8/01/2007

Barnum & Bailey & Lincoln

Sideshow sensibility:
A high-tech Ohio firm is about to make up for the understandable fact that apparently no painter had the foresight to record Abraham Lincoln’s boyhood portrait on canvas. Using a digital age-regression technique and an older image, LifeFormations will create a statue of young Abe for the Hardin County History Museum.
Statue or imaginative sculpture? This carney barker doesn't know the difference:
Museum promoter Susan McCrobie thinks the work will inspire school children. “They can look eye-to-eye with Lincoln,” she said. “They will meet another school person from Hardin County.”
(Eye-to-eye with a sculpture made from a computer drawing. Which reminds me. Baudrillard died in March and I owe you all a simulacra post in his honor.)
The project will draw funds from a flood of grants pouring into the area in preparation for the bicentennial of Lincoln’s birthday, a two-year party which kicks off in Hodgenville in February.
Money is chasing projects. Go to west, young grant seeker.

Shown top right: the rubbery ALPLM vision of Boy Lincoln.