Orchids Overshadowed Under the Bigtop: When Innovation Misses the Mark

A grandiose dose of silliness and fun
Step right up to The Orchid Show of Wonders, where your favorite carnival and circus attractions come to life in new ways. You’ll walk under Ferris wheel seats, and marvel at unicycles on tightropes and other gravity-defying surprises under the big top. This Orchid Show whisks you away to a whimsical world of 10,000 fresh, vibrant blooms.

https://www.chicagobotanic.org/orchid

Sometimes innovations go wrong.

One of the most powerful ways to create innovations is to take two ideas, two metaphors, and collide them together in a way that brings forth something new and exciting. In this case, the idea was to bring together the metaphor of circus, The Greatest Show on Earth, and fuse it with orchids, one of Nature’s Most Sublime masterpieces.  The end result?

The Orchid Show of Wonders!

But instead, the innovation that was spawned was a disjointed amalgam, a mix that highlighted neither circus nor orchids. It was a Fauxnnovation, a mash of metaphor with little transformation or elevation.

The Circus theme brought flashing lights,  mirrors, and repetitive Calliope music, and that became the backdrop to the soft curves of orchids, a beauty that normally commands introspection and contemplation. 

One would expect that an event at the Chicago Botanic Gardens would place orchids at center stage. But instead, it was almost like they were after thoughts to the Circus theme.  The flowers, the orchids, got lost in the flashing lights.

At a circus you want to keep moving, you want to take in as much as you can during a day, eat as much as you can, play as much as you can. But here, instead of wanting to linger in shadows of beauty, the lights and music created an unconscious desire to keep moving – as if you were at a circus. (Other people I spoke to commented on this vibe as well)

Cool effect but the orchids are an afterthought

The jarring lights and carnival music overwhelmed the delicate orchid displays rather than amplifying their sublime beauty. Instead of evoking awe and tranquility, the competing sensory overloads just created dissonance.

Circus balls and colors clashed, orchid pastels overpowered by flashing and glowing lights and circus music.

It’s a shame really. I love the orchid show. I love innovation. As a photographer, I love taking pictures. There were some photo-ops but not like other times. Many opportunities for photos were unique, but seldom orchid-centric. One couldn’t even catalog the various orchids seen at the show,  like in years before (see below).

These are only a handful of pictures I took at last year’s orchid show. This year I took about this much in total.

I respect the valiant effort and boldness of the creators of this exposition. But sometimes innovations, even when based upon the time honored technique of mashing together disparate metaphors, just don’t work.