For this week, I read about the Love and Sorrow exhibit in Australia about the psychological and emotional damage of World War I. The exhibit focuses on the story of eight families and utilized a phone app to guide a visitor through the museum. The app is expected to be downloaded prior to entry into the museum. I must wonder at how they accomplish this and how one might view the exhibit without a phone app. As I understand it, the exhibit is highly dependent upon having the app to guide you through the exhibit.
Upon entering, the visitor must select a single family to follow and download the package about them. They are guided by location on Bluetooth promoting numerous stories and content pop ups. ALthough this whole process seems cool and innovative, it is rather selective in terms of its viewership. What if people do not have a smart phone? What if their phone does not have a particular program needed to work the app? What if they are small children who do not yet have a phone? This exhibit would seem to exclude poorer classes of society from getting the full experience of the exhibit. It would be nice if the museum could somehow provide people with the technology rather than expecting them to own it. This process seems to put too much pressure on the visitor to go through numerous digital acts in order to learn.
Also, by limiting the visitor to one families story, they are kept from learning the story of the other seven families. In order to hear both stories in full, this app process forces the visitor to go back through the exhibit eight times in order to get the full content. The visitor also cannot go back and experience the app after leaving the museum or before entering the museum since the app is location activated. The location aspect of the app I think goes against the purpose of the museum; to spread knowledge to all levels of society. In this case, technology in the museum only seems to exclude rather than include and supplement the learning of the visitor.
http://mw2015.museumsandtheweb.com/paper/storyteller-world-war-one-love-and-sorrow-a-hybrid-exhibition-mobile-experience/
This does sound troubling. I’m immediately interested in how the stories of the eight families intersect, how they’re different, and what kinds of information get shared for each of them, because it probably isn’t the same. This also seems like something that could be done with some sort of in-exhibit, paper version so that everyone can interact. Or so that members of a group could each get a different family. Maybe they are assuming that you are attending the museum in a group? That’s also a problem.
I enjoyed your criticism about the location-based app incorporated into this exhibition. I agree that the museum needs to come up with better ways to engage the viewers that also allow them room for their own exploration. By dictating their course of action and limiting their trip’s perspective to one family at a time, I can only imagine the patrons becoming annoyed and irritated by the app’s intentional limitations. It seems the museum is forcing technology into the exhibition and onto the patrons as well. Younger kids might enjoy it solely because it is technology-based, but I don’t see how the older generations or even the millennials would fully enjoy the curatorial decisions. Millennials would probably appreciate that the museum incorporated a location-activated app, but they would not be amused by how restricting the app is. They are used to technology that allows a wide range of selections, options, and relative freedom, but this app would strip away the essentials they enjoy about technology. I’ve had my share of frustration when it comes to technology in museums. Museums should not incorporate technology into an exhibition and hop onto a bandwagon. They need to deliberate the important questions, such as the necessity of technology.