MuseumNext 2014 Day Two
/Day two at #MuseumNext held as much interest and excitement for me as day one, although I was maybe a little jaded after two nights and one day of networking, the delegates are always so pleasant!
Day two started with Antenna LAB an offshoot from Antenna Audio who are well acquainted with audience engagement in museums. They praised museums as a third space and the opportunities that mobile offers before, during and after visits. They illustrated recent examples of projects within walls of museums at MoMA, Cleveland Museum of Art (Gallery One) and National Galleries Scotland (Art Hunter). They showed Grand Tour project of National Gallery/Hewlett Packard which had replica art all over London and are investigating how to capitalise on the learning of that. My question; is this an opportunity to edutain using cultural output and compete for the time people spend on devices while on the street against music, podcasts, games and social media?
What caught my eye was Talking Statues which is NESTA R&D funded, due to my late posting it's now out. I am excited by this, although rare for museums to have civic statues in their collection the concept of low cost technologies reaching everyday spaces is something I get behind. Currently available on 40 London statues and being evaluated by University of Leicester, this is worth keeping an eye on.
Breakup sessions are always a tough choice, I plumped for Amy Heibel, LACMA and Shelley Mannion, British Museum with intriguing title which included Zen and R&D. Amy introduced the R&D project at LACMA echoing similar artist engagement in 1960s with Warhol, Oldenberg and Smith. After an open call artists were selected and paired with advisors from companies like NVIDIA, Google and SpaceX. "We (LACMA) give financial and in-kind resources to artists to support projects (that may not happen otherwise) that engage emerging technology". My favourite so far is Annina Rust who has robots decorating cupcakes with piecharts depicting gender gaps. I even spotted a previous work colleague in one of her slides, the museum world is small.
Shelly Mannion gave a great presentation with theory from Falk, research from Morris Hargreaves McIntyre, the Happiness Project and laboratory studies of Buddhism. She explained Buddhism views happiness as a fundamental drive, distinct from pleasure, a choice, a skill, inextricably related to others. Shelley presented research that biographical exhibits connect more with audiences and aim to increase their sense of well-being.
Next up was a look at the Adidas archive website, looks great with chance to curate your own collection, nothing new.
Cybelle Jones from Gallagher & Associates presented on a selection of their projects. As someone who has a non-project budget of less than £5k these multi million dollar projects are not going to impact any of my daily decisions. Gallery One, National Post Museum, College Football Hall of Fame.
The afternoon's keynote was to set the theme of crowd sourcing with Gretchen Scott from MoMA and Jason Minyo from Possible and they talked about ART140. Using famous art work they invite people to tweet what they express for them. An additional element is the opportunity to analyse the data, assuming people use correct information on profiles there's a method of taking the data and looking for patterns of interpretations against age, geographic location, etc. Initial findings seemed to mirror findings of other studies, you don't have to be an art historian to see common themes.
Kathy Fredrickson, Peabody Essex Museum stepped in late to present on a joint project with Smithsonian Institute and the Roundware Access App platform development. Another method of gathering audience interpretation and knowledge of museum collections. It's at developer stage at present and anyone interested in getting on board are welcome to contact the developers.
National Museums Scotland, not surprisingly dear to my heart has undergone significant change in the past five years, physically and digitally. The digital has been led by Hugh Wallace and he shared an update and the five learning points for them in developing five apps, three visitor surveys, mobile friendly website, responsive design site (coming soon) and QR code experiments.
- Balance internal knowledge knowledge and creativity with external expertise
- Everything's an experiment, looking at Bluetooth low energy
- Keep asking questions
- Think beyond the sector
- Promote or die
My final selection of conference continued the theme of working with your audience with Carlotta Margarone, Palazzo Madama and Hannah Fox, Derby Museums offering their recent experiences of how audiences have responded to calls for assistance and participation.
Palazzo Madama identified a porcelain service from their region dated to 1730 and felt it was necessity to purchase for their collection. They raised €96k in two months exceeding the target of €80k and Carlotta expressed their desire to build on the relationship with these 1591 funders and other ways people supported. It raised their social media skills and the numbers following and liking, they developed portable donations boxes for everyone to take to events and ask for money all based around a storytelling philosophy for the ask.
Final speaker was Hannah who explained at Derby Silk Mill Museum they were unable to secure the funding to refurbish and were left with a decision of what to do next. They asked the museums and the people what to do and then asked for them to participate and help. Re:make is rebuilding the museum with community effort, skills and ideas by making, producing and building it. Hannah sees it very much in the industrial heritage vein and the innovation of the 1900s while all sharing the load and responsibility. As the location for MuseomixUK in November 2014 it s somewhere some of the audience will no doubt get to visit.
Apologies for a long summary, it proves;
A. I was listening and,
B. the presentations at MuseumNext are engaging, inspiring and leave me asking more questions and searching websites for more information.