Introducing John Ito, Exhibit Designer & Builder

We feel both lucky and happy to have had John Ito join Mindport’s staff this January.  A former employee of the Children’s Museum of Boston, the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, and the Lawrence Hall of Science, John is now calling Mindport (and Bellingham) home.  Though he currently spends most of his work time in Mindport’s basement building what he calls a “people and sound convergence device,” Kevin and I lured him up from the depths for a conversation.  Here’s some of what we discovered: 

John grew up outside of Boston in a suburb called Norwood, home his parents’ ice cream shop and a terrific scrap metal yard.  Access to “junk,” the inventions of Dr. Who, and encouragement from his grandfather and an uncle -builders themselves- led to a childhood spent taking things apart and putting them back together, carving bows and arrows, and fixing bikes. 

After high school, where he focused on art and was voted “Most Radical Senior,” John attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.  He initially thought he might want to be an animator, but at 17 “had way too much energy to do something that required sitting down.”  John turned to metal sculpture instead, but continued to “focus on everything” finding that not being limited to one area resulted in a much bigger and interesting perspective. 

Following stints working for a photo developer, a video store, a hospital laundry room, and a coffee shop, John found his way to museum work, starting out in Visitor Services at the Children’s Museum of Boston at the age of 22.  He then moved into exhibit designing and building at this and other institutions before joining the staff of Mindport. 

When I ask him what he likes about what he’s doing now, John laughs and says, “Well, it’s exactly what I want to be doing, and that’s an impossibility for most people.  I get to build what I want to build – there’s no one giving me directions or telling me what to make, and that’s just not normal for most people.  It’s wonderful.” 

Questioned about how he came to have such a varied and interesting set of skills, John admits that he was not studious ever, noting that, “not focusing on what I was supposed to focus on to be a ‘success’ led me to where I am.  When you let go of expectation – especially expectations for yourself – a lot of interesting things can happen.” 

 Carol, another MP staffer, had some additional questions for Mr. Ito.  

Q. How many pens do you have on you at the moment? 

A. Six fountain pens, one ball-point, two mechanical pencils, and one standard issue pencil.

Q. What is your favorite bike? 

A. A Schwinn Corvette cantilever frame with 2-speed kickback coaster brake hub, moustache bars, leather saddle, BMX pedals with mavic rims and slick tires.  It should also be black and have a milk crate on the front. 

Q. What was the first thing you took apart and put together?

A. My grandparents’ clock.  It was broken and I accidentally fixed it – leading me to believe I could fix anything.  


Tallie Jones

Gallery Window by AnMorgan Curry and Carol Oberton

Do You Have Any Homework?

After spending twenty-two of my thirty-four years going to school, I finally get to answer, “No!” to that question.  It’s been five years since I’ve been assigned homework and three years since I’ve worked in a traditional school setting where I’ve designed, assigned, and graded large amounts of the stuff myself. 

It feels good to be done – lovely and very freeing, in fact.  Outside of work and family, my time is now my own, and I have no problem figuring out how to spend it.  But homework is still on my mind.  Puttering around the house, I run into literal piles of spiral bound notebooks filled with notes, double-spaced essays with comments lurking on the back pages, even a report titled The Desert that I wrote in fifth grade.  Talking with my coworkers, I discover that at least half of them also have stashes of homework from 20 to 50 years ago.  Even my father, who hated the majority of his homework assignments and who says that even after 40 years of not doing homework, he still feels relieved not to have any, brought in a couple of typed essays from his freshmen year of college when asked. 

Despite the freedom I feel now, and the feeling of dread and anxiety I associated with much of the homework I had through those twenty-two years, being assigned homework certainly wasn’t all bad.  Homework offered me a reason to sit quietly with my thoughts outside of the tumult of school.  I took it seriously – and luckily much of it was worth taking seriously, and as a result I learned plenty from what I was assigned.  But I also wonder if there was a cost.  Thinking back, I rarely had anyone ask me what I would like to pursue, what homework might be useful and interesting.  As a result, I didn’t really learn to follow my own curiosity – or rather attempted to do so in the limited time available after homework was done.

Working with young people through Mindport’s education program, I continue to consider the value of homework.  How does it affect an individual’s desire to learn?  What are its effects on a person’s life and the life of their family?  Is it useful?  What kind is useful?  Why?  When a student and I make a plan for what they might do between our meetings, should we even call it homework? Or is that too loaded a term? 

To help me look for answers, I’m starting to put together a show for Mindport’s gallery on this very theme, and I’d love to have your thoughts – and/or to see your homework (returned to you if a SASE is included). What was the best homework assignment you ever had?  The worst?  What homework would you give yourself?  What homework do you wish you’d been given?

Comment on this blog, or write to me at 210 W. Holly St. Bellingham, WA 98225 or talithamdj at yahoo dot com.  Looking forward to hearing from you. 

Tallie Jones

Something to Try

I've been playing with digital cameras from nearly the first day they appeared on the market. The early models had a resolution comparable to the old VGA video monitor standard, of 640 by 480 pixels. Enlarged to over snapshot size, the images looked terrible, full of "jaggies" and JPEG artifacts, which were distortions inherent in the process of compressing photos to sizes compatible with the amount of computer memory available at the time.

Those early cameras did have one odd advantage, which was the fact that their image sensors were tiny and focusing an image on them required very short focal-length lenses. Due to the physics of the situation, this meant that the cameras possessed huge depth-of-field, much like a pinhole camera. In other words, the lens would bring any object from a few inches away to infinity into focus simultaneously. This made it possible to shoot interesting photos that would be difficult to capture with a conventional 35mm film camera.

One of the illuminating aspects of my switch to digital was that, with no film to buy, I could experiment freely in order to understand better how a camera sees, and how to make use of the unique qualities of a particular type of camera. Of course the computer and camera cost money, but unless I made prints it cost nothing extra to shoot as many images as I desired. With digital cameras the possibilities of what a camera can record are considerably beyond what was possible with film cameras. In the process of playing with digital images I learned some lessons, as I did with depth-of-field, above, that have not only expanded my repertoire of possible imagery, but have encouraged me to create images that would have been difficult or impossible to attain with film.

Here's an example of a technique I've tried with my digital camera that often brings interesting and surprising results, while educating my eyes to see subtleties that were previously not apparent.

In the first example, I shot pictures of intriguing marks left on a concrete breakwater by the wooden forms in which they were poured. The concrete was dull grey and the resulting image hardly interesting to look at. I loaded the picture into my image processing program and greatly enhanced its contrast until it began to bring out colors and textures that were nearly invisible in the object or the original photograph of it. There were hidden blues, browns, reds, and shades of texture you'd hardly notice if you glanced casually at the original surface.

 After I'd experimented with this technique for awhile, I began to see all sorts of possibilities for creating striking images from subject matter I previously would have ignored. Such transformed imagery reminds me of my pottery-making days and the excitement of opening a kiln after a firing, then inspecting the surfaces of ware after their colorful transformation by heat.

If you try this, it's best to choose low-contrast, minimally colored subjects. However look for any patterns and textures that might not be apparent due to the low contrast inherent in the scene. Boulders, rocks, and geological formations are good possibilities to investigate. The soft light of a cloudy sky makes for the right sort of illumination. It's color neutral and just the opposite of the sort of lighting you might conventionally wish for such subjects. When you increase the contrast of the image, you may have to tone down the brightness in order for the highlights not to "burn out," that is go completely white.

After playing with this or other means of digital transformation you might ponder this question: What do you think are the advantages and liabilities of digital photographic process compared to the old days of film and chemistry, and how do you feel about digitally modified images as an art form? These are ideas I still contemplate quite a lot and will probably discuss in future postings, along with a few other ideas for modifying digital images. Meantime, have fun experimenting.

Kevin Jones

Harbingers of Spring

Spring has sprung. . . barely, it seems. When I awakened this morning there was frost on the roof below my bedroom. But the frogs are in full din in the several wetlands around where I live. In the past they've often begun to pipe up toward the end of the first week in March, but they've begun their song a week or two later in the two or three most recent years. Early on, cold nights apparently inhibit their ardor, though once they've gained momentum a frosty night doesn't seem to curb their enthusiastic song.

Above is a photo of one of these characters, a different species, I believe, from the more common variety who raise their multitudinous voices in the wetlands every spring. This particular variety I've observed occasionally perched on leaves in the flower beds around our house. One of them, in fact, actually paid us a more intimate visit than that a couple years ago. I was sitting in our kitchen enjoying a cup of tea.  The silence of the kitchen was suddenly interrupted by a subdued CREEAAK issuing from somewhere behind me. The sound was so sporadic that it took me some time to discover its source, which turned out to be beneath the dish drainer. Upon lifting the drainer's rubber base, I spotted the green vocalist, an individual just like the one pictured. Thinking his chances of finding a mate in this venue were limited, I gently carried him outside, all the way to the opposite end of the house, and set him on a leaf.

That wasn't the end of the story, however. A week later, again while sipping tea in the kitchen, I heard the selfsame CREEAAK as before. Sure enough, there was my green friend, once again under the dish drainer. Now, I can't prove it was the same critter because I hadn't banded a leg or anything, but I don't see these frogs around very often, so I like to think that he somehow made his way around the house, climbed through the kitchen window, which was cracked open only an inch, as had been true the previous week, and reclaimed his hiding spot in the damp cave under the drainer.

The other harbinger of spring in the many wetlands on Lummi Island is the skunk cabbage. They're one of the first flowers to show their faces, usually just a week or so before we hear the first frogs commence their song. Over the years I've watched one patch on the west side of Lummi expand, now covering a good quarter acre on a wooded, swampy hillside. When the flowers first poke up their heads, they're irresistible to photographers like myself. I must have accumulated a couple hundred photos, captured as I slogged around in the mud, now and then losing a boot to its grip after becoming immersed in it to well above the ankles.

The skunk cabbage is an unusual plant. It's reputed to generate enough heat of its own to be able to melt its way through a snowbank. Check out this article on the web site of the Nature Institute for more information. While you're at it, explore their site farther. It's one that I've visited periodically for years, and which I discovered after becoming a subscriber to Steve Talbott's Netfuture series of essays.

In closing, best wishes for a happy spring to all our readers and visitors.

Kevin Jones

Graphic Design

Graphic design is a field that has interested me for years. I first became conscious of its effect on me in my twenties, when I began to notice that I was buying quite a few books that I never bothered to finish reading. Eventually it dawned on me that I bought them not so much because of their informational content but because of the beauty of their layout and text and/or the quality of included photographs and other graphic material. It was a pleasure to look at them, in other words.

During my early thirties I abandoned photography for a few years and set about teaching myself to draw. Needless to say,  that raised my consciousness about graphic design even more, and had quite a salutary effect on my photography when I eventually went back to it.

Around the time we opened Mindport in 1995, I stumbled across the books of Edward Tufte, perhaps some of the most beautiful books I've ever encountered. Tufte, among other activities, taught in the Department of Graphic design at Yale University, and has written at least four books on the visual presentation of data, the first being entitled, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. These books have asserted an influence on me in my effort to make the instructions accompanying Mindport's exhibits clear and comprehensible.

The task of writing instructions and other documentation I find enjoyable. There's a fascination in the attempt to view a familiar exhibit from the point of view of a total stranger seeing it for the first time, then in devising a way to explain as succinctly as possible how to make it do something. This involves organizing diagrams, photos, and text on a page in a manner that makes instructions easy to understand and follow, and choosing minimally ambiguous language in order that instructions and labels not be misinterpreted. I consider myself an amateur at this process, but I hope I have succeeded at it to some degree.

In the world outside, of course, the most obvious venue for graphic design is in advertising. We delve into that at Mindport to the extent that we put considerable effort into the design of our posters and other publicity materials. That's not my domain, personally. Staff members AnMorgan, Carol, Karen, and Tallie have been the main contributors to that department, though I do put in my two-cents-worth from time to time.

We all swim in a sea of graphic design, and, like fish swimming the ocean, most of us are scarcely conscious of its atmospheric presence or its effect on us. I've heard plenty of people complain bitterly after having struggled through the assembly of some consumer item labeled, "some assembly required." Right there is an example of what happens when an item and/or its instructions are NOT well designed. With well-designed objects and  instructions, you're likely to finish with the comment, "well, that was fun," possibly never realizing that the work of some designer eased your way through the process.

If the subject of graphic design interests you, I recommend having a look at Edward Tufte's books, or watch the documentary film, Milton Glaser: To Inform and Delight. Glaser is a well known graphic designer from New York, who was responsible for the "I [heart] NY" graphic, and by extension, the "I [heart] . . . [whatever you can imagine], visible everywhere. Glaser, incidentally, claims that he made not a cent off the design of this graphic. The film about him provides an outline of what the finest graphic design is all about and might awaken you to a new appreciation for ways in which we're influenced by it.

Kevin Jones

Contrast: A Look at Silence

 I know, I've written quite a few entries here on the subject of noise, but I've neglected to comment on its opposite, so please indulge me in one more reading suggestion:

In Pursuit of Silence, Listening for Meaning in a World of Noise , by George Prochnik

This book comes at the noise problem from a different and useful direction, namely by defining noise as any sound that keeps us from hearing what we want to hear, whether it's the voice of the person sitting across the table from us, the birds singing in the spring, or the silence of our own thoughts. Then it explores the sounds and silences beneath the noise, what they mean and why they are important.

Prochnik pays considerable attention to silence, but also takes an interesting look at the meaning behind purposeful noise. He includes a chapter of interviews with "boom car" devotees; you know, those people who soup up car stereos so you can hear them a block away. There's a cadre of serious boomers who push beyond the 160 decibel noise level, loud enough to blow the windshield out of a car. He also covers another favorite noise-maker, Harley motorcycles, with their copyrighted resonance and what's behind that. Purposeful noise is a means by which disempowered people make their presence felt.

To me the most interesting and important part of the book deals with the subject of silence and its spiritual implications. In fact the book focuses on the lives of monks, meditation, and the idea of "quiet mind," which Prochnik suggests is essential to the creative process. Without the respite of silence we lose track of the very depths of our being, which, in a culture as awash in noise as ours, it appears to be just what many of us want to do.

Prochnik mentions research implicating excess noise in cardiovascular problems and as a possible causative factor in autism. It seems that young children brought up in very loud environments take longer than normal to process speech, which is an important aspect of this disorder.

The book ultimately makes the point that efforts have been made for years, even centuries, to address the noise plague. But as one source is eliminated, others have a way of popping up like the marching broom fragments that threatened to inundate the Sorcerer's Apprentice. Rather than campaigning against noisemakers, it turns out to be more useful to educate ourselves about the importance of those sounds and silences we do want to hear. If enough of us come to recognize them, then there's hope that the noise may fall by the wayside of its own accord.

Kevin Jones