Author: kaciemorgan

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?

In all three articles you can tell that big debate going on is what the museum digital presence should be – what should they post, how should they post it, and how those publishings alter the museums relationship with the public. There is a general consensus that a museum’s digital presence has both positive and negative effects. One of the most important results of this is the public’s relationship to the art in the museum. The Art in America article Hromack and Giampietro emphasize the point that many publishing of images deters visitors from coming to the museum to see the work in person. They raise the question of “what does it mean for us to encounter an artist’s work for the first time via Facebook or Instagram or Vine?” This is a valid question – what does it mean for both the viewer and the museum when people choose to experience art through a mediated for only? How much is lost in this exchange, and are museums deterring their own patrons? After all, how likely are you to wait in line to see something that you can see for free and with no hassle from your living room?

I have had this exact experience with art, Jackson Pollock to be exact. We had to look up images of his paintings online after watching a brief documentary about how he creates them. The image of his work in digital format aren’t too great. For example:

That just looks like a lot of splatter on a tan background in the digital format. It wasn’t until years later that I saw a Pollock in person, and got to see the texture on the canvas that I had any appreciation for Pollock’s works at all. Digital formats can tell you nothing of texture, or scale which are frequently two of the most important parts of art (they are usually the “wow” factor, that wonder effect), as is depicted in the article with the example of Walker’s statue.

Isaac’s case study of the National Museums of the American Indian is the potentially the best demonstration of many of the issue and tensions that we have been discussing in class. The Museums aim in incorporating technology into the museum was to open the discussion about the objects, express different cultural view points surrounding the objects, and to moderate the ideas of both letting the object speak for itself as well as culturally contextualizing it. The intention is very positive, as it always is, but Isaac notes several ways in which the technology doesn’t work out as planned. The overwhelming amount of it can be distracting, some visitors never look up from the screens (particularly the younger generations). The act of never looking up, however, seems to be a very common current trend in younger generations, period. I’m always amazed walking through campus and seeing how many people never look up from their phones while crossing streets, or just walking down sidewalks. I have a suspicion that the screen viewing obsession is not something that museum curators took into consideration when working to incorporate technology into the exhibits. But videos, and tv screen tend to be distracting anyways, partly due to the fact that they produce sound. In an otherwise sound-less environment, where the only sound is the mumbles/talking of visitors and the shuffling of feet, music and the projected dialogue of the videos can capture attention easily. They are also attractive because they are more “conversational” let’s say, than looking at something that is behind glass – videos talk to you, present a stream of images of objects or people, and give you information with you having to interact with the objects (they present it without you having to go look for it, or read it – the idea of digital story-telling). Isaac’s conclusion states that while the NMAI has a wonderful intention of broadening the cultural scope of the museum, they seem to be teetering on the edge of having added to much mediation between viewer and object.

I’m writing this response knowing that it’s not going to be a very popular view point, but I think it’s worth mentioning. Looking at the various types of data visualization for this week, I have to admit that some of them don’t quite make sense to me. I understand the point of visualization: to organize the data in a way that is easy to interpret, and easily presentable. So some of the projects, like the Cooper-Hewitt’s color history (while lacking an interpretation and meaning), or the Tatelet (which has no “data” purpose what so ever) fulfill their purpose well, but in a very abstract sense. But these data visualizations do not portray data in a practical way – they are the epitome of the “art hack” or the DH repurposing information.

Even more problematic for me are the visualizations of Helen Wall. These data visualizations have a clear purpose, and interpretation, as well as a very clear portrayal of information. (Theoretically, I shouldn’t have a problem with them at all.) Some of her graphs, however, don’t really need to be graphs at all. The artistbio’s by country graph doesn’t help me understand that information any better, in fact, it makes getting a finite number even harder. This, to me, defeats the purpose of organizing data. At that point, it feels like grasping for cultural capital. Like the image below:

This is also a data visualization, but it portrays very little information if you do not understand the theory behind the graph that compacted a large amount of information into this small little image. It can also be replaced by a short explanation and a table that clearly communicates finite quantities, and ideas.

It’s not the idea of looking at information from a new approach, or reorganizing the data that I have a problem with. It is the bizarre obsession that we have with visualizations – why do graphs hold so much cultural capital? And why do “digital” approaches to information always seems to end in graphing information  when it is not more approachable or helpful to do so? Are there other ways to make information more digestible but relay just as much information?

Despite the perplexities that the theory behind the Exhibition Complex introduces, the intersection, or really the duality, of Bennett’s notion of seeing/being seen was extremely intriguing. Ignoring most of the implications brought forth by the article, such as the identity of the crowd, the Eurocentric tendency of the museum, and the social implications of the crowds and museum goers, I thinking mostly of the design of the museum, and the interaction of the crowd and artifacts. For me, this interaction cultivates in two ways: the crowd becoming part of the display, and the crowd as a separate spectacle. Those attending the museum are there to see the what is displayed in the museum. Simultaneously, however, those gathered around the artifact are also part of the viewing process. At museums I often find myself observing the crowd just as much as the art, noting the way that people move through the museum space, and how long they take to look at items, and in general which items have the largest crowds so as to avoid them. Just as Bennett pointed out in the article about the Great Exhibition of 1851, the spaces seem designed for you to observe the people just as much as the exhibits themselves. I definitely fall into that trap: it’s always a moment of great joy and interest to see who else is attending the museum with me.

In modern times, seeing versus being seen has a completely new implication thanks to the invention of the internet and social media, and the incorporation of technology in the museums themselves. Museums compete with artifacts once again becoming public (if we consider items inside a museum as  “private” which is a somewhat contested idea)  as posted pictures circulate widely. People can now “see” things in this way without being seen. Conversely, museum-goers can be seen publicly not just by attending the museum but by sharing selfies on various social media platforms. This spreads the network of being seen even farther, than just the physical space of the museum. It is a great boost of cultural capital, as now your museum visit is even more visible – everyone can know that you attended, rather than just the strangers in the museum.