{"id":2643,"date":"2021-08-31T11:12:10","date_gmt":"2021-08-31T11:12:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/?p=2643"},"modified":"2021-08-31T11:12:11","modified_gmt":"2021-08-31T11:12:11","slug":"moping-owl-playtime","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/?p=2643","title":{"rendered":"Moping Owl: Playtime"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Hope springs eternal, so the poet sings, or dum spiro spero, as that wise and prudent old bird, King Charles I, would put it, and he should know. But then again, true as truth may be, I have to say there are times, and these not the least of them, when it would seem to have shrunk to the merest trickle. Perhaps by the time you read this I may well have been proved mistaken \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and oh how I do hope so \u00e2\u20ac\u201c but please don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t go round to the bookie\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just yet, no matter how short the odds.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

But at least Spring has sprung, just about, and the tendre croppes popped up here and there, and the yonge sonne come out now and again: just the time of year indeed, as that other old bird once sang, whan longen folk to goon doon to the pub again for a swift half or two, and then perhaps to take in a gallery and catch up on a bit of Art at last \u00e2\u20ac\u201c get one\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s eye in again, as it were.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And so, bifel it in that season on a day, it was in rather that hopeful frame of mind that I reached for the wagger pagger bagger (middle-English for waste-paper basket since you ask) to see what of interest might quite by chance have found its way there. For, if they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve done little else throughout our national sequestration, our major cultural institutions have kept us more than well enough supplied with information, both on what they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not doing and we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not seeing. The aforesaid wpb is indeed a most useful item: no home should be without one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But, oh, dear:  information is all very well, and has it place, but interest doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t necessarily dance attendance upon it, and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not sure I need have bothered. If what I found is true measure of what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s in store for us, I think I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll stay put at the Goose & Dairymaid. For in the event, far from encouragement, several melancholy figures rose instead to flit through the pervading gloom, to remind me as they passed of what our cultural commissars and apparatchiks have now brought us to, and what we have lost \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the ghosts as it were of Art Past, Present and To Come.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So what is it they mourn, these sad revenants? Can one be the Ghost of Skill and Craft, now sacrificed on the altar of Technology, the curatorial obsession with which has been long apparent but now grievously aggravated by the exigencies, excuses and opportunities afforded by the late confinement? And is another perhaps that of Particularity and Excellence, now abandoned in light of those fashionable imperatives, Diversity and Social Engineering, with their no less obsessive preoccupation with purity of thought and moral posturing? Gosh, here too come the shades of Judgement and Discrimination, forsaken in the name of Equivalence and Fairness; and that, too, of Scholarship, elbowed out long since by the fell demons of Accessibility, Relevance and Re-Interpretation. And saddest perhaps of all, at last come hand in hand those ghostly figures long forgotten, the Old Curator, the Artist and the Ordinary Visitor, each steeped in love for what Art actually is and whose only wish is to respond to it through their own eyes and minds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If all that might sound a bit harsh, well, as I hinted at earlier, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not in the best of moods. But where to begin? Well, as good a place as any is the National Gallery, that temple to the rare and beautiful which, in all these respects, indeed often all at once, seems to have been especially busy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m sure we can all agree both that the small study exhibitions of recent years, devoted often to a single painting, have been good things, and that that masterpiece of the Northern Renaissance, Jan Gossaert\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Adoration of the Kings of about 1510, one of the glories of the collection, is an entirely worthy subject for such treatment. Straight-forward scholarly presentation, however, would seem no longer to be enough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More than an exhibition, Sensing the Unseen: Step into Gossaert\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcAdoration\u00e2\u20ac\u2122, is an \u00e2\u20ac\u0153immersive experience where (if experience has a local habitation \u00e2\u20ac\u201c answer on one side of the paper only) visitors could (though perhaps for not much longer) journey through an interactive high-resolution image of a picture with sound, poetry and light in socially-distanced pods.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d It sounds just the sort of thing that would have given those shepherds abiding in the fields all those years ago quite a turn, pretty well socially-distanced as they were anyway, I suppose, and no pod in sight. But fear not, for the good tidings I bring you are that the Director Gabriel, or one of his Seraphs perhaps, has had the whole thing re-imagined not just online but in a \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcmobile edition\u00e2\u20ac\u2122.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t say you haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t been warned. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Six poems in the voice of King Balthasar, a character (and how we love \u00e2\u20ac\u02dca character\u00e2\u20ac\u2122) in the Adoration will interpret six scenes from the painting while, wonderful to behold, interactive sound brings them to life\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 Users will journey through the scenes, starting with the broken pavement and ending with the celestial angels, using touch to zoom (no, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not that funny) into visual details they may have missed\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 They can also share their favourite details on Instagram (behave yourselves)\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 Data analysis will be used to help understand more about how visitors interact with paintings on their phones\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not often lost for words, as you know, but I shall struggle on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153The fair Miss Emma McFairyland, Innovation Programme Lead, whatever that is, says: \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcOur aim \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 is to create enjoyable, meaningful experiences which engage new and diverse audiences with the collection in different ways\u00e2\u20ac\u2122:\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and you can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t say fairer than that and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m sure they will. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The mobile experience brings together sound, images, poetry and interaction, doubtless boggling both mind and knees, to explore (of course) the themes of rupture, transformation and renewal through (and here things get a bit metaphysical) the perspective of King Balthasar (and here you might reasonably raise an eyebrow, or even two), a witness to Christ\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s birth.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d But we pass on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Collaborators in this worthy enterprise \u00e2\u20ac\u0153include Nick Ryan and Theresa Lola, former Young People\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Laureate, who wrote and voiced, if that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the word we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re searching for, the poems. Ryan is globally renowned (of course he is) for creating experiences that push the boundaries (and here we get metaphysical again) of listening besides engaging new audiences with audio.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d So there. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Technical analysis has revealed the skill which the artist put into the picture.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Where would we be without technical analysis? \u00e2\u20ac\u0153There is a considerable amount of underdrawing and Gossaert has made a great many changes at all stages.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Well, fancy that. Who would have thought it. Such skill. Well I never.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time to follow the wise example of King Balthasar and his Chums and depart into our own country another way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hope springs eternal, so the poet sings, or dum spiro spero, as that wise and prudent old bird, King Charles I, would put it, and he should know. But then again, true as truth may be, I have to say there are times, and these not the least of them, when it would seem to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2420,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[746],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2643","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-moping-owl"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2643","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2643"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2643\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2644,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2643\/revisions\/2644"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2420"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}