“The Art Interface” as seen through Interactive Resumes

Hromack and Giampietro’s article on “The Art Interface” makes an interesting analogy about the state of museums as they are caught transitioning into the digital world. The idea of art that is no longer an object, but an interface, signifies a transformation in the medium of art’s communication. Art must now speak through technological apparatus, which detractors say dilute the traditional museum-going experience. Further, given that digital platforms are also curated, we are perhaps one step further away from engaging with the art piece in a personal and unmediated way.

Physical aspects of an art piece such as scent, scale and perspective are arguably lost when we try to convey a museum’s collection through non-physical means. However, I think the change in medium can be accompanied by strategic thinking about how to convey information and engage users in ways uniquely catered to that medium. For instance, several software engineers and people in technical professions are being trained in UI/UX design and Human Computer Interaction, learning aspects of which are promising for aesthetically sensitive, yet functional and effective design. A good example of this would be graphic and web designers who have creatively reinterpreted a classic document- the resume. In order to make their applications stand out, developers such as Bobby Leonardi have built themselves an interactive resume.

While these interactive sites are cool, I don’t think they replace the need for a PDF resume, especially when faced with more traditional employers. In the same way, I feel that digital interfaces and the museum experience can enhance one another, but separately can still cater to different audiences. The digital does not attempt to, and is not a replacement for the physical, so digital experiences should in some way attempt to supplement the experience of one visiting a museum. A movie interpretation of a novel should be able to stand on its own, but it is distinct from the novel itself.

Having established that digital interfaces are promising given the increasing amount of attention being accorded to engineer-designer collaboration. I agree with Cat that an institution’s presence online does not make them global, but it does make them more accessible. How they want to leverage and measure their accessibility as a gauge of their success will become easier as more possibilities emerge for infrastructure to be molded to fit institutions’ programming, administrative and outreach needs. Accompanying such changes will be the development of a vocabulary and set of metrics/ indicators to assess how well a museum is doing.