Month: February 2016

This week I read about the “Infinite Museum” at the David Owsley Museum of Art. This interactive website is innovative and useful when trying to tie digital aspects into a museum. Although many museums already do have websites where you are able to explore the works currently on display, this project allows you to explore the galleries in a more creative way. It allows you to be reflective or look at things in a fun manner instead of just completely serious. They did this by creating numerous different prompts, which they then referred to as ‘lenses.’ This reminds me of the interactive wig exhibit we looked at in class. However, I feel like that was just more playful. It didn’t give any real information about the wigs, besides some very basic background. It was entertaining to create an outlandish wig, but ultimately I didn’t learn much. With the “Infinite Museum,” it will actually take you to explore different parts of the museum, which is what a good online digital component will do. I personally like this feature because I often times feel self conscious visiting museums because I’m not very knowledgeable about art and art history and so to be able to explore at my own pace from the comfort of my home is an amazing feature. I will be interested to see how the online realm further develops in the next few years.

There is no denying of the continuing prevalence of technology installed in museums worldwide, even if the degree and types of technological utilization vary greatly from one museum to another. The problem, however, lies with the success of these museums in achieving their mission statements. With increasing availability of resources and innovations, museums can start conjuring up new ways and methods to attract more patrons, enrich their experience, collaborate with communities, and steady their position as a cultural institution. But it doesn’t necessarily mean they should all the time. I have seen museums incorporate technology in a favorable way, but I have also seen museums dump technology into exhibitions that distracts the viewers instead of supplementing the intended experience. Museums should really consider the ways technology can be appropriately implemented and carefully study the impact it has on the patron’s experience.

In the article “Data-driven enriched exhibits using augmented reality” by Warren et al., the authors discuss the ways museums can add “context or content, via audio/visual means, to the current physical space of a visitor to a museum or outdoor site,” which they define it as augmented reality. By drawing information from the data about the location of the artifacts, related events, and visitor behavior, there is a possibility of incorporating technology in a better and more useful way reducing what they call “visitor fatigue”.

The goal is to create links between the visitor’s immediate surroundings, as affected by his or her actions, and information held by the museum.

An example would be creating conversational noises in the background for specific exhibits to create resonance around the objects and place the visitors in a surrounding that reflects the historical context of the objects and the era of interest. Another example would be the sound of Morse codes when a sensor detects a visitor engaging with an object from wartime. According to the authors, all of this would be possible by, first, identifying the interaction points; second, detecting visitor action with the interaction points and the objects; third, mapping the interaction point to the object, which allows for personal and customizable experience for each visitor. An interesting case study would be the Anne Frank House, where it utilizes environmental noises and other audio/visual means to link the visitors to Anne Frank’s experience. If museums can create such a data-driven augmented reality in order to enhance the museum visitor’s experience, technology wouldn’t feel so out of place in an exhibit. Through smart implementation coupled with museum’s data, technology can evoke the intended emotions and guide the patrons toward a more cohesive understanding of the object.

For this week’s blog post I looked at the article Personal and Social? Designing Personalised Experiences for Groups in Museums which covered a kind of experiment that involved allowing the visitors to become the curators for their friends’ and families’ experiences in the museum. To do this they offered a mobile app which had a basic template from which the designer could choose whatever pieces they felt their respective loved one should visit. After making those selctions they could add an audio element through song to better create the mood of the moment. Additionally they could provide instructions on how the loved one should interact with the chosen piece and textual information they should know about it. The purpose of the piece was to blend the personalization of self-curated tours of museums with the social experience of coming to a museum with others which can be lost when individually creating personal experiences.

In terms of how successfull the app was, I think they achieved their purpose in creating something that was both personal and social since they were able to watch as both pairs and groups interacted and reacted towards how their loved ones wanted to view an object. Though I think the argument could be made that this still removes the agency of the patron since they are stll not controlling their own experience, I think the personal element is still clearly evident in that the people who likely know them best are specifically designing something for them to enjoy which is pretty cool. The tour then perhaps becomes more personal then something purely self-curated since patrons are sharing an experience in which each object is chosen to have a special meaning. In that way I feel like there is a greater sense of resonance with each object since they would then be able to connect to the personal moment and interaction curated by their loved one. Thus in this way the technology enhanced the connection between the patron and the art.

The Pointillize Yourself and #NeoImpressed apps, implemented at the Indianapolis Museum of Art and the Phillips Collection, respectively, allow viewers to take selfies of themselves and apply filters that transform the images into pointillist paintings, within the context of Neo-Impressionism exhibitions. The article focused mainly on comparing the museums’ approaches in implementing these technologies (top-down in the case of the Indianapolis Museum of Art and bottom-up in the case of the Phillips Collection), but I found the results of the evaluations of the technology in both cases to be far more telling. Both museums received immense positive feedback from users of the apps, to the extent that the article considered the app “the most successful participatory tool [The Indianapolis Museum of Art]  has ever developed for an exhibition.”

But what made the app so popular? The article credits the popularity of the app at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, in particular, with the fact that the museum learned from its previous interactive components. However, given the younger demographics of people using the app, the option to post to social media after you create the pointillist image, and the simple fact that the images are self portraits, I credit the popularity of the app in the case of both museums to my generation’s narcissism and obsession with “selfies.”

In the first act of the This American Life episode, “Status Update,” Ira Glass interviews a group of teenage girls, who discuss the importance of posting selfies to platforms like Instagram, as well as the implications and politics associated with that practice. These girls– and many of my peers– construct their senses of self based on their Instagram identities and the reactions they get to what they post. Selfie culture has permeated teenage realities. It would be interesting to see if the app would be as popular without the social media aspect, or even the self portrait aspect, but I think it wouldn’t be. Patrons’ fascination with this technology stems from the fact that they themselves become a piece of artwork, put in the online gallery space of Instagram, to be admired, in turn, by the patrons there.

The Infinite Museum is an application to enhance the museum going experience by providing a wide range of prompts to promote patrons to think about art in new ways. This prompts range from silly to philosophical, asking about specific artworks or more broadly about the museum/life. This application gets at a tension that’s come up a lot in class – that there is a specific way in which art should be viewed and interpreted in the museum space. There is a stigma in society that art placed in museums is something to be venerated with little to no critical thinking involved. This application puts itself right in the middle of that process by providing a platform in which it is encouraged to think of art in news. With new prompts being added frequently, this is something that patrons can use on their own or that museums can include in the exhibit itself.

I like the concept of this application – prompts are randomized so the experience changes every time, and you can save your favorites to reuse them. The constant additions will also continue to change the experience. To some extent, though I think the prompts could be distracting if the user engages with too many of them during the museum experience, or engages only with prompts and not with the museum space itself (this has its pros and cons for sure). What if the user gets distracted trying to find the perfect random prompt? What if they spend the whole time jumping from specific item prompt to specific item prompt? Do they loose the museum or the exhibit’s sense of cohesion (and is that a bad thing)? It sort of equates to trying to find the best Instagram photo, or reddit post to retweet or share. You spend a lot of time looking for it, but are you actually looking at all the things you scroll past?

Most museums these days have implemented digital applications or other technologies that are developed to enhance the museum experience by offering information about the museum and its collection. On my most recent museum visit to The Broad, I was presented with their app that can be used alongside one’s visit. Though this app was extensive, interactive, well designed, and easy to use, I found myself only using it for a short period of time. An important part of my museum going experience is not only engaging with the artwork, but watching how others engage with it as well. People watching is just as integral to my museum going experience as the artwork itself, and app’s like The Broad’s require a degree of attention and isolation that takes you out of that experience. I found it really refreshing to hear that museums are conscious of how the sociality of a visit can affect a visitor’s museum experience. In “Personal and Social? Designing personalized experiences for groups in museums,” conducted by Lesley Fosh, Katharina Lorenz, Steve Benford, and Boriana Koleva of the University of Nottingham; the authors explore designing “interactive visiting experience[s] that lets visitors create interpretations of exhibits for their friends and loved ones that they then experience together.” The final “interactive visiting experience” designed required visitors to choose for their loved ones a set of objects, a piece of music, instructions on how to engage with the objects, and a portion of text for context. By allowing visitors to “gift” their loved ones a personally curated experience, I believe that this new approach definitely makes that experience more personal, intimate, and social. I think that their new design template is a great start in the right direction towards bridging the gap between the often impersonality of technology and the personal experiences museum visitors, like myself, wish to have.

I chose to read an article from 1998 by James Berry entitled “The Virtual Docent”. I found this article interesting because it was written 18 years ago and it is proposing digital technologies to repair discrepancies in the museum world that we use today and that we have surpassed.

The article calls for some kind of virtual docent program in which docents are able to lead patrons from off site, transcending place and time.The article proposes examples where technology is used to extend the interpersonal aspects of museum docents. While I feel that many museums have not replaced docents with digital tools, I do not see that museums have incorporated them well into docent relations. Usually in museums there are either docent lead tours or self guided audio tours.I think the closest we see to the resolve that the article calls for is at the Brooklyn Museum, where they have text in docents answering questions. However, as we discussed in class, this is more of a community based outreach that does not transcend space as the “virtual docent” does.

However, I do think it is interesting that the article looks to virtual docents as a way to reach schools and interested patrons that may not be able to reach the museum. I see that this is very apparent through the digital designs and interface of museum websites. I think in a way, how museums curate their online databases is a a of virtually docenting. For example, the Getty has its collections available on line and commentary from the curators of exhibitions and walk throughs. The Hammer streams all of its art in conversations and museums like the Cooper Hewitt have virtual activities to make viewers make meaningful connections with the art. In this way, I feel that there is no real resolve in the personal aspects of docents but digital tools can still be used to make meaningful connections with the art.

(Please excuse me if I sound angry; these types of arguments just annoy me.)

They move through galleries fast and with a new purpose — cellphones in hand, they’re on Instagram treks and selfie hunts — and with a new viewing rhythm: Stop, point, pose, snap.

I’ll just start by saying I hate this article. I hate the wording. I hate the attitude. I hate the way of thinking. I hate that the article sounds like another “them-versus-us” argument about the detrements of social media and those young people are on those darn smartphones too much. 

Although yes, there are people who are just that vain and do go to museums just to take “selfies,” generalizing an entire demographic as attending museums for such reason is… stupid.

Like libraries, they were places where the volume was low, the energy slow, the technology unobtrusive. You came to them to look, to think and, in the days before museums became the prime social spaces they are now, to be alone in a small, like-minded crowd.

Yes, and you also used to pay gas that didn’t make your wallet cry, used to refer to a paper map for driving directions, and used to dial an industrial-grade plastic telephone with a corded handset. So what? What point are you trying to make? That museums are no longer the same environment back in “the good ol’ days?”

 

My own introduction to art was remote and virtual, at home as a kid, looking through books, flipping pages, stopping when something caught my attention. But what got me hooked were visits to museums, notably the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and seeing crucial features of art that didn’t come through in reproduction.

The attitude this author has is preventing him from realizing this: the same way books motivated him to go out to the museums to experience the real thing, social media is serving for the present generation. He speaks of everything books lacked–scale, experience, texture–without realizing that the “digital photographs” he speaks of are not seen as a holy grail that our generation is using to substitute a live experience. He sites a survey that states the obvious–that people prefer to see museums in person. He ends his argument with, again, the obvious–that photos do not suffice in terms of experiencing art. What he completely fails to see is that us, as “young people,” agree with him as well. I can attest to this firsthand, as my list of must-visit-when-I-have-free-time museums were generated from a friend’s Instagram. Without him, I probably would not have known about the more obscure, local museums outside of the LACMA and the recent Broad-buzz. Furthermore, museums own social media accounts do not supplement a substitute for a real life visit, but rather encourages it, seen below in the Pasadena Museum of California Art’s Instagram.

Obviously there is the same motivative quality in social media as the author found in books. Just because we are now in an age of “digital natives” does not mean that all museum goers today lack substance. In fact, the fact that the author has a discouraging tone towards those who do manage to visit a museum in person, assuming and brushing off their motive as vain, only weakens his already ill-focused argument to me. He’s not satisfied with millennial culture making museums accessible online, nor is he satisfied with the reasons that make them want to go in person… What is he trying to achieve?

The only thing this article achieves is perpetuating an unnecessary “us-versus-them” mentality over a subject that is (somewhat) universally agreed upon.  How can you call this good journalism?

 

 

I found this article, on using interpretive technology at the fine arts museums in San Francisco, was particularly interesting especially since I have visited the deYoung multiple times in the past (I have not yet had the chance to visit the Legion of Honor). This article goes over what Voices:FAMSF is, as well as its aim to combine the visitor’s experience with the art piece with sound to enhance their experience. (On a side note, I thought it was amusing that they decided to use the outdoor sculptures at the deYoung so they could get a better GPS read, since the deYoung has notoriously horrible cellphone reception.)

It’s interesting how these fine arts museums, the ones who are usually less flexible and more resistant to change, are trying to embrace technology and integrate it into the user experience. Maybe this is just the spirit of San Francisco, the city with such a tight-knit relationship with technology and the industry. As someone who grew up the county over, it has always been a given that the (big) museums have always embraced and accepted technology. SFMOMA, before it closed for reconstruction, had large digital displays in the entryway. There are two museums, the California Academy of Sciences and the Exploratorium, dedicated to  technology (although not from an artistic standpoint).

In its beta phase, Voices:FAMSF noted that through the usage of their application, user engagement did increase, and that people actually felt like they were having a more holistic, stronger engagement with the art. Since the application takes visitor comments and uses them to generate a platform for discussion, both from the museum and the community, they hope to increase user engagement and understanding of the art at both of the institutions. While the app may not be ready for the public, their early beta testings are showing that embracing technology can be a good thing for museums.

Okay, maybe I’m looking at this in a sort of biased way given that I myself am a millennial, but was anyone else getting a “I’m against the digitization of art because these kids nowadays don’t understand MY non-digital experience with it” vibe from Holland Cotter’s article, “Tuning Out Digital Buzz, for an Intimate Communion with Art?”

I feel that the argument of baby boomers vs. millennials is pretty prominent in pop culture, especially when we’re talking about how things were back in the good ol’ days without Facebook or Twitter, or Skype or the Chase Mobile app. This argument goes further into the museum world; that is, the ever-so talked about critiques of this generation being so obsessed with digital technology, that we supposedly overlook the significance of artwork and digitally-independent museum experiences. Cotter herself explains, “Like libraries, they were places where the volume was low, the energy slow, the technology unobtrusive. You came to them to look, to think and, in the days before museums became the prime social spaces they are now, to be alone in a small, like-minded crowd.” She recalls moments of true resonance from her experience of museums, stating that “the only way you would retain most of what you saw was by spending time in the galleries and imprinting things on your brain.” But then Cotter goes on to explain the downfalls of technology in museum spaces, particularly, when people rely on digital supplements as the only way to even experience a museum.

But Cotter also brings up examples that work in favor of #TeamDigital. And I quote, “The basic idea is simple: More people should be able to see more art. Who would argue?” It goes without saying that every human being reserves the right of accessibility. Though there may be some parts of the museum experience that can be “missing,” isn’t the fact that making such well-known, generally agreed upon, and culturally significant works open to viewing and learning to all a huge leap for museums? With the reputation of being historically exclusive to those of higher class, or the ones who have the privilege of calling themselves true art appreciators or experts, it’s definitely a plus. Cotter describes the Museum of Modern Art’s direction into encouraging photographs of the objects, as “in general, MoMA is encouraging the picture-taking impulse” for means of sharing and reproducing on the Internet. The museum’s Instagram account is reflective of this culture of having museum-goers either post about their experiences, or allow for followers both around the world and in that sort of interest field to see these experiences and compare it to their own; or rather, even inspire an experience for those who cannot attend the physical space. Reproduction through this Instagram account makes pieces from the museum accessible in another digital delivery method, which can lead to people wanting to visit the MoMA’s website, or search up artists and objects online for their own interests. Reproduction is just that: a representation of an object that is otherwise remote or unable to be physically experienced by everyone, so Cotter’s point of digital accessibility being inaccurate of a work is somewhat skewed.

(The MoMA’s Instagram account encourages patrons to take photos and tag them to be featured.)

In a previous post, I mentioned that scale is usually hard to decipher in digital reproductions. Yet sometimes, aspects of art such as scale or texture is still relatively easy to replicate with today’s technology, even though Cotter disagrees. But ince technology is still improving, who’s to say that we’re missing out on details if we’ve yet to discover or create a method to completely capture them? It’s like how human beings have only explored 2% of the earth’s oceans; anything is possible, and with further digital advancements, we’re getting closer to more possibilities and opportunities of engagement and recording. So why make things less accessible, just because a few minor things might be missing? Accessibility via internet and digital means is such an improvement from the once closed-off space of musuems, so Cotter having to say negative things about not being able to physically experience exhibits and objects is just a little contradictory to her approval of accessibility.

And the further we distance ourselves from art itself, from being in front of it with all filters gone, life is what we lose — art’s and ours.

Anyway, maybe I’m just a bit insulted at Cotter’s viewpoint on accessibility. I mean, admittedly, I do love my digital gadgets, and can see why Cotter would assume this generation of being utterly sucked into them. But at the same time, here’s what I have to say to her: have some faith! It’s a different time and a different meaning of museums that this generation lives in. Art is and can be everywhere, and through digital means, art is not only preserved and reproduced, but even transformed and interpreted in many, many ways. Good or bad, that depends on the eye of the patron. But what matters in the grand scheme of things, is that we can look at works old and new, physical or digital, and think to ourselves, wow, this is art, this is culture, this is what x means to y, this is us, and not have to worry about if our experiences are accurate or need to be validated by a traditional way of thinking.