Author: Mystic Seaport Museum

For about a week now, Reilly Donovan has been walking around the Collins Gallery at Mystic Seaport, with a modernistic-looking contraption on his head, carefully stepping over various steel beams, hydraulic pistons, and discarded bubble wrap strewn across the floor.

The careful observer will see the 33-year-old Donovan occasionally point his finger in the air, then point a finger on his other hand, then make a motion as if he were playing with an imaginary sock puppet. He can be overhead saying “Show pingo” every now and again. Then he returns to the laptop he has set up on a folding table in the gallery, and starts tapping away at the keyboard.

This is art — specifically sculpture — in the 21^st century, where modern technology meets carved wood  and fabricated steel. The result is an interactive experience for the museum visitor like never before. When “Murmur: Arctic Realities” opens Saturday, January 20 at Mystic Seaport, visitors will not only be able to walk in and around an intricately carved simulation of an Alaskan pingo created by renowned contemporary artist John Grade, they will be able to see and hear the flora, fauna, and wildlife that lives around that exact land form created using mixed reality technology.

Donovan has been working on the virtual aspect of Grade’s project for just about a year, although it looked far different when the two artists began collaborating in January 2017 then it does now, less than a week before the opening. In its nearly finished form now, “Murmur” utilizes Microsoft’s HoloLens technology to provide the mixed reality experience. As visitors walk in and around the sculpture, the HoloLens headset will show them holographic images of the summertime Alaskan tundra, including grasses, flowers, and bodies of water. They will hear the summer breeze, bird calls, and mosquitoes buzz.

Grade’s massive sculpture (15’ x 38’ x 42’)  is kinetic — the upper portions of it collapse down and move back up to replicate the lifespan of a pingo, a hill of ice that grows over centuries in the Arctic’s highest latitudes, then collapses. The steel framework is covered over with sheets of carved Alaskan yellow cedar, large pieces along the bottom and sides that gradually grow smaller as they reach the peak. Grade drew the inspiration for the piece when he traveled to the Alaskan Arctic three years ago as part of Anchorage Museum’s Polar Lab residency for artists, and discovered pingos on the tundra.

For Donovan, this is the latest step in his evolution as a sculptor, photographer and filmmaker. A graduate of Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle, where he makes his home with his wife Cyrena and their two young children, Donovan has been working to combine his mediums for many years.

“This is a form of sculpture,” he says of his work in Mixed Reality. “It’s just not a physical sculpture. It’s a sculpture made of light and sound. From the beginning, I have been interested in going outside the traditional structures to create. I’m more interested in the overlap of these mediums, where one informs the other.”

Donovan became interested in virtual reality about eight or nine years ago,  when he was creating motion graphics (computer animations). He taught himself to write code, and then began creating interactive experiences. He was fascinated by the ways that the technology allowed him to be able to “create things that are very uncommon, that are not of this terrestrial world. For me, I was very hungry to create unique things to see; things that are very out there.”

When the first Virtual Reality headsets arrived on the scene about five years ago, Donovan said it was a “natural evolution” for him as an artist. When he and Grade began working together on “Murmur,” it was to have been a virtual reality experience, but then Microsoft released the HoloLens. “We decided that was the right direction to go,” Donovan says. “HoloLens is mixed reality, when the virtual content co-exists in the physical world. It was the right fit.”

Just as a canvas is the path for a painter’s self-expressions, Donovan sees the HoloLens the same way. “It is a tool for self-expression,” he notes. “It is a medium. It’s a canvas. The holographic content is the aesthetic thread, the interplay, between (Grade’s) physical form and my objects.”

Donovan thinks this is the first time that a physical sculpture has been so tightly wedded to mixed reality, and he looks forward to the relationship between the piece and the technology evolving as the technology is refined. Just as an iPhone user needs to update software to have the best experience, so too will the HoloLens change as time goes on.

“We will continue to push this,” Donovan says, noting that there could (and likely will) be a time when the HoloLens headset and sculpture share information with each other to change the visitor experience; that the piece will have “network-based sharing” so that users can integrate with each other in the exhibition; and finally that there would be a telepresence, so that if the piece were in two locations, users would share the experience. “It will be a never-ending project,” Donovan says with a laugh. “As the technology evolves and updates, the project will update.”

As the group enters pre-opening crunch time, Donovan looks back on the last year. “It’s been a lot of fun,” he says. “It’s been great working with John and his team — they are a great group, so talented and collaborative. We are all pushing our skills as hard and as far as we can.  For me, this is really exciting. This is the beginning of what the future will have for us to express ourselves with.”

To commemorate International Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27, Mystic Seaport, the Jewish Federation of Eastern Connecticut, and the Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust, will co-host a special screening of the 2016 Danish film “Across the Waters,” which tells the story of a Jewish musician and his family who make a frantic escape from Nazi-occupied Denmark. The screening (Danish with English subtitles) begins at 2 p.m., Saturday, January 27, at Mystic Luxury Cinemas in Olde Mistick Village.

The story takes place in 1943, the same year that the Danish lighthouse tender Gerda III was smuggling Jews from Denmark to safety in Sweden. Gerda III belongs to the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City and is on display at Mystic Seaport. In 1943, the boat was used by Henny Sinding, the 22-year old daughter of a Danish Navy Officer who commanded the country’s Lighthouse and Buoy Service, and a four-man crew, to rescue Jews. The refugees were brought to a warehouse along Copenhagen’s waterfront and smuggled aboard Gerda III, hiding in the cargo hold.

The little vessel then set out on her official lighthouse supply duties, but detoured to the coast of neutral Sweden. Although the vessel was regularly boarded and checked by German soldiers, the refugees were never discovered. Gerda III rescued approximately 300 Jews, in groups of 10 to 15. Of the 300 boats that participated in the evacuation, Gerda III is believed to be one of only three that remain afloat.

On Saturday, January 27, the event will start at 2 p.m. with an introduction and remembrance by Jerome E. Fischer, executive director of the Jewish Federation of Eastern Connecticut. That will be followed by a short presentation on Gerda III’s story by Howard Veisz, a Mystic Seaport volunteer who has exhaustively studied the boat’s history. Veisz is the author of “Henny and Her Boat,” the story of Gerda III and the rescue of 300 Jews. Tickets are $20 for Mystic Seaport members, and $22 for non-members. Tickets may be purchased in advance by calling the Museum’s Central Reservations at 860.572.5331, or at the door the day of the event at Mystic Luxury Cinemas.

[embedit snippet=”murmur-installation”]

On Saturday, January 20, Mystic Seaport will host the international debut of an exhibition that heralds in a new era for the Museum — the Era of Exhibitions. Murmur: Arctic Realities is the product of one of world’s leading contemporary artists, John Grade, and with it, Mystic Seaport becomes a leader in the introduction of mixed reality technology in a museum setting. This exhibition showcases the Museum’s vision for engaging visitor experiences, a vision that will only expand throughout 2018 and beyond.

Staged in the Collins Gallery in the Thompson Exhibition Building, visitors will encounter upon entering what appears to be a natural land form — a mound (15’ x 38’ x 42’) intricately carved from Alaskan yellow cedar. This vast sculpture represents a pingo, a hill of ice that grows over centuries in the Arctic’s highest latitudes, then collapses, pockmarking the tundra. Grade’s work replicates a pingo in Alaska’s Noatak National Preserve, mapped by the artist using photogrammetry. Visitors will not only witness the pingo’s impressive scale, but will also be able to enter inside the sculpture as its walls open and close, mimicking the pingo’s life cycle at a time when this is accelerating due to unprecedented environmental change.

Grade and New Media artist Reilly Donovan are collaborating on Murmur, as Donovan brings the use of Microsoft’s HoloLens Mixed Reality technology to the experience. They have mapped fragments of Noatak’s landscape into the gallery so that visitors wearing a wireless HoloLens headset will see themselves within a holographic representation – one using visual images and spatialized sound of a precise geographic location 80 miles north of the Arctic Circle.

“The opening of Murmur is a thrilling moment for this museum,” says Nicholas Bell, senior vice president for curatorial affairs. “The inclusion of giant steel and wood kinetic arms and a holographic experience immediately removes us from our comfort zone. But that’s exactly where we should be as we enter this new Era of Exhibitions – challenging the limit of how we engage with museum space, and what we can learn from such unexpected encounters. Murmur affirms the role of Mystic Seaport as a place to come together, not only to understand our past, but also to anticipate the future.”

The title Murmur evokes both the sound of Arctic wind and the shapes made by flocks of Arctic birds in flight. The installation will provide an experience in which people can virtually explore the interior of a pingo’s ice core and the unusual textures, flora and fauna of the land form. By allowing visitors to traverse an Alaskan marsh in Connecticut, Murmur will revolutionize the public’s grasp of what a museum experience can be.

Murmur: Arctic Realities is being staged in collaboration with Anchorage Museum. Grade has been working on the pingo project for three years, after Anchorage Museum invited him to spend time in the Arctic as part of its Polar Lab residency program. According to his website, “Inspired by changing geological and biological forms and systems in the natural world, John works with his studio team to create large-scale site-specific immersive sculptural installations. Impermanence and chance are often central to the work along with kinetics and relationships between the natural world and architecture.”

Museum President Steve White notes that the opening of Murmur: Arctic Realities kicks off a busy and exciting year. “John Grade’s work speaks to our vision for exhibitions at Mystic Seaport,” White says, “to bring exhibitions to the Mystic region for which people would ordinarily have to travel far to see, and to provide content that appeals to people accustomed to compelling museum shows.”

Murmur, which closes in late April, is followed by two major exhibitions both opening on May 19: The Vikings Begin: Treasures from Uppsala University, Sweden and The Vinland Map. The international debut of The Vikings Begin will bring one of the world’s finest early Viking-age collections to Mystic Seaport. This exhibition represents the first instance most of these artifacts will have ever left Sweden. For the Vinland Map exhibition, it will be the first time in more than 50 years that the document is on public display, allowing those who have followed the saga to see its primary evidence for the first time. Mystic Seaport will engage historians, archaeologists, scientists, and other leading experts to share the Map’s story, and discuss its out-sized role in modern American history.

In addition to the exhibition itself, there are scheduled talks by both Grade and Donovan, the opportunity to take a yoga class with renowned instructor Coral Brown within the exhibition, and other programs related to the piece. Visit our online calendar for the full schedule. Use #wearethemurmur #arcticrealities on Twitter and Instagram.

The 70th annual Community Carol Sing at Mystic Seaport will be 3-4 p.m. Sunday, December 17. A new addition to this beloved seasonal tradition this year is a Holiday Hat Contest.

The Museum will be open to visitors from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and admission is free with the donation of a non-perishable food item or by cash donation. All contributions will be donated to and distributed by the Pawcatuck Neighborhood Center.

The Mystic Seaport Carolers will perform a holiday concert in the Greenmanville Church at 2 p.m. The carol sing will commence at 3 p.m. in the McGraw Quadrangle, led by Associate Professor of Music and Director of Choral Studies at the University of Connecticut Jamie Spillane (now in his 32nd year directing this event) and backed by the Museum Carolers and a brass quartet.

Guests at the Carol Sing are always in the holiday spirit, and often their headgear gives new meaning to “merry and bright.” This year, judges will be circulating through the crowd, and prizes will be awarded to the top hats! Winners will be announced during the concert.

Also that day, the Treworgy Planetarium’s 2 p.m., program, “The Star of Bethlehem,” explores the winter skies, merging science, mythology, religious observance, winter traditions, and music. A holiday craft workshop will be hosted in the Howell Classroom (lower level of Planetarium) from noon to 2 p.m.

The American Institute of Architects (AIA) has recognized the Thompson Exhibition Building for an achievement in design.

The building earned an Honor Award-With Distinction at the AIA QUAD 2017 Design Awards in Albany, New York. The annual QUAD (Quality Unites Architectural Design) Conference brings together the AIA chapters from Connecticut, New Jersey, New York State and Pennsylvania.

The AIA QUAD Awards jury commented: “Whimsical and joyful, this project has very strong imagery: the jury admired its resilience and its work with glulam structure to connect with traditional shipbuilding imagery.”

The award was presented to Chuck Mueller of Centerbrook Architects & Planners, who designed the building for Mystic Seaport.

This marks the second award the Thompson Exhibition Building has received. The 21,000-square-foot facility was designed as a keynote building for the McGraw Gallery Quadrangle on the Museum grounds and features an exhibit hall, welcome center, retail shop, and wraparound deck.