THINKING THINGS consisted of four research modules developed during the seminar "Critical History: Curating Images, Objects, Media" led by
Professors Peter Galison and Jeffrey Schnapp during the spring semester of 2011.
It served as a complement to the exhibit TANGIBLE THINGS. However whereas Tangible Things highlighted and questioned the modern Western intellectual categories that distinguish
nature from artifice, art from artifact, specimen from tool, and the historical from the anthropological,
the seminar developed four experimental installations that bridge the worlds of media and things:
installations that excavate the incrustations of knowledge and history found in physical objects.
Two points of departure were present in the Foyer Exhibition Space: "The Sound of Epic,"
dedicated to the fieldwork of Harvard folklorist Milman Parry, and "Citizen Scientists Track the Skies," which explored how the public used amateur astronomy and radio practices to engage with the first man-made objects in a newly politicized space.
An additional node,
"Returning to B.F. Skinner" inspired by the research of Harvard psychologist B.F. Skinner, was present alongside
the Tangible Things exhibit in the Special Exhibitions Gallery.
A fourth node,
"Permanent Collection" consisted in media augmentations of the pieces from the Collection of Historical
Scientific Instruments on display in the Putnam Gallery.