In a building near the centre of Auckland's Museum of Transport and Technology is a maze. Quite while it should be there is not clear. The rest of the building is devoted to a history of New Zealand manufacturing – boot polish and dairy products among them. There is a sign saying the floor of the maze is made of local timber, and not to run. That is all.
MOTAT is a strange collection of steam engines, trams, buses, butter churns, retired fighter aircraft and Catalina flying boats. Some are outside and can be climbed on, surreptitiously at least. Others are behind glass and perspex or cordoned off by rope. One local volunteer tips sacks of coal into the open maw of a boiler for the steam room. Another drives a trolley car around the perimeter of the nearby park, joining the old and new parts of the museum in a rickety trail.
I go there partly because it is close to J___'s house in Grey Lynne, but mainly because retired technology suits a certain otaku bent of mine. The museum does not disappoint. It is exactly the right mix of preservation, rust and engine grease. Some of the displays are absurd. The first diesel tractor in New Zealand. Others heartbreaking. Jean Batten's heroic efforts as one of the fastest female pilots of the 1920s. Her desperate attempts to claw back fame in later life, and death in isolation and obscurity in 1982.
The maze though, and this is the thing, is made entirely of mirrors. So wherever you turn you are met by hundreds of repeated versions of yourself, each iteration slightly decayed as distortion and the pale green of the glass multiplies.
It is uncanny to see your image approach and retreat in such numbers. But compelling, and both J___ and the other cousins well remember visits to the labyrinth of glass as children, more than three decades ago.
MOTAT is a strange collection of steam engines, trams, buses, butter churns, retired fighter aircraft and Catalina flying boats. Some are outside and can be climbed on, surreptitiously at least. Others are behind glass and perspex or cordoned off by rope. One local volunteer tips sacks of coal into the open maw of a boiler for the steam room. Another drives a trolley car around the perimeter of the nearby park, joining the old and new parts of the museum in a rickety trail.
I go there partly because it is close to J___'s house in Grey Lynne, but mainly because retired technology suits a certain otaku bent of mine. The museum does not disappoint. It is exactly the right mix of preservation, rust and engine grease. Some of the displays are absurd. The first diesel tractor in New Zealand. Others heartbreaking. Jean Batten's heroic efforts as one of the fastest female pilots of the 1920s. Her desperate attempts to claw back fame in later life, and death in isolation and obscurity in 1982.
The maze though, and this is the thing, is made entirely of mirrors. So wherever you turn you are met by hundreds of repeated versions of yourself, each iteration slightly decayed as distortion and the pale green of the glass multiplies.
It is uncanny to see your image approach and retreat in such numbers. But compelling, and both J___ and the other cousins well remember visits to the labyrinth of glass as children, more than three decades ago.
No comments:
Post a Comment