A Short Synopsis of the Workings of "Ignisfatuus"

Abstract

Ignisfatuus was an installation made specifically for a working Victorian Conservatory in Druids Hill Park, Baltimore, Maryland (Color Plate A No. 1), and was operated by the Contemporary Museum over a period of three consecutive lunar cycles (3 April to 2June 1996). Ignisfatuus is an ephemeral work that uses the cycles of the moon to allow the delicate aural quality of early acoustical recordings made by the late Rosa Ponselle to trigger a cardiovascular system of arterial casts of human organs (planted under glass bell jars) to evoke a process of endocrinology and the production and provocation of memory by the analogy of the idealized moment of a single bloom. Because these mechanisms hardly appear to be operational, these machines exist primarily in the viewer's imagination-knowing that something might take place is more important than actually seeing it occur. The Conservatory became, in effect, a Palace of Memory. The term ignisfatuus comes from the medieval Latin for foolish fire. It is a