While the show at the Peabody Essex Museum (PEM) is over, the Web
interactive remains...
I know I posted this before to the art ed lists... but thought it was
worth a mention again. Site was selected by Scout Report.
16. Joseph Cornell: Navigating The Imagination [requires Adobe Flash Player]
http://www.pem.org/cornell/ (click Launch site)
Navigating The Imagination, a Joseph Cornell interactive created by the
Peabody Essex Museum, allows a visitor to open up some of this artist's
boxes, shake out the objects, and play with them (at least virtually). Short
on text and long on pictures, the interactive begins with a
compartmentalized box holding details from Cornell's works. Cornell's magic
and mystery is preserved as viewers navigate through various sections of the
web site by clicking and selecting images that seem to float by, coming
closer and then receding. For example, "Geographies of the Heavens" begins
with what looks like a map of the constellations, and features an engraving
of a gentleman wearing a ruff and gold chains, and a Cornell box with balls
of cork, cordial glasses, and blue marbles. It takes some experimenting to
discover that repeatedly clicking the gentleman reveals additional images of
other Cornell works, and it takes consulting the illustrated Web checklist,
helpfully provided in .pdf, to find out that the gentleman is likely
astronomer Tycho Brahe, the box is Cornell's "Soap Bubble Set", and
several of the other images are from a pleated book collage that Cornell
created in 1924, entitled "Panorama". [DS]
