MELINDA SIPOS

The data sculptures will be inaugurated early Fall 2024 with the opening of the new permanent exhibition of the Museum of Ethnography

We co-created, developed and realised two pieces for the new permanent exhibition at the Museum of Ethnography in Budapest with Mátyás Fusz. They approach the universe of the Museum of Ethnography from two directions: the Growth Diagram represents the overall structure of the collection, while the Object-Time Coordinate System focuses on individual museum objects.

GROWTH DIAGRAM

This data sculpture is a spatial diagram that displays the growth of the Museum of Ethnography's ever-changing and expanding collection along a timeline from 1872 to 2022. Different colored elements indicate the creation and separation of collections. The lines within the colors represent 100 objects each. The legs supporting the elements mark important events and milestones in the life of the collection, while the divisions on the concrete base indicate the museum's various buildings and the duration spent in each. For the creation of the sculpture, we used the inventory and registry data of the Museum of Ethnography.

OBJECT-TIME COORDINATE SYSTEM

This work is based on the interplay of light and shadow and the combination of projected content, revealing patterns and correlations based on the data found on the descriptive cards of the artifacts. Each oak element represents an artifact, its height determined by the time the object has spent in the museum, and the size of its shadow determined by the artifact's age. The taller the element, the longer it has been in the museum, and the longer the shadow, the older the object.