Into summer, the herald cicadas crown every year with the underlying HUMs and AHs that shake and beat the speed of the season. Here in the Museums Discovery Centre at Castle Hill, the heat – no less the sound – creeps through the metal ceilings, dusting the suspended planes with its urgency, pushing them further into flight. Their metal skins are now missing the glare of the sun and all her intensity but are animated once more in the vast imaginations of those who point and squish their faces to the glass, sound tracking engine roars with the blubbering of mouths.
In all this buzz, I wonder about the time when they were starkly silent, and the lull in families that come to inspect every corner was even greater than it is now. How quiet and dull these planes must have seemed in an empty room, with no one to imagine their flight.
Objects are absent without their audiences. Even when all their wear is forgotten in the creases and dents of their form, they can be re-negotiated – re-imagined – back into the hands of the present. Accuracy matters but it neither equates to relevancy or impact. An old plaster replica of a dinosaur skull can cast fear and marvel, and we can fear it’s terrible skull crunching down on us as we marvel at its size without ever needing to see what this dinosaur actually looked like. In the same way, an old toaster or beloved toy will never be remembered in its exact detail, we will never truly forget in its entirety either. Each evolution of technology and life is imprinted with the energy of the last and we gleam these residual identities in our imaginations inspired by the objects that surround us.
Collection labels do not account for how things change, yearly, daily, hourly; it neither scribes or notes the gasps or silences that situate the object in the present. The sterility and objectivity of museums and archives are often assumed, but it takes a little more than an afternoon to see for yourself the people who come and speak amongst themselves about the stories that are integral to these objects. We find ourselves in wonder; not only in the presence of fancy planes or dino bones, but of each-other.