Archive for the ‘Powerhouse Museum’ Category

QR codes and museums

Sunday, August 14th, 2011

The Internet of Things is a compelling idea, with its promise of a seamless link between objects in the physical world and associated media in the online world. The implications could be profound: an object will cease to be an isolated entity, but will become the focal point in a web of connected information. Take your dining table as an example. If the table carried a small identifying tag that linked to a central online database of ‘things’, reading the tag would open up the contents of this database revealing, perhaps, the table’s history; the manufacturer’s specifications and the materials used to construct it; its previous owners; the video of a family cat stealing food from a plate left on its top; the written memory of someone who as a child fell into its corner and broke a tooth – and so on.

All that is required to link this digital media – photographs, text, videos or sounds – to a real object is an identifier that can be read by an internet-connected device. One such system, developed in Japan as long ago as 1994, is the QR code. QR stands for Quick Response and the code itself is a square grid of black and white blocks, roughly equivalent to the barcode found on product packaging. But unlike a barcode, which links a product to a retailer’s stock database, a QR code links with a web page or some other online content. These codes are then read by the camera and QR reader software on a mobile phone or similar internet-connected device, allowing the device to open the link.

The appeal to museums of QR codes – and an internet of things – is immediately obvious: digital media can be ‘attached’ to physical objects by means of the small printout of a square code. Although QR codes themselves are essentially just web-address links, when connected to an online database of objects their possibilities become quite powerful. An object in the real world – a museum specimen – can be permanently linked with a growing and editable repository of online material, revealed to visitors through their smartphones or similar devices.

An early, beta version of such a system has been developed by the TOTem research consortium of Brunel University, University College London, University of Dundee, University of Edinburgh and the University of Salford. Tales of Things is a free QR based system that links an object with its ‘tales’ – media left by users who have something to say about the object in question. Tales of Things is being used on objects in the Tales of a Changing Nation gallery at the National Museum of Scotland, as well as in the QRator co-creation project at UCL’s Grant Museum of Zoology and The Petrie Museum of Egyptology.

‘Whilst there are a lot of QR code readers about and websites where you can generate codes to link to other sites, with the Tales of Things app the key element is the ability to add your own tale to the QR code, so that you are not just reading information but also writing back,’ says Jane MacDonald, administrator of TOTem.

In an age where co-creation and sharing – two tenets of any forward-looking museum – are all the rage, this type of system should be a sure fire hit. It permits people to record their personal reflections on museum objects and ‘attaches’ these reflections to the objects for others to see and respond to in turn. Certainly, Alison Taubman, principal curator of communications at National Museums Scotland, sees potential for QR codes to open up a new type of dialogue with museum visitors, breaking from the ‘usual one way traffic of information’. But she also acknowledges that such two-way dialogue has so far been scant in the Tales of a Changing Nation project.

It seems that despite the appeal, museums are finding that general take-up of QR codes is bedevilled by a few technological restrictions in implementation and, perhaps more significantly, a general lack of awareness. ‘I am not sure if enough people know what a QR code is or have their own device [to read one] for it to have mass appeal at this stage,’ says MacDonald. ‘We are expecting this to come, as they are slowly becoming more common. The more that museums and visitor attractions use QR codes, the more people will interact with them. I really see them as a brilliant way for museums to be able to create a truly democratic and interactive experience for visitors.’

Kathleen Tinworth, director of visitor research and program evaluation at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, presented a small number of visitors with a QR code to find out how many people could identify or explain it. Barely a third could and none of those had ever used one.

‘For those who didn’t recognize the QR code, we got responses that ranged from ‘Native American design’ to ‘puzzle’,’ says Tinworth. ‘So what does this mean for using QR or other identification software in museums and culturals? Is it futile? Worthless? Nope. Not at all. We may need to lay some groundwork with visitors, but the pay-off could be high. In time, perhaps there won’t be a need for an app download or a certain type of phone [to be used], but for now the learning curve may need to be built in to the design.’

The Powerhouse Museum in Sydney, Australia has also experimented with QR codes. After finding that too few people had a suitable reader installed on their phones, the museum decided to build a reader into a bespoke mobile application that would serve as an object database and QR code reader in one. This app now supports the museum’s Love Lace exhibition by allowing visitors to access an object’s catalogue entry directly by scanning the QR code on the physical display.

But even this simple system hides technological pitfalls. If the code squares are printed too small, phone cameras and reader software have trouble understanding them. If there are shadows, reflections or poor light on the codes the problem is compounded, as the Powerhouse discovered in earlier QR experiments. The provision of free public Wi-Fi throughout a museum space is another potential difficulty.

On the other hand, despite these relatively small technical issues QR codes are extremely straightforward to produce and equally easy to access assuming a visitor has a phone reader installed and there is a good (and ideally free) internet connection available in the exhibition space.

But as with the introduction of any technology to a museum or gallery, there have to be clear benefits to both visitors and museum departments of using QR codes. While the actual act of using a phone to ‘magically’ read a code may appeal to some (it does: to younger visitors to the Tales of a Changing Nation exhibition, according to Taubman), it is what the code is linking to that is the real issue. Even without referencing a co-created database of ‘things’, there are still plenty of appealing uses of QR codes for museums. They can provide quick and immediate links to material that supports interpretation, education or a marketing campaign, for example.

But as Tinworth notes, getting the content of these links right is vital, whether they are to third party sites or to material generated by a museum itself. ‘The QR code is just a vehicle,’ she says. ‘I believe that for QRs or similar technologies to succeed in museums we have to ensure they provide something of value and aren’t just gimmicky. Whether that’s the back story on an object or a video of an artist installing a sculpture is neither here nor there; it’s about the value added through that content. QR codes are simple to make and inexpensive, which has massive appeal to the cultural sector, [but] are we enhancing the visitor experience in the ways people want?’

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Scott Billings is a freelance journalist who write for publications including Design Week, Museum Practise, Museums Journal and Marketing.

 

Posted in Powerhouse Museum, QR Code | 17 Comments »

What can the iPad do for museums?

Tuesday, January 4th, 2011

Even though it is still only a few short years since the introduction of multi-touch technology in the first iPhones, already we have become familiar with the way that communications devices seamlessly integrate the internet’s vast information resources and social media networks. High-end interaction technologies are now so commonplace that many of us carry them around in our pockets all day long. And with the rise of smartphone apps, we now routinely expect these products to be endlessly adaptable and updatable.

For museums and galleries looking for new and inspiring ways to generate interactions between visitors and collections, this democratisation of technology is perhaps both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, visitors are no longer wowed by touch-screen and computer software installations per se. On the other hand, the availability of adaptable, mass-market products gives museums easy access to cleverer hardware for less money. At the same time, visitors will often be familiar with the hardware platform already and may even be able to use their own personal devices to access or interact with multimedia exhibition content.

The latest consumer products to lend themselves to museum and gallery use – and probably the most suitable so far – are the tablet devices such as the iPad and the Samsung Galaxy. Apple’s iPad is obviously the leader and major player here and already there are examples of museums harnessing the device to deliver content and interaction to visitors, despite it being less than a year old.

In some cases, iPads are being used by museums to deliver richer and expanded versions of their existing iPhone apps. The American Museum of Natural History has launched an iPad version of its Dinosaurs app and SFMoMA’s Rooftop Garden iPhone app, which provides a tour of its sculpture garden, has also been enhanced for the iPad.

But Melbourne Museum decided to build a dedicated iPad app as part of its tenth birthday celebrations. The free Please Touch the Exhibit app makes use of the iPad’s large, book-sized screen and shake functions, allowing users to explore the museum’s collection through ten specially curated science and social history themes. Similarly, highlights from MoMA’s Abstract Expressionist New York show are only available on the iPad. The AB EX NY app offers high-resolution images of selected works, videos and deeper information about the art and artists. It also includes an NYC history featuring a multimedia map of studios, galleries, bars and other points of interest.

One of the key appeals about apps like these is that they offer people a rich, tour-like experience away from the institutions themselves – before, after or indeed instead of, a physical visit. ‘One of the uses that we’ve realised people have really come to enjoy [about our app tours] is the takeaway,’ said Dallas Museum of Art multimedia producer Ted Forbes at the 2010 Tate Handheld Conference. ‘Maybe they participate in some of the tour while they are in front of the objects, but they can also go home and preview tours after their visit. It has a lot of application in the those areas, so it’s really important for us to be able to [offer these] tours.’

One of the questions that emerged at the Museums Association’s All in Hand: Working with Handheld Devices conference, held at the Royal College of Surgeons in July 2010, was whether a cultural institution can afford to develop mobile applications and whether the organisation might hope to recover its investment. In short, do mobile guides generate revenues?

There are no simple answers to these questions because every project and museum has its own requirements, target audience and budgets, but it is interesting to note that iPad apps have a higher average price point than iPhone apps, perhaps implying a higher user expectation for the iPad. Although most museum iPad apps have so far been offered for free, there is the possibility of using Apple’s App Store as a mechanism for generating revenue from multimedia content, something that would have been all but impossible with traditional gallery kiosk applications.

The success of the Guardian’s photojournalism iPad app, Eyewitness, has led to plans for an enhanced but paid-for version in the future, according to New Media Age. Whilst Eyewitness sits outside the museum sector, it is not hard to see how the evident appeal of high production quality multimedia content might also be a source of revenue and brand building for museums and galleries.

Exhibition-related games in particular might deliver a source of revenue, if they can be sold as standalone gaming apps in the App Store. As Jason DaPonte, former managing editor of BBC Mobile, told the Tate Handheld Conference: ‘You might not think about the games world and gaming as being that important to museums, but I challenge you to think about it very, very seriously. If you look at the app stores, typically the most popular apps – eight or nine of the top ten – are always games. So go where your audiences are, see what they are doing and see how you can get in there.’

At the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney, an in-gallery game called WaterWorx was delivered via eight iPads in the exhibition space. This is where larger tablet devices differ from smartphone based multimedia content – they are big enough to operate as gallery based ‘kiosks’. At the same time, the app or game can be used by iPad owners at home. According to Seb Chan, head of digital, social and emerging technologies at the Powerhouse Museum, the WaterWorx game may now be augmented for commercial release on the App Store, creating revenue for the museum.

So perhaps the loss of technology’s wow factor is no curse at all. It may just mean that interactive installations are developed on the basis of relevance and content and not because of a perceived obligation to include a technology element in an exhibition space. As Silvia Filippini Fantoni, senior producer at digital media consultancy Cogapp, says on the group’s blog : ‘Mobile interpretation is not about the technology. It is about the user experience and particularly the content. Museums should focus on telling a story that answers questions, creates emotions, inspires a response, rather than using the technology for the sake of it.’

Chan echoes this, while also noting the new role of consumer technology in museum multimedia development. ‘[WaterWorx] brings with it an explicit acknowledgement that the entertainment and computing gear that visitors can get their hands on outside of the museum is always going to be better [than], or at least on a par with, what museums can themselves deploy. So rather than continue the arms race, the iPad deployment is a means to refocus both visitor attention and development resources on content and engagement – not display technologies.’

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Scott Billings is a freelance journalist who write for publications including Design Week, Museum Practise, Museums Journal and Marketing.

Posted in Dallas Museum of Art, iPad, iPhone, Melbourne Museum, MoMA, Powerhouse Museum, SFMoMA, Tate Handheld Conference, Wikipedia | 16 Comments »

Ask a Curator

Monday, October 25th, 2010

On the same day that Tony Blair’s memoir, A Journey, was published to considerable media reaction and controversy, discussion of another topic entirely was topping the trend charts on Twitter. Remarkably, it was an initiative to stimulate dialogue between the public and museum curators that had become the hottest Twitter subject in the world by mid morning on 1 September 2010.

The one-day event, called Ask a Curator, was the brainchild of Jim Richardson, managing director of Sumo, a branding and design group which regularly works with museum and gallery clients. Frustrated that social media are usually used by such organisations to push out ‘bland marketing messages’, if they use them at all, Richardson wanted to harness Twitter’s networking power to drum up some direct engagement with curators across the globe. The idea was that a curious public would be able to question the keepers of cultural heritage about the objects in their care and what it is they do with them.

‘With Ask a Curator I wanted to do something which asked more of both the public and museums, something that could create dialogue and real engagement. I hoped the project could give the public unprecedented access to the passionate and enthusiastic individuals who work in museums and galleries and also break down barriers within these institutions, where all too often social media is still the remit of the marketing department,’ says Richardson.

The initiative comes at a time when many museums are just beginning to consider how online platforms and social media might dovetail with their on-site activities. Some institutions, such as the Brooklyn Museum in New York and the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney, have blazed a trail with their online services and an open attitude to dialogue with the public. But for some organisations, taking part in Ask a Curator was a foray into largely uncharted territory.

According to Conxa Rodà, project coordinator at the Museu Picasso in Barcelona, the event was the first time curators there had used Twitter. ‘[The event gave] museum professionals a real proof of the reach and influence of social media and it can awake an interest in what Twitter is all about,’ she says.

So was Ask a Curator a success? In many ways, yes. Despite being promoted solely through Twitter, the idea eventually garnered participation from over 340 institutions, each offering a curator to take part in a question and answer session at some point during the day. What’s more, together these museums and galleries span the globe and cover a huge breadth of subject matter and collection material – from the Museum of East Anglian Life in the UK to the Museum of History of Medicine in Brasil.

Questions ranged from the general – ‘Have you ever had a piece that you wanted to exhibit but was too large to get into the museum?’ – to the specific – ‘What is your vision for creating a participatory interactive experience with visitors using mobile guide technology? – to the analytical and academic – ‘Is a visual art exhibition a collaborative project between artist and curator? Is there a dominant player?’

‘For us, Ask a Curator was the start of an ongoing conversation,’ says Wenke Mast, events and website assistant at the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp. ‘Our communications department will now screen Twitter every day and pass relevant questions to our curators. We will keep on answering questions.’ Perhaps this is a first step towards breaking down the ‘barriers’ between curators and marketing departments that Richardson observes.

And if volume of traffic is a measure of success, the event was barnstorming. The rapid rise of #askacurator – the ‘hashtag’ linking Twitter messages to the subject – led a range of media, including the BBC, to report on the activity. Although these reports largely focused on the social media phenomenon of a trending hashtag, they also discussed the event’s principal idea of connecting museum curators and the public all over the world.

The day’s activities also increased Twitter followers for the organisations which took part. ‘We received 403 extra followers from Tuesday 30 August,’ says Maryam Asghari, online and digital marketing manager at the Barbican. ‘The average is 443 extra followers per week, so to get this number in three days is good.’

In short, Ask a Curator generated lots of activity around a worthwhile objective, namely giving the global public ‘one-to-one’ access to curators of cultural heritage collections, many of which are publicly held. This huge response reveals genuine interest in the sector’s work, says Museums Sheffield marketing officer for campaigns and digital Dominic Russell-Price. ‘When the calls for scrapping arts funding get ever louder it was heartening to know that the public want to engage and know more about how we work, particularly with questions being about collections, not just exhibitions.’

But there are also limitations to the Twitter platform and in many ways Ask a Curator was beset by problems of its own success. The popularity of the event and the fast trending of #askacurator swiftly led the hashtag to be hijacked by spam messages, polluting the stream of genuine messages with rubbish. Because #askacurator is the only identifier of relevant messages it becomes difficult to track associated questions and answers as they stream in from multiple sources. Additionally, many responses were made directly to questioners rather than ‘tweeted’ publicly, further obscuring the exchange.

Another inherent limitation is Twitter’s short-form message format of no more than 140 characters. Does this preclude the meaningful and detailed conversation needed to discuss complex curatorial work? Is Twitter actually better suited to providing basic visitor information?

‘I think it all lies in the expectations of the Twitter audience,’ says Richardson. ‘Everyone enters Twitter knowing that the messages are short and I think people expect short answers and a certain amount of chaos. Personally, I don’t equate depth of engagement with the length of the answer; the tone and speed of response are for me just as important as they can show that an institution is open and keen to engage with the public.’

Certainly, whichever online platform is used for engagement, it is not so much the mechanics that are important, but the content and intention. In this regard, Ask a Curator raised its own valid question: Is there an appetite for this kind of dialogue, from both sides of the exchange, and how can it can enrich the work, understanding and enjoyment of museums and galleries everywhere?

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Scott Billings is a freelance journalist who write for publications including Design Week, Museum Practise, Museums Journal and Marketing.

Posted in Ask a Curator, Brooklyn Museum, Powerhouse Museum, Twitter | 1 Comment »