by J. Nathan Matias
Art and Reality?
How do Al Capone's Cell, 142 Ways to Mark Time, a pile of shoes, Ghost Cats, a boxcar, and Band of Brothers relate to each other?
Each of these items uses the creative arts, normally relegated to fiction, to reflect reality. Some recreate a lost reality. Others help visitors interpret reality. The final two give their audience the tools and incentive to discover reality.
Al Capone's cell at the Eastern State Penitentiary, is a recreation based on first-hand accounts of the cell's contents. Although no photographs exist, museum curators have obtained period items similar to items that they know Capone kept in his solitary confinement cell: a writing desk, an electric lamp, floor rugs, a bust, a hardwood floor radio, wall-paintings, and even a sofa chair.
Stephen Spielberg's film, Band of Brothers attempts a similar accomplishment, except with actors, sets, and everything else needed to make a major television production. As with Al Capone's cell, everything is deeply rooted in researched, verified fact.
Both of these examples attempt to reproduce, relate, and replace primary material in more accessible, understandable ways. But this isn't the only way to use art. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum uses primary sources as part of the art itself. They turn a list of names into a glass wall. They turn piles of shoes into poetry or place a boxcar in the middle of a museum path. These powerful art spaces, rooted in reality, cause us to pause and emotionally consider the story of the Holocaust.
A third type of creative art treads the middle ground. At the Eastern State Penitentiary, Ghost Cats is similar to Al Capone's cell, because artist Linda Brenner is trying to recreate and preserve the memory of the cats who colonized the penitentiary before it became a museum. However, unlike the other examples, this installation doesn't have a central focus point. By encouraging visitors to explore the museum to find all the cats, Linda's sculpted cats nudge visitors to become active participants. The search for cats makes them more attentive to the visual detail of the penitentiary.
142 Ways to Mark Time does the same thing with sound. Timothy Noe's exploration of prison sounds is interesting in its own right, but it is most notable for giving museum visitors new ears to experience the prison.
in Last Night's Fun, Ciaran Carson uses creative, poetic language as a glue between massive collections of sources. His creative language reminds us that a human compiled this jumble, that there could possibly be a meaning somewhere inside. So we look in-between the lines.
These artistic techniques are valuable to consider when crafting hypertext. Because readers often need the reassurance of the author function to seek meaning between the nodes, artistic efforts can provide a nudge to remind them that yes, there really is a good story inside.