The eyes want to have it: Multimedia Handhelds in the Museum (an evolving story)

The eyes want to have it: Multimedia handhelds in the museum ( an evolving story) Peter Samis Associate Curator, Interpretation San Francisco Museum of Modern Art WCC 2008 Milano • 8–10 September 2008

Setting the Stage

Museums! Even if they look like this on the outside...

...they look like this on the inside.

… and this...

… and this.

This is our Problem Space: Opportunity

Modern art— like all the objects museums exhibit —exists in a framework of meanings.
Physical aspects
Process of its making
Relationships (to its maker, to ideas, to other works)
Documents (journals, letters, sketches)
Media
Methods of approach and understanding

Of these, art museums typically strip away all but one or two.
Process of its making
Relationships (to its maker, its time)
Documents
Media
Methods of approach and understanding
Physical aspects

Experts… … … … …… Novices Somewhere along the line that leaves us to restore the context.

Hypothetical Demand Curve:

First Forays

Points of Departure — SFMOMA 2002

First use of artist videos on PDAs in a museum space. Sometimes interpretation ’s a case of what’s missing …

Sometimes it’s a case of what’s there.

The goal is to meet people where they are—both conceptually and physically.

So the Goal, at least, is clear.
But the means are constantly changing…
.

as is the Museum environment.

Technology & museums change at very different paces.

With that in mind, a bit of history.

Early prototype: MEG @ Experience Music Project , Seattle, 2002 Mobile Exhibition Guide

Lessons learned
Bulky & cumbersome to carry
Long development cycle
Expensive to build (prohibitive for non-profit institutions)
Technology surpassed by time of its introduction!

Compaq iPAQ Pocket PCs with video clips stored on 64 MB Compact Flash cards
Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player running on Windows CE (imperfect)
Used to present video clips of artists in each gallery
Points of Departure iPAQ Gallery Explorer 2002

CIMI/Renwick Gallery prototype , Washington, DC
Visual menus for each gallery
20–45 second clips
30-second message length deemed ideal
Add’l layers can be selected
Video clips ask: “Why did you become an artist? ”

The Visitor Experience

Tate Modern’s Multimedia guide , 2002/3… Casual cues shift attention from artwork to screen… and then back to artwork

Just-in-time learning/modeling how to look UBC’s Museum of Anthropology demo 2004… Ubiquity Interactive, Vancouver

… through use of QTVR and animations

Augmented space: physical spaces filled with electronic and visual information … and social sharing of that information

Question of constantly changing hardware models, not to mention form factors … and of consequent lack of technical support!

Visionary Failures* * aka reach exceeding grasp/ techno-hubris

GettyGuide Handheld (A Cautionary Tale)
Works of art: image & stops
Events: tours & exhibitions
Map
Audio stops - keypad entry
Location sensing
Download content
Wayfinding
Integrate with kiosk & web

GettyGuide Handheld : The Execution
Five internal departments
Five vendors
Yet none had a vested interest in the complete system functioning
Internal: Interactive Programs (interpretive content), Collections Information (object/registrarial information), Museum Information and Media Systems (academic programming and hardware), Web Group (academic programming), IT department (infrastructure hardware and software) Vendors: Server and application programming, location sensing hardware & software, handheld hardware & programming “ There is no safety in unlimited technological hubris. ” - McGeorge Bundy

GettyGuide Handheld: Evaluations Visitors would rather pay for a simple audio player with all artworks covered than a free but fancier handheld with only some, e.g., family audio stops. Visitors would also approve of a handheld that had all the audio content with a touchscreen keypad & improved on-screen map Inform the potential of handhelds – can we use them? How can the handheld and audio player be used in conjunction What to See guide — Handheld vs. simple MP3 Audio Player (Antenna X-plorer) Study Result

ArtScape @ the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Mass. Good idea, but an absence of further in-depth content made the return visit to the website superfluous.

WiVID Messaging & Live Updates (prototypes)

Multi-modal communications
<— All these plus:
Interactive gaming
Simulations
Tickets
eCommerce
& Concierge services !!!

Chasing the tail of technology was getting museums nowhere… (except into debt )

Nancy Proctor’s Findings (Formerly Antenna Audio Strategic Planning in London, now at Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC)
Wireless location-sensing’s just too problematic
Onboard content’s “a good thing”
Stabilize the platform
Keep it simple
The best technology is invisible

Capability - Maturity Model
Initial phase: “heroic”
Managed phase: “1-deep”
Defined phase: Processes in place
Quantitatively managed: metrics
Optimizing: metrics fed back into system
Institutions’ reach was exceeding their grasp. Don’t skip the steps. Just set your sights on the step you’re at, and the next.

Grassroots Returns & Tests

Enter a cheap & disruptive Social Technology: the Podcast

SFMOMA Artcasts
A rapid response, audio zine format that blends structure and flexibility
A movement from the Museum out into the community , and from the community into the Museum
Beyond an audio tour:

A $2 admission discount at all price levels when they show their Artcast:
Adults
Seniors
Artists
Teachers
Youth

Guest Takes Pamela Z JT Leroy Beth Lisick

Vox Pop

disruptive Social Technology #2: The Cell phone

Why “disruptive” ?
They posed fundamentally new questions :
Should visitors bring their own devices?
Should Museums ask visitors to contribute their own voices and interpretations?*

Matthew Barney: Drawing Restraint, 2006

Our problem: subtract the man/film from the gallery, and… How to make the mute plastic speak?

Traditionally, this would have been cause for a multimedia feature. … online, by the galleries, in the Koret Center.

To this, we were adding multiple format audio tours:
Podcast: download from home
Gallery X-plorer: rent in Atrium
Cell phone: turn on in show
Collaborate with Antenna to develop content for all three.

Downloadable podcast map

Cell phone promotional card - collab w/ Guide by Cell

In fact, we thought we were setting out to measure visitor preferences for three different types of audio tours. And we did that.

What did we find out?
There is no clear winner
Traditional devices skew older
iPods and cell phones seem to skew younger *
Visitors appreciate multiple experience options
* statistics not fully conclusive

Different devices support different touring styles :
Cell phones averaged less than 50% stop use , indicating à la carte, on demand use.
iPods and traditional audio tour devices averaged 70-80% stop use : a more immersive , custom experience In fact, iPod and traditional headset tour users had more in common than these users might suspect…

Those who chose the iPod and cell phone formats rated them more highly than traditional headset tour users rated theirs. — although the content was identical!

Phone logs enabled us to see patterns in where visitors wanted information most: (or perhaps where they or could find the labels!)

In fact, GuideBy Cell now mashes up area codes and Google Maps to reveal where visitors are from:

Stats: Cell-phone Tours
Good News: Guide by Cell records
1st exhibition with over 10,000 calls
Average message selection in other museums is only 33%
Bad News:
Still only averaging 45 visitors/day
Only 3.7% of exhibition visitors

So somewhere along the way, the target shifted.

The elephant in the room is that: The vast majority of our visitors do not use technology during their museum visit. So how do we reach them?

If our goal is to use technology, we may just nod and move on . But if our goal is to enhance visitor experience, we have to think larger.

“Variable on-demand mediation.” –Brad Johnson, Second Story Interactive

Interpretive Menu: analog + digital
One curatorial intro panel
Exhibition brochure
Docent tours
Audio tour delivered via:
Antenna MP3 gallery guide
Downloadable podcast
Cell phone tour courtesy GuideByCell
Learning Lounge in show:
Plasma screen with Barney video interview clips
Barney FAQ wall graphics
Interactive feature/website
Books & catalogs

So what did we learn? What did visitors prefer?
Audio: Different people opt for different devices
Video: Visitors want to see and hear the voice of the artist above all else
and perhaps most surprisingly:
Visitors opt for the analog first.

Here’s what that looks like: Use of offerings by respondents:

But on the other hand: What helped make meaning?

But taken together, Interpretation works: Statistics Courtesy Randi Korn & Associates

Or put another way: This is our Opportunity Space! Is it time to re-train our visitors? Change their expectations? Change our approach? All of the above?

Next Tests: Traditional audio tour vs. iPod

When visitors were given the choice … 49% 51% Eliasson / Cornell / Wall 45% 55% Matisse 41% 59% Picasso & Brice Marden iPod Antenna XP - “Classic”(mp3) Exhibitions in 2007 (in sequence)

Do we detect a trend?

Fast forward to summer 2008 (right now):

Enter Frida Kahlo
MENU: analog + digital mix
Brochure
Wall texts
Multimedia tour with low price barrier to entry
Learning Lounge
Supplementary galleries to add context
Kiosk / Website
Video
Podcasts

Visitor Feedback

iPod-Touch and iPhone

Using PDAs to harvest visitor feedback
Tate SMART Tours for school groups
Favorites, drawing, even voice commentaries
Mesh with website for after-visit classroom assignments / follow-ups

iPod-touch interfaces
Tate Liverpool’s Klimt exhibition
Stops are a series of short enhanced podcasts mapped to the default iPhone interface
Meshing of linearaudio tour with selected visuals

iPod-touch interfaces
Museum of Modern Art (New York)’s MoMA udio program
Wi-Fi throughout the galleries
Download in advance or on the spot
Optimized for iPod-Touch & iPhone; plays on other devices as well

Soon to come… an SFMOMA iPhone title: In the meantime…

The beginnings of custom design using the iPhone SDK

Planning Today/State of the Art

Words of Wisdom from Chris Tellis , founder & former Chairman of Antenna Audio
“People go to museums often to get away from technology.”
“The subjective is always more powerful than the objective .”
“Never be the early adopter… What ’s hip is to have a program that works !”

A url to remember: http://tate.org.uk/modern/multimediatour

New Book Digital Technologies & the Museum Experience: Handheld Guides & Other Media Editors Loïc Tallon & Kevin Walker, AltaMira Press Available now through amazon or http://www.altamirapress.com

Thank you.

The eyes want to have it: Multimedia Handhelds in the Museum (an evolving story)

by Peter Samis on Sep 23, 2008

Accessibility

Categories

Tags

Upload Details

Usage Rights

1 Embed 6

Statistics

The eyes want to have it: Multimedia Handhelds in the Museum (an evolving story) — Presentation Transcript