Pavement to Headline and Curate ATP

Pavement to Headline and Curate ATP.

Yeah….I got no problem with this. And I don’t understand the backlash from curators about the appropriation of the word by mainstream culture.  Being a curator in a museum is ultimately no different than making a mixtape for a dear friend.  Everything is chosen for a purpose – to weave a story. The precise placement of the songs, one after another, is no different than the precise placement of art and artifact.

You got a problem with that?

here i am….stuck in atlanta again…..

With apologies to Stealer’s Wheel….but I am, in fact, in Hot ‘Lanta, waiting to go to AAM.  Sara, Marc, Priscilla, Jeef and other fine museumy folk are already there – and I am….here.  And I’m paying money for wi-fi – which, might I just say I think the airlines are morally obligated to provide to the folks that they strand on a regular basis.  But whoever said that the airlines were moral?  Hmmmm?

Anyway – if all goes as planned I’ll arrive at some ungodly hour this evening, sleep for a bit, and then be egregiously perky for an afternoon presentation.

On the plus side – I was on a flight to Atlanta with a man who looked so much like Jim Cantore without actually being Jim Cantore that it was frightening.  This of course necessitated two phone calls to Anne Marie to have her check the Weather Channel website for his whereabouts (I mean….we did have tornadoes in North Carolina today……it could happen.

Sadly – it was not the godlike creature of weather goodness.  But it did make the weather delays more fun, at least.

Right – so a plane just arrived and I’m in danger of being trampled (one loses all dignity in the quest for an available electrical outlet for one’s laptop….) which leads me to observe that people are basically evil and clueless.

And I am trapped among them.

electronic museum

electronic museum is a nice place to visit……..

Engaging Museum Audiences – MW08

Engaging Museum Audiences

Shelley Bernstien

 

Target First Saturdays

Brooklyn Museum Visitor Video Competition

Hosted by You Tube

Rules posted:

 

• How to participate – the clearer the rules the better
• Filming Artwork
• Filming People
• Filming Performances
• Content

Lessons learned:

 

• Trust your audience
• Flickr – Visitors posted images of the collection from their visits to the museum
  • Shows how visitors see the collection
  • Allows personal expression

From the images submitted, several were selected and converted into a video promoting the museum from the perspective of the visitor.

 

Art Share

Application created for FaceBook

 

What can you do with ArtShare?

 

You can select works from the collection to display on your individual profile. But then, because social networking is about connecting and seeing what others contribute to the social fabric, anyone can also use ArtShare to upload their own work and share it with others. You can use ArtShare to select a wide variety of work, then each time your profile is loaded a different work will be displayed at random from your selections.

 

Institutions can join artshare and upload images that correspond with current exhibitions or upload spectacular images from the collection not in conjunction with a current exhibition.

 

Objectives Achieved:

 

• Community
• Openness
• Trust
• Value
• Giving

 Click – www.brooklynmuseum.org/click

 

Click! is a photography exhibition that invites visitors, the online community, and the general public to participate in the exhibition process.

 

Steps:

 

1. It begins with an open call—artists are asked to electronically submit a work of photography that responds to a theme established by the museum.
2. An online forum opens for audience evaluation of all submissions; as in other juried exhibitions, all works will be anonymous. As part of the evaluation, each visitor answers a series of questions about his/her knowledge on the chosen topic.
3. The project culminates in an exhibition either at the Museum or online, where the artworks are shown according to their relative ranking from the juried process. Visitors will also be able to see how different groups within the crowd evaluated the same works of art. The results are then analyzed and discussed by staff on online communities, and crowd theory.

 Project is based on the theories of James Surowiecki in the book The Wisdom of Crowds.

 

How to get curators blogging

 

Getting curators involved in blogging is a difficult process, everyone is busy. One solution to this is to keep all of the content directed to one person who then posts it so that curators are not responsible for keeping up with the technology.

 

Recommendations: 

• Establish word counts
• Ask that they write in a personal voice
• Involve younger members of staff
• Work with a teen advisory group and interns

Ladders of Participation – Social Media and Museum Audiences

Lynda Kelly and Angelina Russo

 

Given the rise of social networking it has become imperative for museums to understand not only who uses the internet but also how and why they are using it. The following information provides examples of on-line participation and classifications.

 

Audience Research and Classification:

 

What are they doing online?

 

• Watch videos – 46%
• Social networking sites – 36%
• Forums – 39%
• Read customer reviews – 32%

Creators:

Creators typically use the Internet as a personal development tool. They are the finders of information which they then share with others. They spend the most time of the web and are passionate about it. They recognize that knowledge is power and feel that it is important to leave a record of their opinions, activities, etc.

 

Creator

• Two-dimensional relationship with net
• Passionate people
• Recognize knowledge – power
• Value the importance of being published and contributing to the whole

Commentators:

Commentators tend to have one track minds and are primarily interested in feeding that need for information on their chosen topic. They see the web as a place to give and take and openly acknowledge the gratification that the instant access to information that the web provides has given them. They tend to stay within a set of sites and are not interested in exploring beyond those bounds.

 

Commentators

• Two-dimensional relationship with internet – give and take
• A fuel for their personal passion
• Tend to collect a few websites centered around their passions

Joiners

Joiners utilize the internet for work, study, and general organization of their day to day lives, but their primary interest is in socializing. This is accomplished through sites like MySpace, Bebo, and FaceBook. They have a high level of trust in the net and are optimistic to a fault in regards to technology. Primary use of the internet is with social networking sites that allow them to keep in contact with family and friends.

 

Joiners

• Two-dimensional relationship with the net – quite shallow
• Motivation is for socializing – upload photos

Spectators:

Spectators have a very basic relationship with the Internet with their key interest being in efficiency. Banking, movie times, restaurant menus, etc. are about the extent of their online involvement. They have a distinctive lack of trust in the internet, specifically security.

Spectators

• One dimensional relationship with net
• Lack of trust and experience in working with applications on the net

Physical environment engages the senses and the virtual environment engages the mind…

 

Use of social media

• Flickr
• YouTube
• Facebook
• Survey Monkey
• Mail Chimp

Social networking sites serve as a venue for exploratory visitor feedback:

 

·        Post suggestions for exhibitions and get user feedback before investing resources in the creation of the exhibition either virtual or physical.

 

The result of the use of these social networking sites is evident in several different types of experiences:

 

·        Cognitive experiences: gaining knowledge

·        Introspective: imagining reflecting connecting

·        Social experience: sharing information and opinions

 

Social experience:

Social sites are an amazing gateway for research into museums as places to build extend strengthen the museums identity

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

and a splendid time was had by all…

Again – raw notes from a session……

MW 2008 Closing Plenary 4/12/208

Clifford Lynch – Coalition for Networked Information www.cni.org

Digital databases of objects, etc. – great opportunity there to reach out to visitors, scholars, etc. To get beyond the restrictions of available exhibition space.

Have to be honest – sometimes these virtual ways of getting at an object are better than the actual ways – when the object is monumental and cannot see the whole – when the gallery is too crowded

This is not to say that the real is not important – but these surrogates – nay, complements are very important. There is great power in that – we are able to see things we cannot see when we engage physical collections esp in the way normal people access them – the non-privileged access.

Provocative areas of compromise – better stewardship, protecting collections, issues with repatriation.

Digital surrogates are great insurance – if something is stolen, looted, destroyed then it is still available.

There comes a time that you have to give a high priority to a really good collection of digital surrogates and their propagation around the world in various safe havens as a good insurance strategy – good stewardship

Mashups and such are important – but we do need to be realistic about them

Look at the new way we can compare different versions of a Shakespearean play – new things become possible – finding new information, new meaning is now possible where it would not have been before.

Imagine doing the same sort of thing to your own collection – then comparing with other such collections – finding new meanings, new information

Open access – how broadly do we believe there is some base human right to access this – and most importantly how serious are we about breaking down barriers that hold back such access –

Through collections – that’s where we are beginning to converge with libraries and archives.

Exhibitions – the fascinating prospect of being able to extend exhibits in virtual form – the potential of creating virtual exhibits that you could not do physically – the potential displacement of curation – where meaning is constructed by others – other curators, visitors, etc. – as well as the curator.

Most virtual exhibits only take you a little way – then leave you there. We don’t have really good connections with collections – nomenclature and naming authority differences, all sorts of barriers.

Pivot points that present all sorts of opportunities

what does a scholarly monograph turn into in the digital world? Some books should never have been books – they are far more suited now to the digital world. You can do so much more in a networked environment than you can in print.

Relationships between exhibitions as represented in digital form, with catalogues, and scholarship produced in conjunction with an exhibition in digital form – and how that links out to the outside world. Have to look at the viability of the traditional exhibition catalogue and where is it best suited for?

Interactivity - should be looked at critically – because some of it is interactive for the sake of being…interactive.

Visitors creating their own tours – very much like the old pick your own ending

then there is interaction that leaves trails – like leaving comments, reactions stories behind that establish a bond around a cultural institution. Well-received – and useful tools, but not sure in the long run that they make that much of a difference.

Social Networking Fatigue phenomenon – as these communities get busier, advertisers come in, spammers….people get socialized to death. How much do you really have time for – what’s the emotional, social, etc. return for you? How much time do you have to put towards it?

Museums may find social network sites useful – but when they fail it is important to remember that it is not the museum’s fault – just people have moved on.

Tagging – can be used as a diagnostic – to understand that you do need cross-references – that the visitors vocabulary is not the museum’s vocabulary. Tagging also allows the user to discuss the information in ways that they want – and in ways the curators do not intend. Much of this is easily absorbed – but other parts are deeply idiosyncratic, interpretive and don’t translate well from one interpretive frame to the next – but they still remain important to people. And is tagging a quick-win phenomena – how do we manage the evolution of a tagged collection over a long period of time? Will need a great deal of maintenance as do other systems of taxonomy. Is tagging very much of the hour? Will it decay after time passes? How will they remain fresh? Need to be mindful that what we are seeing today for tagging is the early win and not the maintenance side which will need some consideration as well.

There’s a form of interaction where people want to interact with the materials – the collection – and they may want to interact in a variety of ways depending on who they are – correct errors, annotate, answer questions, etc….raises deep questions about authority, responsibility, audience, institutional strategy and priorities. For most museums, their mission prizes public engagement. Interactions with image material – it’s wonderful what happens – people want to tell you who those people are, who the dog belonged to, what that machine is, etc……there are some institutions doing this in a deliberate way – giving them to the public and having the public identify, react to, create meaning around. The phenomenon of the orphan photo. Who are these people – where are they from, what did they do. These questions were largely unanswerable until the advent of the web.

Were does authority reside – do you dilute it if you open it to all – and remember that all the crazies and folks with axes to grind are out there waiting to help as well. And what does this do to the authority of the institution? How do you balance this – and where do you priorities lie – is it truly public engagement if this is what public engagement means? Museums may need to revisit their priorities. It may be useful for museums to enter into dialogue with library and archives – and with their fellow cultural institutions.

Question – what does an institution in Australia owe to an audience in Atlanta – esp. if their funding is a local funding. Online is global – funding may be local. ILL is a good example of this – technology has made it easy to locate items and thus a greater demand is there – and this may bedetrimental. Also – these global users don’t just ask a question, get an answer and then go away – they come back for the next question – they stay. This can be good. And bad.

Changed conversation with the audience – important to continue to redefine the conversation.

itsy bitsy teeny weeny web

So this is just an experiment – I’m uploading my raw notes from the session I’m sitting in right now.

MW 2008 Working with Teens 4/12/2008

ArtPad- A Collection. A Connection. – Glenbow Museum

Teens are: Interested in themselves

Interested in their relationships with peers

Interested in adapting and improving their skills

Used a teen focus group – showed them six works of art with no context, then showed six works with a bit more context. Found that giving them skeletal information was not enough – but provoked questions that could then be used in the interactive. Ultimately found that providing context for the work was needed.

Students really want to know scale in the virtual context, want to see pictures of the artists

All of the works of art have the same categories: Looking at this work, Insight from the artist, how was this made?, finding meaning, talk back, more stuff, artist’s biography, credits

Students want different kinds of media – audio, video, etc. But when the students were asked about downloading podcasts – they thought that was a bad idea – would be boring. but they would watch the video online. RSS feeds not of interest.

Project also includes interviews with teens, and also enlisted design students to assist in the project

TalkBack section is moderated

Privacy concerns with login – use non-identifiable user names, no email info displayed – and still they ran up against certain area school board regulations that kept students from being able to register at school – but they could do it at home.

Young Peoples’ Laboratories for Art

www.smk.dk/ulk Anne Nielsen

Hired 90 teens – had 400 days

all they knew that there needed to be an on-site and online presence

Now – almost 500 profiles online with no advertising – and have created and engaged this target community

Concept –

Every profile is a laboratory

‘New knowledge’ – a collaboration between staff, artpilots, audience and artists

The ‘new knowledge is presented in entries on the website – related to the contributing profiles

Why try? There are so many communities already out there. Because sometimes teens think they are the only ones who like something in the world – they are alone in their classes – here they find others, find new inspiration

Advantages –

It’s non-commercial – no ads, no fear that the site will be bought out or content regrouped

It’s in Danish

It’s democratic – If I give a lot to this community it will grow – I can improve it

It’s a small and safe community – and exists on-site as well

It’s serious- it’s not just flashy show off stuff.

There’s room for different kinds of users and user behaviour

The context of the museum – gives some authority and identity

Challenges

Education – teachers are not as enthusiastic about the community as the students are. Teachers are not using it. Don’t care that there is a teen site.

Continuum from museum to community – where is the balance? For staff – where is the ROI?

Community members grow “too old” – original community was for ages 12 – 25. What do you do when they age out? Where do they go?

Resources – time and funding

The internet ecosystem – do you link out to the rest of it? Some teens want it to stay a closed system because there their nerd side can be displayed – not so much on MySpace or Facebook

From Boring and non-offensive to

Walker Art Center – visual arts

http://teens.walkerart.org

This is for teens in their after school time – important to make that distinction

Citywide scavenger hunt – decode clues and find bands in secret venues

Original website was designed really for museum staff and educators – not for teens – not for the target audience

Where are teens? On MySpace, Facebook, other social networks. And what are they doing?

Messaging privately and publicly

posting links

shows/events

trading videos

showing their work

customizing – form of self expression

Walker has a total of 7 institutional blogs – launched in 2005 – has become more popular than even the front page of the site sometimes.

Site needs institutional info, projects archive, application, sponsorship logos, maybe teens can be enticed into doing reviews and criticism

Two distinct tiers of information – teen driven content, playful, fun, fresh set of views AND institution driven content

Site should also be an open vessel – ready for expansion and ability to add other content that has not even been thought of yet.

SO – the site is split in half – literally. The boring, institutional stuff on the left – and the teen site on the right side.

Are using del.icio.us – one shared account at the moment – RSS feed into site

upcoming.org

Using outside services really works – use RSS feeds

Users can customize the look of the page – just like MySpace, etc.

Make teens a part of the process – not just the product.

Risk – no moderation – but, there are guidelines which they have to agree to – and most feel empowered by it.

Think about the site as an educational program – don’t focus on marketing. The marketing will flow from the site – but it isn’t the site. Authenticity is better marketing than any ad you can do.

Easiest if you create partnerships at the beginning – with schools, school systems, etc.

Look at the sites that teens go to – have them show you what they like and draw from those suggestions. They don’t have to be heavily involved in the design process – but should be consulted along the way.

Walker Art Center – while the WACTAC group is teenaged – the onsite programs are not limited to an age group – while the program might have been created by teens for teens, there’s no exclusion of others – remember, that teenager might like to keep coming to those events when he’s 23…..

the secret life of the mariners?

The Secret Life of Objects could be a good template for us to use when we implement our interactive gallery map……

job security training

job security training, originally uploaded by sumi37.

You just can’t take Anne Marie anywhere without the waiters gravitating to her. Case in point – we were having breakfast this morning at the Montreal Hilton and in between the pain chocolat and the oatmeal, she got a free tutorial on how to carry lots of plates at once.

So we documented the event, uploaded it and now here it is, for your viewing pleasure and edification.

veni vidi wiki?

Or should it be Wiki Tiki Tavi – not sure I want to go with Caesar or Kipling. In any event – we have a wiki – but we don’t use it, so we’re here trying to figure out why we should……

Honestly – I think it would be a pretty brilliant tool for our nascent techno group to use for collaboration and it struck me that maybe PMF needs a techno group or maybe an MCN group for Tidewater. Anyway – we shall see……

of hockey, and beer, and data management solutions

Following the sessions today we went to the opening reception for the exhibition hall – which you mostly go to for the free food and one free drink (and who can argue with free foods made of liver? I for one have no arguments there, but apparently several others do which means only one thing – more liver for me!). We felt compelled to talk to the exhibitors, though – I mean – it was their reception and we were eating their liver for goodness sakes.

And I’m glad we talked. We may have found an interesting solution for all of our database needs and it was truly a wonderful demonstration. So if we come back from the conference with nothing else – we have info on this company. Oh. and liver breath.

But Sara and Anne Marie are less enamored with the variety of things you can create with organ meat so we set off into Montreal in search of food.

And we found food. And hockey. Because it appears that the Canadiens were playing Boston tonight and we managed to find a brewpub/sports bar with lots of hockey loving folks. The menu being entirely in French made ordering an interesting prospect, and ultimately Sara ordered dessert as that was the safest thing. Anne Marie and I had croque monsiuer, which I haven’t had since I was in France so it was a nice remembrance of things past.