keith gallasch

The Museum of Rumour (review)

The Museum of Rumour website uses the great avant-garde writer Gertrude Stein as the primary node for a network of association and influence in six frames. Each of these has a life of its own, aptly titled Œdegrees of separation. They include rumours of war, cats (feral, domestic and Tourneur's Cat People film), the Gene-Hackman French connection, Our Lady of Coogee and a set of Steinian cups that fall and clink and spill the writer's words. There's a Stein page where clicking on scrolling lines of letters triggers an acrobatic dance of words (lesbian, postmodern, writer...) and sounds. There's also a delightful ŒInterferometer with an active grid that responds like an oscilloscope to the speed of rumour at your choice of drift, walk, wander, meander, lurk or float. This is a good-humoured, finely made, altogether eccentric museum that suggests different ways of archiving experience and tracing the lateral paths of memory and association. Keith Gallasch, from his review of The Museum of Rumour in RealTime No 59 http://www.realtimearts.net/