Wunderkammer-a (Wunderkammer + kamera)

Abstract

The histories of the 17th and 18th century Grand Tour and 16th century Wunderkammer offer perspective on the connections between foreign travel and collecting. These histories also assist in positioning the role of narrative in the development of a collection’s identity, and its influence on the evolution of the contemporary museum. As the Wunderkammer, or cabinet of curiosities, shrank in scale transitioning from a room to a cabinet within a room, its function also shifted from displaying to concealing what might be deemed hyper-collecting or hoarding. The contemporary scale has decreased even more as the Wunderkammer is now digital existing in small handheld devices with increased privacy. The Wunderkammer-a project hybridized the histories of the Grand Tour and Wunderkammer in a contemporary context seeking to document ranges of authorship in the vault. Consistent photography of nearly 100 European church, basilica, and cathedral ceilings developed into a virtual Wunderkammer where illustrative relations were fostered through juxtaposed curation. Results identified normative proportional conditions for various vault types, as well as anomalies responding to abnormal conditions in alignment, dimension and/or timeframe.