Curators of Cool

I was invited to choose one object for Curators of Cool, but upon seeing the extent of the Natural History departments of Queensland Museum, I decided I would choose one idea that has long fascinated me.... 'Cabinets of Curiosities' 

Cabinets of Curiosities became particularly popular in the 1800s as seafaring types began traversing the globe & bringing back their unusual treasures, seen by civilised societies for the first time. Well-heeled & deep-pocketed amateur collectors began collating a mixture of natural specimens & other strange curiosities to display & show off to other like-minded types. They were often displayed in glass-topped or fronted cabinets that had easy access, as these collections were all about show & tell, touch & feel – an open arena for speculation & discussion.

As collections grew these cabinets would often expand to encompass the entirety of a whole room. Curiosities would be displayed everywhere, from the more formal cabinets, to the ceiling, floor & wherever they fit. This was before science was science, and there was no categorisation other than the aesthetic & temperament of the keeper of the collection. There was a haphazard casualness to it all that I love. Although mine are behind glass, imagine them without, for you to pick up & marvel at each precious piece. I have chosen my specimens purely on aesthetic. They are a mix of sizes, shapes, colours & textures that raise my curiosity. They encapsulate a time when specimen collecting was a job for the adventurous, hardy types that traveled up mountains, across seas, through dense jungles in plinth hats armed with all the paraphernalia needed to capture & transport their prize specimens.

Every writer knows the coolest journalist in the world is Joan Didion. Didion was a member of the New Journalism vanguard, the pioneering set of writers that included people like Truman Capote, Hunter S. Thompson and Gay Talese. Together, they revolutionised how we read and write non-fiction. Without them, you wouldn’t have writers like Susan Orlean or Jon Ronson. In her essay anthology "The White Album", Didion detailed the changing face of America in the ‘60s and ‘70s, and included a list of all the things she would pack if she was hitting the road for an assignment.

Pre-internet, pre-laptop, pre-smartphone journalism was a different beast then. It’s insane to think that writing longform journalism – the kind of work I do now – warranted hauling around a typewriter that would’ve been several kilograms. In 2013, after a day on assignment, my routine is to open my Macbook Air, upload the MP3 interviews I’ve recorded on my Sony dictaphone and transcribe the notes from my Moleskine notepad. All up, my portable office weighs just over a kilogram. Still, I’m old enough to remember the gradual introductions of new technologies: the first dial-up modem; the first affordable computers; the first mobile phones that didn’t way a tonne.

I work in an architectural studio where many of our ideas come from the ordinary things found around us. We think that beautiful work can be made from ordinary ideas and observations. In everyday life there are things that seem amazing – and things that seem ordinary. I wonder if sometimes we get them mixed up. When asked to explain the work of our architectural practice, I sometimes liken us to scientists. Our work can involve collecting ordinary data – words / photographs / mapping / sketching / numerical data.

To know the whole story of things is empowering and important – it represents authenticity. The things I’ve collected from the Queensland Museum collection shows the back-of-house work of an entomologist next to amazing imagery of the inspects they research. It shows the daily work of an entomologist next to amazing imagery of the insects they study. To find some of the most amazing things imaginable, a museum entomologist undertakes countless ordinary tasks – and they can recognise beauty in unlikely places. Trusting in ordinary things and doing simple, honest work can lead to discovering something beautiful and amazing.

I make media. Magazines and websites inspired by pop culture with a conscience.I have always believed in the need for more positive media in our communities and that is what I have spent the past 20 years making. I was born in Papua New Guinea and had an amazing childhood exposed to the tribes, oceans, rainforests and wildlife. All these pieces were part of my everyday including the Cuscus that would sleep in my bed. These objects inspire me to make change. As long as I have nature I am OK... and I think that is cool. Nature is imaginative by necessity and has already solved many of the problems we are grappling with. The discipline of Biomimicry studies nature’s best ideas and then imitates these designs and processes to solve human problems. This is cool so we should look after nature. My parents taught me about caring for and respecting nature and I think this is cool.

People are cool when they act in a timely and effortless fashion.Timely means being both in the moment and of the moment: doing the right thing at the righttime. Effortless can mean doing it with poise,elegance, grace, strength, skill, beauty, panache, saviour faire… we have many words for that transformative power of cool. 

The growth of photography helped crystallise our sense of the cool moment. The sense we might capture cool moments as they happen has always spun a halo around equipment that lets us do so, from the earliest cameras to today’s smartphones. The power to capture cool imbuesthese cameras with a reflected sense of cool.