Docent Toad
Docent Toad is an upcoming multi-media project that will present and recontextualize museum objects from around the world — brought to you by the titular Toad himself!
Docent Toad will tell stories through video essays with text and audio companion pieces. All of it will be housed in this handy website.
[The demo below is a live presentation of the current build. It is very work-in-progress. Things are broken, dead links everywhere, there are strange test pages and texts, etc. That said, it is constantly evolving and you can watch it develop live!]
Work-in-progress link: docenttoad-wip.netlify.app
Each essay will uncover the story of a different object. We’ll learn about the object itself, but we’ll also learn about the people, events, and culture that produced it. There’s no limit to where we’ll travel. Museums of all niches and objects from every corner will fall under the Toad’s eye.
Like all stories, these will have heartfelt moments, playful moments, tragic, enlightening, unbelievable, and so forth. Toad draws inspiration from The Anthropocene Reviewed, Ocean Vuong, and whatever else is in his hippocampus.
On June 25th, 1904, in the Philippine town of Todaya, Edgar Alexander Mearns journaled: “The bird giving voice to such a prolonged gush of song is called by the Bagobos Doo-roogh-bah’-tong.” That bird became one of many Philippine birds which Mearns would add to Western scientific canon. In that publication, he twice renames the Doo-roogh-bah’-tong. Its colloquial name, the Bagobo babbler, references the Bagobo people who shared with Mearns’ much of their language, while its scientific name, Leonardina woodi, tributes Mearns’ friend and then-Military Governor, Leonard Wood.
Excerpt from Science, Empire & the Bagobo Babbler by Docent Toad
Docent Toad will launch…..when it’s ready.
Anti-Amazon Shopper
The Anti-Amazon Shopper is an upcoming project that will help you divert your money from big monopoly men! It will have two main components:
- A website, which will inform you of the many reasons to shop outside of Amazon, and
- A browser extension, which will help you identify other places to find the products you want and find more sustainable ways to spend money
Check out the work-in-progress site below
Work-in-progress link: antiamazon-wip.netlify.app