beyond education & contextualization: creativity

A museum should aim to educate the public about art, history, culture, etc., engaging with them in creative ways to communicate their significance and relevance to the current generation. It goes without saying then, that a museum’s digital presence should support this mission. The videos, articles and other forms of online content that a museum shares with the public should have a distinct purpose – to educate and contextualize – rather than to market and induce “likes” on social media, although in today’s digital age, an institution’s social capital seems to be a key (and to some degree, false) indicator of its legitimacy.

When it comes to art museums, I expect creativity and continuous effort to push the envelope even more so than I do from history museums, for instance. Art has always been a field that praises self-expression, progress and innovation – a lively spirit that I somehow expect to see transferred on to a museum’s digital space.

That being said, I don’t think I’d want to watch an online class about the influence of Modernism on American art or the techniques of Renaissance artists. I would however, watch a class about the influence of super hero comics on the meaning of social justice or the role of social media in democratizing the medium of photography.

Clearly, creativity is one aspect that I appreciate from a museum’s digital presence. One digital storytelling piece that I truly find creative is the piece about sound and urban architecture by Michael Kimmelman, architecture critic for The New York Times and pianist. In “Dear Architects: Sound Matters,” Kimmelman discusses the importance of sound as an architectural material in shaping people’s experience of buildings, contrasting the distinct “feel” of New York landmarks like the New York Public Library, High Line and Penn Station by the sound they each produce. The digital team at The New York Times makes the story an interactive one, including muted clips of the landmarks that become audible once readers hover their mouse over the clips. They are interspersed throughout the text and allow readers to immediately hear how each place that Kimmelman refers to differs from the rest.

The caption reads: Hover for sound. This article uses three-dimensional audio. The effect is only apparent if you listen with headphones.
The caption reads: “Hover for sound. This article uses three-dimensional audio. The effect is only apparent if you listen with headphones.”

Users can instantly feel how sound distinguishes one experience from another by hovering over the clips. Also, they are very much integrated with the text. Readers can find out for themselves what Kimmelman is saying about each place. And I find it so interesting how a short clip, shot from a fixed angle, can be so powerful in conveying a message. I don’t think a video could have achieved the same effect. Perhaps it’s the interactive aspect of the clip.

Week 8: Digital Storytelling

In the digital world, I expect museums to provide the information that they cannot provide in the physical exhibit. At least a catalog which can be used for in depth research, like that at the British Museum in London. All of the metadata and past articles and exhibits created by the museum should be online. Anything beyond the catalog I would consider extra with the museum going above and beyond. Social media, while good for advertisement, I consider unnecessary as they do not contribute to the information of objects. Most digital work is for exposure and not necessarily for education.

I have only taken an online course once before and my experience with it was not satisfactory. Honestly, I dislike the idea of online courses. For people who are in a position where they cannot attend school, I understand the necessity but opting for internet learning as opposed to personal experience and interaction seems unrealistic. The best version of a digital course I can think of would be based around independent research. The student would be monitored by regular interaction every week by the instructor online and would have more free-reign to build their own project. Particularly for digital projects, such as 3D modeling, the students would collaborate online while all viewing the same model and suggesting changes. However, I do not think traditional learning can take place over the internet.

I found this series a while back when I was exploring videos on ancient history. This particular one is about the life of adolescent girls in ancient Rome.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQMgLxVxsrw

There are others along the same topic of history and random interesting concepts that have good imagery and narration. In general, TED Education tends to pick interesting topics that people are likely to click on and the content is well-rounded making it enjoyable. The videos are not too long but they provide a good amount of content.

Response to Agnes Stauber

Today I was entranced by the video “Dreams of Dali,” a “virtual reality experience” which takes viewers inside Salvador Dali’s Archeological Reminiscence of Millet’s “Angelus.” 

The video was created as part of the Disney and Dali exhibit at the Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida. The virtual reality is a synthesis between the fairylands we see in classic Disney films and Dali’s dreamlike paintings. Not only does it let the viewer see a whole new version of the painting, it allows one to imagine a world of Dali’s creation, maybe even entering into the realm of his mind. The presentation is more like that of a video game than a movie, as the viewer really feels like they are exploring this other world. “Lead developer Nathan Shipley used the same 3D modeling, lighting, and texturing tools game developers use, and built a gaze-based navigation system” to create this experience (Wired).

This video is free from text and there is no voiceover other than the haunting music playing in the background. The lack of human presence mediating one’s experience with the video differs from the videos available on Lacma’s website, and it is what makes this video so compelling.

As far as an online course, I would be interested in a course on Art Criticism. Criticism can be snarky and funny (like a YouTube video) which would make it enjoyable to watch through, while still being educational.

 

Multi-perspective Digital Story Telling

I read “The Museum as digital storyteller: Collaborative participatory creation of interactive digital experiences” by Maria Roussou, Laia Pujol, Akrivi Katifori, Angeliki Chrysanthi, Sara Perry, and Maria Vayanou. The essay discussed the methods employed in the CHESS (Cultural Heritage Experiences through Socio-personal interactions and Storytelling) research project that took place in multiple cultural institutions and museums.  The essay posits that creating digital story telling experiences and narratives for museums is a multilayered process that should involve interdisciplinary authoring groups. The essay also argues that in the age of  information technology and social media institutional boundaries of the museum are increasingly blurred, and thus audiences too must participate in the story telling process. I think this essay speaks to central concerns in the museum world at this moment: public engagement and participation; How can museums use digital technology and platforms to provide new avenues and spaces for audience engagement with museum spaces, exhibitions, and collections?

The Object Stories program at the Portland Art Museum (PAM) has a great digital platform for increasing audience engagement with collections through digital story telling. The Object stories websites has a collection of diverse personal narratives about objects in the PAMs collection, but also objects of the narrators choice, such as an old wallet or a child’s costume. The stories illuminate how objects in museums are not static, but have real uses, impacts and personal value, beyond the museum. Listening to the stories and seeing the pictures of the narrator and objects being discussed has a real resonance. I also think integrating objects outside of the museum’s collection shows that the musuem is interested in what is important to their audiences, and how they are hoping to get museum audiences to reflect on objects in the real world they way they would in a museum and vise versa.

The object stories and the conclusions made in the essay, made me think about the digital story telling project that I am going to create at the end of this class. Objects and their histories become much more meaningful when a multi-disciplinary and multi-perspective approach is taken in the digital story telling process. My challenge will be to integrate diverse narratives and perspectives regarding the object into an overarching account of an object.

Multiperspective Digital Story Telling

I read “The Museum as digital storyteller: Collaborative participatory creation of interactive digital experiences” by Maria Roussou, Laia Pujol, Akrivi Katifori, Angeliki Chrysanthi, Sara Perry, and Maria Vayanou. The essay discussed the methods employed in the CHESS (Cultural Heritage Experiences through Socio-personal interactions and Storytelling) research project that took place in multiple cultural institutions and museums.  The essay posits that creating digital story telling experiences and narratives for museums is a multilayered process that should involve interdisciplinary authoring groups. The essay also argues that in the age of  information technology and social media institutional boundaries of the museum are increasingly blurred, and thus audiences too must participate in the story telling process. I think this essay speaks to central concerns in the museum world at this moment: public engagement and participation; How can museums use digital technology and platforms to provide new avenues and spaces for audience engagement with museum spaces, exhibitions, and collections?

The Object Stories program at the Portland Art Museum (PAM) has a great digital platform for increasing audience engagement with collections through digital story telling. The Object stories websites has a collection of diverse personal narratives about objects in the PAMs collection, but also objects of the narrators choice, such as an old wallet or a child’s costume. The stories illuminate how objects in museums are not static, but have real uses, impacts and personal value, beyond the museum. Listening to the stories and seeing the pictures of the narrator and objects being discussed has a real resonance. I also think integrating objects outside of the museum’s collection shows that the musuem is interested in what is important to their audiences, and how they are hoping to get museum audiences to reflect on objects in the real world they way they would in a museum and vise versa.

The object stories and the conclusions made in the essay, made me think about the digital story telling project that I am going to create at the end of this class. Objects and their histories become much more meaningful when a multi-disciplinary and multi-perspective approach is taken in the digital story telling process. My challenge will be to integrate diverse narratives and perspectives regarding the object into an overarching account of an object.

Engineering Art Discovery Systems: Artsy vs “Five Every Day”

I really enjoyed Liam Andrew, Desi Gonzalez and Kurt Fendt’s article on “Playful Engineering: Designing and Building Art Discovery Systems”, which explores ways to “engineer the discovery of art” i.e. use technology to attract users to artwork, encourage a sustained relationship with art, and to help users gain a better understanding of the cultural community of Boston. I am by no means a developer or coder, but this article helped to explain some very technical concepts involved in the building of technological platforms and interfaces, which in turn helped me build on my own technical vocabulary. For a digital humanist, it is especially important to understand the technology being used in order to effectively apply and evaluate its usage in the art world.

The authors make an interesting comparison between content-based and collaborative filtering systems using Artbot’s discovery engine as an example. The latter takes on a “social approach”, which offer recommendation based on users’ behavior e.g. Amazon and Netflix. However, a drawback of this system is that it limits rather than expands a customer’s purview. While this might not seem particularly harmful in an ecommerce setting, the term “filter bubble” coined by Eli Pariser in 2011 speaks to the way in which modeling systems to fit a user’s behavior “isolates users from content that might differ from his or her viewpoints”. This algorithmic filtering leads to biased data and information narrowly skewed to enhance confirmation bias.

In contrast, content-based systems “look to the properties of the items themselves, rather than the users, for recommendation signals”. This seems more common in a museum setting, where “object and subject taxonomies built into the museum’s collection management systems” are relied upon to assist a user’s exploration. For instance, one can browse a museum’s collection by searching genre tags such as “Asian art” and “Roman art”. However, “generating and maintaining a taxonomy” is time intensive and dependent on the precision and dedication of the tagger. The worry is therefore that rigid classifications do not accurately represent a work of art, and do not allow for “happy accidents in the discovery process”, or serendipity.

In order to combat the drawbacks of each of these methods, Ethan Zuckerman recommends building digital tools that “infuse serendipity and a diversity of voices”. Specifically, the authors suggest building systems that allow for a hybrid of automation and curation. For instance, computers could perform preliminary web scraping and parsing, but developers need to constantly review their code and the information that results from data gathering in order to present it in a sensible and user-oriented way. This enables nuances to shine through recommendation apps such as Artsy, while saving time and energy on individual research and compilation.

This discussion makes me wonder about the app “Five Every Day”, which recommends five things to do in Los Angeles every day. Here is a photo (taken off Google) of its astonishingly simple interface:

interface

The scope of the app is fairly limited since it is only curated for events in LA, and even then it is limited to five things recommended by a trusted group of curators, as opposed to using a content or collaborative system. Rather than embarking on discovery individually, we wait every day to “discover” what is happening (the recommendations change every day), offering more of a wildcard/ surprise element to the app that differs from the serendipity offered by most other apps. While there is probably some engineering that goes into their research, the possibility of having systems engineered to satisfy one’s own preferences perhaps dilutes the cultural authority that curators traditionally have. While “Five Every Day” seems to restore such power to the curator, an increasing number of technological apps even outside the art world rely on these engineering systems to create a personalized experience for users. If “Five Every Day” were to expand and cover different geographic areas, I am interested to see how they manage the consistency of their recommendations, and whether they would develop their interface and jump on the “personalization” bandwagon.

Week 7

The NY Times article, “Tuning Out Digital Buzz, for an Intimate Communion With Art,” by Holland Cotter is a piece that I, along with many others in this generation can resonate with. This piece reminded me of the many articles published by pop culture websites and video showing “what we miss because of technology.” We are so invested in documenting our milestones and everyday activities instead of experiencing the moment itself. The video (now widely seen) showing what we miss is very powerful, especially to those of our generation, as many do not realize what happens.

However, there are arguments that this obsession with technology/social media/and “materialism” is somewhat of a fad. There are claims by millenials ourselves opposing to this culture. Since time has passed after the boom of social media, we are at the peak of utilization, yet more and more people are spending less time habitually browsing social media now. The way we use social media and technology is shifting as well, as more corporate companies and businesses use it as a tool to reach out to people. The very fact that people are calling our overuse of technology shows that this “problem” as some may call is being recognized in society. I believe this is the same for museums as well.

Growing up, I didn’t go to museums much simply because there weren’t many museums where I lived. However, the ones I did go to were very small, and the typical old fashioned museum. Little to no technological pieces were incorporated into the exhibits. With my museum visits, I noticed differences in the two museums I visited. One was very interactive and technology heavy, whereas the other was more of a classic stationary museum. I think it’s very important that we have both types, and think that this shift is going to continue no matter what, but, the old fashioned museum will always be around as well. The museums will shift to keep the value of the old fashioned type, while still incorporating new advancements.

Like Cotter, I believe there is a point to which we lose retention and the value of the museum visit due to too much technology, or too much “other stuff” incorporated when showing the objects. We remember the technology or the “cool” added tool to the object rather than the object itself. It’s overwhelming and it brings up other concerns, like generation gaps with technology. However, just like how the technological age that we live in now may be just a fad which is growing, yet changing, I believe this will translate to museums as well.

Week 7: Smartphone Headset

The Smartphone headset presented by Daniela De Angeli and Eamonn O’Neill from the University of Bath seeks to engage the visitor through technology by augmenting the visitor’s museum experience.

headset2
How the headset actually works

The headset works by using the visitor’s own phone to record and project information onto a transparency in front of the visitor’s eyes.  Thus far, the researchers have run a small study testing lighting, color and image blurriness.  When the headset is less a prototype, they plan on testing it in National Trust’s sites.

 

There are possibilities of displaying an infinite amount of information that the visitor would not originally have had. Curating would certainly be affected.  The headset impairs peripheral vision and curators may have to edit the exhibitions to allow the headsets to be really effective.

headset
The Smartphone headset prototype

 

The pros for a headset over a purely phone based augmentation was that holding the phone is limiting.  Having the phone in your hand was a distraction in it of itself.

I would argue that having the headset on itself is a distraction as it would take a while for visitor’s to become adjusted to the having something cover and interfere with their vision.  It would certainly take some time, at least, for the novelty of the headset to wear off. Certainly it would be an initial distraction to the visitor but I see there being a lot of potential to what could be done with the projections.

 

Week 7: How to get visitor feedback on digital interactives

Coming from a communications and business oriented background, the reading that caught my eye was “When to ask and when to shut up: How to get visitor feedback on digital interactives.” Just two weeks ago in Management class, we learned about proper ways of hypothesis testing and interviewing customers. Interestingly, this article resonates with the methods I learned in that course, and actually goes deeper. There are four major ways to learn customer insights: interview, surveys, observations, and usability testing. The last one is the focus of this article.

 

Usability testing in particular can be very effective in helping assess how a museum’s digital gadget is accepted by the users. This is important because when users have bad experiences with digital tools, they themselves often don’t know why they’re struggling, this is where usability testing brings makers and users together, helping work out the problems. In order to conduct a proper usability test, one must first recruit proper participants. Of course, it’s possible to ask some museum visitors while they explore the gallery on a given day, however, that participant sample will not be representative of your target segment. Thus, it’s better to pre-select participants, inviting them to the institution for the specific purpose of testing the interface. Next, it’s important to give people tasks because when people use digital tools it is usually to accomplish something. For example, the article says “if you are concerned that the map does not distinguish between the first and second floors – the participant to find an object on the second floor while on the first floor.”

The next step is knowing how to guide the user’s experience smoothly without incorporating your own biases in the questions you ask. Here one must be very careful and patient, and really focus on wording open-ended questions that allow the users to do the talking as much as possible to describe their experiences. It is highly unlikely that they will know the source of a frustration if they encounter a problem during use. Thus, as you have them talk through what they do, see, feel, and want, and knowing your digital tool’s feature, you’ll be able to better realize the source of the problem.

The specific examples provided in this article were quite fascinating to read through. For instance, how should you guide a user who gets stuck when using your tool? Giving “hints” is obviously wrong, as is constantly asking “What’s the problem?” Instead, the author of this article suggests to take the screen away for a few moments and ask the user what was on the screen. This will give insight into what things were easy to find vs. hard to find for the user.

Finally, after usability data has been gathered, it’s important to evaluate it relative to all other participants, trying to find common trends and discovering whether some features were really problems or just inconveniences. This process will help prioritize the digital tool’s design iterations.

In conclusion, I’d say that this article definitely provided a much more in-depth and detailed review of usability testing than my management textbook!

Week 7 Blog Post

Playful engineering: Designing and Building art discovery systems was interesting to me because it discusses a project that utilized a humanistic approach to technology from the very beginning. The intention of the technology was to introduce individuals to new types of art in a meaningful and sustainable relationship. This process was intended to act as a complement to the works of art, rather than as a technology to replace the work of art. Finally, the project was integrated into the city of Boston, which makes it more human based because the users will be able to interact with their surroundings through the lens of this technology.

I found Andrew’s discussion of algorithms particularly interesting because he presents an idea that I had never considered. If people see too many objects and too many options, the technology looses its purpose. The point to the technology is to be specific enough that the user sees hidden gems, rather than multiple collections of work with gems hidden within them. This point also shows off the human concern based in these projects. The creators have adjusted these technologies to enable users to feel as though their personal preferences are being understood while avoiding them feeling overwhelmed.

Finally, the physical layout of this article proved that human understanding was crucial to this project. By breaking down each section step by step, and including images of the work along the way, users are able to understand the personal work that went into creating this project. So often our technologies are created to hide the human aspect of technology, and I appreciate that this project aimed to break that barrier.