Week 8

I don’t think I have any major expectations in terms of a museum’s digital presence except a clean functioning website that offers an explanation or information on the exhibits and events taking place at that particular musuem. Any museum site should be user friendly so as to draw in potential patrons, an expectation that I would think to be intuitively considered in the web design process. Othewise I think digital aspects shouldn’t necessarily stand in for the physical experience, but instead enhance it as with the arrival of the megalith in the Levitated Mass video on the LACMA site.

I’m actually taking an online class right now through UCLA for my last science GE. Though its pretty convenient, I wouldn’t say I’m getting much out of the experience since it is so easy to complete the adjoined activities without really understanding the content. However I think this has less to do with the online aspect and probably more to do with my lack of interest in the subject matter. If I had to chose or create an online class I think I would be interested in something more of a practical application like something to do wth coding that way I’d be more interested in actually understanding the content.

I didn’t have any immediate thoughts when it came to good digital storytelling projects I’d seen so I googled. A project that came up numerous times was Bear 71 which was an interactive storytelling project about a female bear living in Banff National Park in Canada. The story took around 20 minutes and varied between controlled visuals which would play at specific points in the narration in conjunction with an interactive range which would appear in between allowing you to travel over the park tracking not only Bear 71 but other animals and humans. All the while there was narration that was meant to be coming from the main subject Bear 71 explaining essentially the negative effects of the human expansion and presence in the once truly wild habitat of these animals. By relating these issues in the format of a story, I think it was more emotionally resonant and the message thus had more impact.