Matt Hampel | matth.org

I want a media museum. It is a exhibit museum. It is not Flickr.

It holds media of all types — text, photo, video, audio. I lay out media around a theme — here is a custom-designed page that presents video, audio, text about Chicago. Here’s another that uses some of the same elements, but it’s exhibit about wayfinding.

The exhibits can tour. You can use have some of my pieces to use in yours, but provenance (not scarcity!) is enforced.

Maybe you can comment on things. Maybe you can’t. I suppose you could suggest new pieces for my collection, but it’s my choice whether they appear right away or not, or if I even read your suggestions. Or maybe on this one exhibition we can all work together, because I’ve invited you.

Here’s what the museum looked like in its last revision, if you wanted to know.

Here’s everything in the highest resolution I’ve got.

The future digital humanities museum.

Sign my guestbook?

Looking to join a buying club this fall, starting 1 September. Know a lot of 3-4 person households who could benefit, too.

Photos of a bulk room serving ~20 people:

A library of food?

It’s much easier to eat new things if they’re readily at hand, in large quantities.

(hm, a bit blurry)

The new Palmer Commons / Life Science grounds on central campus are cold, uninterrupted, a flat passageway and a windtunnel, and that’s a shame:

Every few yards is another blue emergency light — it’s not safe to be here.

The green areas are raised, off limits, not for you. The ground has no texture. There are benches, hard, fixed, pushed to the side. Nothing is outside. There’s no reason to stop, to meet someone, to talk with colleagues or other students.

There’s a little stage area:

But no power plugs, or lights, or seating.

Compare to a similar intersection of major buildings on Central Campus:

Crowds of people walk here at all hours of the day. When it’s warm, a cafe sets up chairs outside, a hotdog vendor is open for business, political activists and panhandlers accost you. Benches and bike parking are everywhere. Artifacts: historical placks, posting boards teach you the past and the future. Ahead is the arch of West Quad, a transition to the Diag. It’s warm, even thought the temperature isn’t.

Why do we think that big, glass-fronted buildings with lots of flat space

will be pleasing?

They won’t, and they never will be.

The building is built, but there’s nothing stopping us from breaking up the flat:

Make the ground textured. Give it an end, and a narrower path:

Put in big objects, and small objects, and water, and wood:

Change the texture, change the color:

Who is planning North Quad?