservation.
Today Auckland Museum is holding a dissection of a Great White Shark and you can view it on their website from 2pm. The necropsy, or animal autopsy, will raise public awareness of this magnificent, and vulnerable fish species.
Here at Te Papa we have also had great success with making some recent scientific examinations and dissections available online. In April 2008 a team of scientists thawed and examined a colossal squid, but didn’t dissect it. This is the colossal squid now on display , along with lots of info explaining it’s anatomy. While the team examined the big colossal squid specimen they dissected a smaller, incomplete colossal squid specimen and a giant squid specimen and blogged about it live. The information we got from dissecting these other big squid specimens was vital to understanding the biology of the colossal squid, and then communicating this in the exhibition.
After the success of the squid investigations we then decided to blog about a dissection of a pygmy right whale in May 2008. Looking at our blog stats we still have heaps of people going to these posts about the pygmy right whale heart and lungs – somewhat strange, but true. I’m not sure why these posts would be so popular - so if anyone out there knows please tell me!
Then in July 2008 the Melbourne Museum held a public dissection of a giant squid, which you can view here.
From big molluscs we have now moved on to big fish! It’s great to see these new ways of communicating science in museums being explored and our museum-based scientists taking centre stage - I’m interested to know what others think about this.
A blog from Bruce Reidenberg
Pygmy right whale mouth and chin
The pygmy right whale – chin on. You can see first incisions.
Dr. Joy Reidenberg has examined larynges (voice boxes) of many aquatic and terrestrial mammals. There are unique adaptations of whales to life in the water. One of these adaptations is the use of sound. Whales tend to make two types of sound: a high frequency sonar to examine their environment and a low frequency series of sounds that are used to communicate between individuals and groups. Very little is known about pygmy right whales’ sound production.
Since Dr. Joy Reidenberg has examined larynges of many species of whales whose sound production is well described, evaluating the anatomy of pygmy right whales may show similarities or differences with species that are better known. From this anatomical relationships, the types of sound made by pygmy right whales may be estimated. Then other scientists listening to whale recordings may be able to validate the guesses over time.
In addition to guessing the types of sound that pygmy right whales might make, Dr. Joy Reidenberg is looking forward to working with Prof. Fordyce, Drs Kemper and Rommel to compare the anatomy we observe over the next few days with fossil whales. From these comparisons, we expect new insights into understanding how whales have evolved from a land-based ancestor.
