Inhaling The Spore: Journey Through The Museum Of Jurassic Technology

Behind a storefront in Los Angeles is one of the most unusual cultural institutions in America - The Museum of Jurassic Technology. It's a modern-day "cabinet of curiosities," filled with juxtapositions of the genuine, the strange, and the truly unexplainable. Inhaling the Spore is an intimate journey through the "MJT", and features its founder and director David Wilson, who can often be found in front of the museum, playing his accordion to attract visitors. Entering the museum, the camera winds through a dark warren of spaces. Behind glass are various exhibits presented with the normal trappings of a museum - exhaustive captions, hushed lighting, and scholarly audio programs. With Wilson as our guide, we see: Micro-miniature sculptures of Napoleon and the Pope, each carved from a human hair, and mounted in the eye of a needle. An elaborate exhibit about the bat Myotis lucifugus, or "piercing devil" which is believed to fly through solid objects. Yes, there is something very odd going on here, questioning our usual assumptions of what is real...or not. We turn to some outside experts for analysis: Author Lawrence Weschler relates his experiences trying to verify some of the MJT's exhibits; the J. Paul Getty Museum's John Walsh compares it to the first museums of the 17th century; art historian Barbara Stafford observes that Wilson's exhibits invite us to see the hidden associations between objects; and actor/magician Ricky Jay discusses his "on-loan" collection of desiccating dice. Museum director David Wilson views one particular exhibit as a metaphor for the entire enterprise. The African Stink Ant inhales the spore of a parasitic fungus that causes it to behave in curious and irrational ways. Eventually the fungus grows, horn-like, from the ant's head, and rains down new spores to the forest floor. "All of us here at the museum feel like we've inhaled that spore," says Wilson, "and hopefully we'll infect other people as well." Inhaling the Spore explores and celebrates the Museum of Jurassic Technology. A place that inspires us to wonder at the marvels of man and nature... and wonder whether any of it could possibly be true.