I found the documentary we watched on The Museum of Jurassic Technology fascinating, and decided to do some more research into Guelph’s own “Museum of Subliminal Objects”. Heres what I found:
The museum was part of a pop up art instalment called the “Hatch” which took place in August, 2015, with the purpose of altering viewer’s perceptions of four formerly vacant spaces in Guelph.
The Museum of Subliminal Objects was created by disciplinary artist Steph Yates, who drew inspiration from Michael Gondry, a surrealist film director, best known for his work on “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”. Yates dressed the store front with “familiar objects altered and transformed into the stuff of dreams”. A Global Tribute article on the exhibit states:
“There are tea cups that drink their own tea, a plastic-wrapped rubber chicken with doll hands, and a bowler hat with eyes in its crown. There are also a series of oversized wrist watches with tiny silver figures affixed to the second hand and going around in circles like prisoners of time.”
I found the concept here to be very similar to “The Museum of Jurassic Technology” in that viewers are not told they are entering an surrealistic art experience, which challenges their perceptions of reality and allows them to have an genuine experience of bemusement, confusion and wonder. The exhibit ran only for a weekend, but the sign remains up today confusing passerbys, including myself.