As we approached the old brick factory buildings we knew for sure we had reached the right location as soon as we saw six large maple trees suspended in wooden tubs -- growing upside down!
We struggled through a confusing piece: a replica of the interior of a 1930's Vermont farmhouse apparently devoted to the eradication of the local french population, based on wrought-up and contrived eugenics arguments, the point driven home by a plain woodpile and chopping axe outside the house. ???
Then we ambled into a small movie theatre. On the screen, a large plywood panel was rocking back and forth. A cylinder rolled slowly from side to side. Would it fall off on one side or the other? Would it slide to the end and fall off then?
It was incredibly suspenseful. And absorbing.
Eventually it did fall off the end, where it triggered another event, which triggered another...
It was, if you will, a veritable pornography of determinism (Now we know chaos doesn't work this way at all). Sequence after sequence, rolling tires bumped ladders, which fell over... causing suspended garbage bags to unwind, knocking over gasoline-filled flasks, flowing downward... eventually encountering waiting candles FOOSH the flame spreading burning away a support for a bucket filled with some dissolving chemical falling over turning powder into foam, foam, foam, slowly spilling over down a spillway and then...
Then we had to leave. Who knows how long it might have gone on, limiting our ability to experience a huge 12-tone lung wind organ the size of a football field, or a performance art piece by a woman weaving EEG (electroencepalograph brain wave patterns) readings of her dreams into an unbroken continuous incomprehensible tapestry, or a field of fans turned on by the outdoor wind ruffling a field of windflow sensitive banners, or...
or something else we might have missed.
Fortunately the video was for sale at the museum. Now you can buy it too: we highly recommend it.
Don't take our word for it, though. Go read the reviews, then let one thing lead to another and order...
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© Copyright 1997-2001 George D. Girton.
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