UC Santa Barbara

This dissertation project explores the convergence of museum and themed entertainment design through the lens of Deep Time—a concept that has important implications for connecting mass communication to scholarship on the Anthropocene. Based on case studies that represent a variety of exhibition contexts, I consider how paleontology, evolutionary theory, art history and archaeology function as public histories that structure and mobilize our understanding of the remote past. I examine several US-based sites: the George C. Page Museum at the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles, the Evolving Planet exhibit at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, and the Dinosaur attraction at Disneyʼs Animal Kingdom Theme Park in Orlando, Florida. In France, I conduct research on the replicated cave paintings of Lascaux IV and Caverne du Pont-d'Arc, at the International Centre for Parietal Art in Montignac and Grotte Chauvet 2 in Ardèche.

These sites explore Deep Time as a theme that links media, temporality and ecology; I consider how this theme is implemented in designed spaces, and how these spaces go on to shape our shared scientific imagination. I conduct in-person research at each site; this entails formal analysis of attractions and their host institutions, ethnographic observation and consultation with attraction personnel. This in-person research is framed by spatial and temporal approaches to film and media theory, as well as key texts in museum and themed entertainment studies. The research sites represent distinct approaches to spatializing and temporalizing information, and each uses a unique combination of aesthetic and performative strategies in order to construct unique relationships between visiting publics, institutions and industries. These relationships imply a range of social, cultural and political contexts for exploring the intersection of media, temporality and environment, and each site proposes novel reconstructed environments and experiences as a basis for engaging the remote past and ultimately the Anthropocene