This week I skipped out of the regular museum rotation to see a neat little exhibit at Concordia's Communications Department. I was hosted by Heather Ferguson, a graduate student in the Master's in Media Studies program. I met Heather on the internet, through a Toronto Maple Leafs blog. It's always interesting to meet internet people in person. Also interesting is Heather's area of research. She's looking at how the words in art exhibits influence the way people see the exhibits. She can be found on Twitter and on Tumblr.
Marconi's ruins is an exhibit of photographs and artifacts from the abandoned site of Guglielmo Marconi's transatlantic wireless station, near Glace Bay, Nova Scotia. The station was the first of its kind, established in 1907. One might view the exhibit as simply photos of old junk, especially if one doesn't have much knowledge of transistors and tubes and the like, but what's really fascinating about it is the fact that such an historic site could remain abandoned, even run-down, for so long. In Baddeck, Nova Scotia, the Alexander Graham Bell museum is a national historic site. Marconi's place is basically a junkyard. Why the difference?
I don't have an answer, and neither do the artists Michael Longford and Robert Prenovault. Like many good works of art, it proposes more questions than answers. I can imagine the socio-economic situation of Cape Breton contributes to the lack of prestige for Marconi. The superiority of the telephone over the telegraph would be another.
It's interesting to see the development of communications technology. Looking at one of the transistor tubes racked up against the wall, I commented to Heather that it was just like one of the "series of tubes" that make up the Internet. Marconi's Ruins made me wonder if one day a similar installation would be made of server farms, as we move towards cloud technology. Or a pit of abandoned cell phones, rendered obsolete by the invention of...whatever the next thing might be.
