A talk I was asked to give at Culture Hackday in London, talking about the thinking that's been going on in the latest project I'm a part of; Artfinder.
What if you could see through the walls of every museum and something could tell you if you’d like it?
1. HTTP://WWW.FLICKR.COM/PHOTOS/
JAGGEREE/
What if you could see through
the walls of every museum and
something could tell you if
you’d like it?
Chris Thorpe
ArtFinder
I’m going to start off this talk by saying why I think this is important. Culture is such a key
part of the fabric of our society in my eyes and yet it is something that is often perceived,
rightly or wrongly as something not for me. It’s for the intelligentsia, the liberal classes, the
trendies. This is so untrue, but it’s something where there is a perceived risk to self esteem
in trying new things. We have to break this, we have to make culture more democratic, more
inclusive, not by dumbing it down, but by making systems which talk to each other so that
the good experiences you have in one place can lead to good experiences in other places.
2. The concept for me of seeing through the walls of buildings all really starts with this man
who I expect none of you to know. He isn’t famous, apart from for me, he’s my maternal
grandfather.
3. Who went by the great turn of the 20th century name of Cyril George Evans. He was an
architect who designed mainly civic buildings like schools and offices. But most importantly
to me he’d draw buildings and taught me to draw them and about perspectives and
projections.
4. He and I would also look at this wonderful book which is one of my most treasured things.
The wonderful History of Architecture by Professor Banister Fletcher and Sir Banister Fletcher.
5. And I loved pages like this, where you could see into buildings, see through their walls
6. See what was inside, it’s like what we now know as MRI scans for buildings.
7. It seemed to me the most magical thing to be able to see into a building. It’s such an unusual
thing. Buildings are largely solid and opaque.
18. In theory websites should help. But the problem for me is that I need to know what questions
to ask of them. They are centered around the needs of the gallery to broadcast. They are user
centric in their design. However this doesn’t feel enough to me, I want user centric
information more than I want user centric design.
19. HTTP://BERGLONDON.COM/
PROJECTS/HAT/
Bend services around the user
I want the services I use to bend around me, and for the services I make to bend around the
user. Whenever I think about this concept I always think about this wonderful map from Jack
Schulze. The city and the possibilities open up from my point of view through the way it
bends around the point I’m at.
20. HTTP://WWW.SCHOOLOSCOPE.
COM/
One site which does this beautifully is Schooloscope, again from BERG. Where the information
about schools is bent around the person’s location and the information is presented in a user
centric way.
21. HTTP://OWLSNEARYOU.
COM/
And for me the best example is the wonderful Owls Near You, which does exactly what you
would expect. It tells you where the nearest owls to you are. If you’d like more than owls,
there is Wildlife Near You.
22. I think there’s a fascinating opportunity around art and around the hidden art in our world,
things like the Government Art Collection. It’s the ultimate unknowable gallery, until it’s
exhibitions at the Whitechapel next year you can’t see it in an exhibition where mechanisms
such as serendipity can help you discover what is in it and what you may like. At Rewired
Culture I made this prototype of an iPad explorer for the GAC, which at it’s heart was about
demystifying and knowing it, the opening screen presented a random collection everytime
you returned to it.
23. For a while now I’ve been thinking about one of my favourite scenes from a very trashy film,
Disclosure. I love the concept of the angel which acts as the guide in the virtual reality
filesystem explorer. It’s what I want for galleries, an angel on my shoulder whispering to me
about the artist’s intent and about pertinent and fascinating facts about the art history, artist,
technique and provenance of what I’m looking at.
25. Over Christmas I watched Wall-E and it became so clear to me of what I didn’t want for
gallery spaces and why I don’t want augmented reality apps. The screen gets in the way of
art, you don’t see what is there and your eye isn’t drawn to the wonderful thing juxtaposed
with the thing you came to see. It becomes all about information delivery and less about the
natural interactions that lead to discovery.
26. HTTP://WWW.FLICKR.COM/PHOTOS/
JUSTINMASTERSON/
Look at art not screens
It feels simple to me. Look at art not screens. Yet so many gallery tours are full of video and
you see people wandering round, being educated but not really experiencing the things
they’re learning about.
27. HTTP://RUSSELLDAVIES.TYPEPAD.COM/
PLANNING/2009/11/PLAYFUL.HTML
This is what we really need. This was a wonderful prototype made by the people at the Really
Interested Group, an audio based augmented reality app. But even then, it needs to be quiet a
lot of the time so you can experience the whole experience of where you are.
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Technology should
get out of the way.
In all cases, this should be true. The technology is not why you are there, it needs to know
it’s place.
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How to do zoom in gallery apps...
I was recently asked how we planned to zoom into the pictures in the smartphone guides
we’re making and thinking about at the moment. For me it’s obvious.
30. HTTP://WWW.FLICKR.COM/PHOTOS/
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How to do zoom in gallery apps...
Walk towards the painting.
You simply walk towards the real painting that’s here and now with you in the gallery.
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For me the role of technology aside from being a mechanism to inform and enhance the
experience is to capture what you’re looking at, what you love, what you’ve seen. A sort of
flight data recorder for gallery visits.
32. Something a bit like this treasure hunt game I made for the Hide and Seek festival which gave
you and end of day essay telling you what you’d seen, with each object being a pathway to
more discovery, you clicked on it’s name in the essay which parodies the school child’s end
of summer holiday back to school essay, and discover who else has seen that thing and what
they saw... serendipity and filtering and recommendations through implicit and explicit
recording of actions.
34. Thyssen-Bornemisza
Prado
Reine Sofia
I’ve been playing with their Polymaps framework thinking about how this “flight recorder”
data can be used to start recommending to you where you should go in cities to see the art
you’d love. This for me is the classic example, every guidebook will tell you that the must see
gallery in the city is the Prado, but if you love contemporary art, the Thyssen-Bronemisza and
the Reine Sofia are more likely to be the places you’d want to spend more time. We can build
an atlas of the art that you’d love. This reduces the risk in a way of a visit where you felt
uncomfortable, or that it wasn’t to your taste, or that you didn’t find anything you wanted to
see and felt that it was a waste of time or money to go to the gallery, experiences which may
reduce your desire to visit more galleries to engage more.
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JAGGEREE/
As I was writing this talk I noticed that there is a perfect example of this just around the
corner from the office in a tube station I use on many days. On the Central line platform there
are graphics of the pillars of the British Museum interspersed with images of some of the
artefacts in the museum. It is as if the walls of the museum are stripped away, revealing the
contents that lie inside. It is the essence of seeing through the walls and seeing hints as to
what you will like within it. I hope we can make this manifest in many ways and in many
places so that more people will find the things they love and can enrich their lives.
36. chris.thorpe@artfinder.com mark.norman.francis@artfinder.com
Chris Thorpe
Founder/Technologist
@jaggeree