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This morning I rousted myself out of bed at 9 a.m. to visit the National Museum of Korea. That was the plan, at least, but 9 is far too sour a time to be waking up on a Sunday. In, truth, I waved Mike off with unintelligible grunts and stupid questions and fell back asleep until noon. I had a perfect dream in which the plot wrapped itself up nicely just before I woke up, which never happens. Yup. I escaped from the suicide-cult house without having my face branded with a fork and blow torch, mysterious girl in tow, and then I woke up. No stupid epilogue about flying tea parties or rearranging someone's DVD collection. Flawless. Privately celebrating, I took the subway to meet up with Mike and Sunni who had preceded me for hours.

As far as museums go, the National Museum of Korea is impressively modern. It was just built a few months ago in Ichon and, as its name rightfully suggests, concerns itself with all things Korean and museum-y.

We got neat little MP3 tour devices, which had some technical difficulties but, in the end, added volumes to our visit. (volume! ha ha!) They were locational-sensitive, so the theory was that you'd go near an exhibit and your MP3 player would launch into a spiel about the particular piece of ancient pottery or slave price list or whatever it was that you were looking at. The spiels themselves were well done: short blurbs about dynasties and history and bloody sword massacres, delivered by an automated female voice. Our robot guide's voice was quite tolerable, except for when her script attempted to be congenial and ask rhetorical questions like, "It's hard to believe this scroll is 1000 years old, isn't it." Because robot voices are unskilled in the art of asking rhetorical questions, they all ended up sounding like monotone demands of thought compliance. I command you to picture in your head what it would be like to watch a public paddle-flogging!

Every once in a while, an automated male voice would rouse itself, like a bear from hibernation, and ask an incredibly stupid question like, "Doesn't it look like there should be pieces of string hanging off the ends?" We were looking at a set of 10th century rulers. More often than not, the female voice would ignore his demented input and continue with her monologue, and he would fade back into silent slumber until next time.

Whoever designed the tour system was clearly maniacal. Many times I would be looking at a hangul scroll and hear something like, "This lovely painting of the..." What the fuck? What painting? I was looking at a scroll. Then I would spot the painting in question and stroll over to it, and immediately my tour would switch: "You're looking at a scroll from the..." Basically I could only learn about the scroll while I was looking at the painting, and vice versa.

We got through only one of six wings of the museum. Mike and Sunni had seen the Archeological Exhibit while I was still comfortably dreaming. When I asked for a synopsis, Mike told me that after a peculiar, awkward ramble by the electronic tour about earthenware, the female voice admitted, at the end, that, "This makes no sense." Obviously a private notation from the translator, her confusion has become immortalized in the final product somehow. I love screw-ups, far more than I love pottery.

I was clearly more fascinated by the mechanics of the tour than the museum subject matter itself. The section I saw was mostly concerned with the advancement of Korean language and cartography, which was interesting but not really noteworthy. It doesn't lend itself much to any kind of satire or criticism, and if I'm not satirical or critical, what's left to say?? I'll go back to savage the Fine Arts wings next time.

Posted by Chris at 04:04 AM >> Commentations (0)