2016.12.07 Jewish Museum lecture
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This document discusses four trends accelerating change in U.S. museums in 2016: indoor navigation, new technologies like 360 video and VR/AR/MR, external pressure from grassroots initiatives, and internal pressure to undergo digital transformation. It provides examples of how museums are implementing indoor navigation apps, using new technologies to enhance visitor experiences, and responding to activist campaigns. It also examines how museums are shifting to network organizational models and the challenges of building a digital culture within institutions.
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2016.12.07 Jewish Museum lecture
- 1. Museums and Digital Technologies What’s happening in U.S. museums in 2016
- 7. Four trends that are accelerating change in U.S. museums: 1) indoor navigation and location-based services, 2) new ways of seeing: 360 & 3D video/AR/MR/VR 3) external pressure to change - grassroots initiatives. 4) internal pressure to evolve - digital transformation
- 8. Indoor navigation Giving people what they want, based on where they are
- 9. The Holy Grail Your phone is able to provide you with content relevant to where you are in the museum, without you telling it, or punching in a number, or scanning a QR code, or…
- 10. An early win The Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) Hobart, Australia, 2011
- 11. Universal distribution + brute force Wifi
- 12. This year’s success story San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) & Detour San Francisco, USA
- 13. A huge critical success
- 14. The recipe for success? • Unusual content • Choice of content • Up-to-date content • An indoor map that really works
- 15. new ways of seeing The brave new worlds of 360º, 3D, AR, MR, VR
- 16. Why? Platforms are pushing it – for now.
- 17. 360º video: Not quite ready, but very exciting
- 18. The bad news: It’s still in the hobbyist stage
- 19. More bad news: It’s not yet supported in all browsers Chrome Safari
- 20. The results: Hopefully you’ll see something when you click on the video
- 21. VR: From fad to fixture?
- 23. Still 5-10 years from mainstream adoption
- 27. And let’s not forget big screens!
- 30. National World War II Museum
- 31. External pressure to change The network effect and grassroots initiatives
- 32. #hashtag activism The modern Internet gives individuals great ability to make their voices heard in ways that were impossible in the last century. The “signal boost” that can happen when like-minded individuals share content and spread it through their personal networks can cause ideas to spread rapidly. The # sign has become an important part of everyday life.
- 33. Examples of hashtag campaigns Social issues: #svegliamuseo – “Wake up, museums!” Campaign to shame Italian museums into paying more attention to digital #DropBP – Campaign to get the British Museum to drop British Petroleum as a sponsor #MuseumWorkersSpeak – Campaign to highlight and change unfair labor practices in museums. #museumsrespondtoferguson – Campaign to mobilize American museums against violence against African-Americans. Awareness raising: #askacurator #empty___ (#emptymet, #emptymfa, etc…) #InstaSwap (London, NYC, LA, etc…) #historichousecrush
- 34. Another example: Drinking About Museums • Informal, unofficial • No central authority • No membership rules • Leverages social media
- 36. The network organizational model “The shift from hierarchical organizational structures to networked ones is the dominant theme of the current era.” Catherine Bracy, at the Museum Computer Network 2016 conference
- 40. The challenges of the network model
- 41. An example: Museumhive • An informal, community- centered gathering, • A hybrid structure which involves members who come and go, • Participation is wide, • The barrier to entry is as low as we can make it, • There is a tangible outcome to the effort
- 42. The network changes how we perceive everything “Art is nothing important. Where its important is where it connects people to people, and people to events, and people to things. It’s a social network of objects.” David Newbury, Museum Computer Network 2016 conference
- 43. An example: CODE | WORDS
- 44. What was the rationale? A peer-organized response to a perceived lack of informed discourse around issues of theory and digital technologies within the museum space.
- 45. How it worked Rob Stein me Suse Cairns + + Museum professionals PhD student We talked a lot about wanting to affect change We talked more, with peers all over the world
- 46. We organized a group around ideas • Making the value statement for museums in a digital age - How can museums measure what’s important and not just what’s easy? • Digital curation - What does it mean to collect and preserve digital media, art, and information? • The politics of new technologies - New takes on power, audience, and authority. • Dialogue and discourse in museums - Who’s talking and who’s listening? • Creativity, innovation, and technology - Is there a relationship between the three that’s unique to museums? • Eschewing both techno-fetishism and techno-fandom. - Technology can’t solve all the problems in the world, or the museum.
- 47. Used free tools to spread the word
- 48. What did it generate? • A collection of essays on Medium (a free-to-use publishing platform) https://medium.com/code-words-technology-and-theory-in-the-museum • >50,000 views to date • Several conference presentations and collaborations • And a book!
- 49. And it goes on… CODE | WORDS v2.0
- 50. Internal pressure to evolve Digital transformation
- 51. The tension between strategy and culture
- 52. “You need to know what you’re doing digitally. You need to have a convincing story. We call this story a strategy.” Visser/Richardson Strategists know that digital media touches every aspect of a modern museum
- 53. Pragmatists know that culture is more important than strategy ‘A digital culture will get you through a time without a digital strategy much more than a digital strategy will get you through a time without a digital culture” -Nick Poole
- 54. “Culture is the manifestation of values.” -Jan Gunnarson
- 55. What are the obstacles?
- 56. An example: What this looks like at PEM
- 57. Staff contributers to the PEM blog Amy Curtis Annie Lundsten Austen Barron Bailly Barbara Pero Kampas Becky Vitale Caitlin Lowrie Carla Galfano Caryn M. Boehm Catherine Robertson Chip Van Dyke Claire Blechman Craig Tuminaro Dan Finamore Dave O'Ryan David Thibodeau Delia Faria Dinah Cardin Doneeca Thurston Ed Rodley Edie Shimel Ellen Soares Elliot Isen Emily Fry Eric Wolin Gail Spilsbury Gavin Andrews Gordon Wilkins Janet Blyberg Janey Winchell Jay Finney Jim Olson Juliette Fritsch Karen Kramer Kathy Fredrickson Katie Theodoros Kerry Schneider Kurt Weidman Leanne Schild Linnea DiPillo Lisa Incatasciato Lisa Kosan Lucille Wymer Lynda Hartigan Lynne Francis-Lunn Maddie Kropa Martine Malengret- Bardosh Matthew Del Grosso Meg Winikates Melissa Woods Michelle Moon Mimi Leveque Nicole Polletta Paula Richter Penny Bigmore Rebecca Bednarz Sarah Jennette Shoshana Resnikoff Sidney Berger Siri Schoonderbeek Sona Datta Susan Flynn Susanna Brougham Victoria Glazomitsky Walter Silver Whitney Van Dyke
- 58. The goal: build digital literacy Working in digital spaces – Social media platforms, Wikipedia, Google Art Project Professional development – Vital for staff to understand enough about the digital realm to make informed decisions Cultural transformation – Incorporating digital in existing processes rather than developing separate ones. Staff empowerment – Opportunity for staff to demonstrate digital skills they have
- 59. What does a 21st century curator look like?
- 60. They expose the inner workings of the museum, through their own unique lenses
- 61. The goal? 100% participation • All the curators establish social media presences • Move on to executive leadership • Continue to encourage all staff to participate as they see fit. This is not a mandate, but a request.
- 62. In closing…
- 63. "Creating culture is always more rewarding than consuming it." –Mihaly Csikszentmihályi
- 65. Спасибо! / Thank you! Ed Rodley Peabody Essex Museum (www.pem.org) Tel: +1 978 542-1849 Email: ed_rodley@pem.org Social Media: @erodley
Editor's Notes
- Good day! My name is Ed Rodley. I work at the Peabody Essex Museum in the city of Salem, Massachusetts. Today, I’d like to talk about four digital trends affecting US museums: indoor navigation and location-based services, new ways of seeing: 360 & 3D video/AR/MR/VR. external pressure to change - grassroot initiatives. internal pressure to evolve - digital transformation
- But first, a little context about where I’m coming from…
- I work at the Peabody Essex Museum, or PEM as we usually call it. The Peabody Essex Museum is in Salem, MA in the northeastern corner of the US, the part referred to as “New England.” Salem is about 15 miles north of Boston, and 200 miles northeast of New York City.
- PEM is the oldest continuously-operating museum in the country, tracing its founding back to 1799. At the beginning of the 19th century, Salem merchants and ship captains made enormous fortunes in trade with Asia, and brought back objects from their travels around the world. So much wealth that in 1800, Salem was the largest port in the United States, ahead of Boston, New York, or Philadelphia. It was home to the first millionaire in America, too.
- For it’s first two centuries, PEM was at various times a museum of curiosities, a natural history museum, a local history history museum and a research library. In 1993, PEM became a museum of art and culture, and its collecting shifted to include a strong emphasis on contemporary art in addition to its historic collections. So, PEM is an interesting mix of old and new with particularly strong collections of maritime history, Asian, South Asian, and Native American art, a major research library, and two dozen historic houses from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. So, that’s PEM.
- I work in the Integrated Media department at PEM. We are responsible for all visitor-oriented digital media at the museum. I spend a lot of time trying to keep up with what’s going on in the digital realm, and today, I’d like to talk about four digital trends affecting US museums. Two of them are technologies, and two of them are human responses to technologies. The technologies are: indoor navigation and location-based services, new ways of seeing: 360 & 3D video/AR/MR/VR. And the human responses are: external pressures to change – the network, and grassroots initiatives internal pressures to evolve – institutional culture shifts
- Here’s something I’ve heard various museum directors say for at least the last twenty years, if not longer. “Wouldn’t it be great if there was a way for us to deliver content to visitors right where they are standing, that was customized to their wants and needs? They’d never get lost again and they’d always have access to relevant content!” I heard this when portable computers first came out, then when PDAs like the PalmPilot and Newton came out. Nowadays when a substantial portion of visitors to American museums have smartphones in their pockets, it seems even logical that we should be able to harness this latent ability. Indoor navigation and location-based services are right on the verge of transforming how we think about delivering information to museum visitors.
- “The blue dot” that tells you where you are has become a standard feature of modern mobile phone use. The fact that the technology phones use to determine location only works outdoors is mysterious at best to most users. Bringing that kind of location awareness inside has, up until now, been a huge technical issue. Solving that problem opens up untold possibilities.
- Arguably the first glimpse of what a location-aware museum might look like, and how it might differ from traditional museums, is the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) in Hobart, Australia. A new, private museum, built by millionaire collector David Walsh, it has no labels at all. Visitors are given an iPod and headphones with their ticket and all the interpretation is delivered through the device. Text, audio, video, music, and the ability to share whether you love or hate any piece in the museum.
- It works because the museum is built around the idea of everyone having the device. Technically, it works through a series of clever design choices to overcome Wifi’s poor location-finding capability. The museum uses a fairly sparse display style and serves you up a list of thumbnails of everything within 5-6 meters, so you have a list of 5-10 images you swipe through to find the work you’re interested in.
- Since 2011, the technology in phones has only improved and developers have figured out ways to use Wifi to determine location indoors. The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art recently reopened and as part of its new, expanded presence, premiered an app created by a company called Detour, which actually delivers. It can tell you where you are inside and out. It delivers content tailored to your location and interests, and by all accounts is reliable, and popular.
- A bit of hyperbole, perhaps but you get the idea. It’s a big deal.
- SFMOMA has a long history of producing great multimedia content. This app allowed them to build on the work they’d already done, and expand their repetoire. They commissioned local celebrities, artists, and others to give tours of the collection. So, you can not only hear curators, but local artists, sports figures, and others known to the local audience.
- It’s hard to overstate how important video is becoming, espcecially in places as visually oriented as museums. I was recently at a meeting of museum social media professionals at Harvard University. Their Director of Digital Strategy asked the group of about 25 people how many of their museums were producing video for online consumption. A couple raised their hands. He said “The rest of you probably want to start. Tomorrow.” Video is big.
- Most social media platforms are skewing the reach of content with video in them, at lest for the time being. When you’re a museum trying to get people to look at your content, anything that guarantees you greater reach without having to pay is worth investigating.
- I won’t get into the technical details about 360º video and VR, and focus instead on what it’s like to work with. Our experiments this year have been with 360º over 3D video, and I’ll explain why. Spherical video, creating video that depicts an entire field of view that the user can steer within, has been around for awhile. This year, though, it’s really taken off in terms of adoption by major media and social media platforms. Our 360 experiments were a direct result of Facebook’s decision to push video content more than it does any other kind of content. Video = more people see it.
- 360 is still in that annoying hobbyist stage of development. If you know a lot about video and computers, you can do really interesting things. If you don’t… it’s hard. It’s needs a lot of tending, it’s prone to failure, and it’s impossible to tell what you’re getting. The picture on the left is our AV producer trying to make sure that all 9 cameras have turned on. Since the GoPro was not designed to operate in clusters, there’s no reliable way to get a bunch of them to act in unison. So, you have to make sure all the lights have come on, and then run out of the shot, then click a noisemaker so that you have a sound you can use to sync all the 9 video streams. You also can’t preview it at all. It’s like 1940 again. You have shoot, then go back to the office, look at what you shot and hope it came out.
- It’s also in that awkward phase where it hasn’t been universally adopted. Some browsers will play it fine, some won’t. One format has yet to win out and become the standard. It’s a mess.
- But when it works, it’s pretty amazing. You are there in a way you can’t be with traditional video. We haven’t even launched our first 360 video, and we’re committing to creating multiple other projects. [ask Chip to make video public] So, click on Steven and hopefully the video will load from YouTube. [if it works] So you can see it looks like regular video. Now put the cursor somewhere on the screen, click and drag. Voila! Your field of view moves! You can look all around, up in the sky, and pretty much anywhere other than straight. That’s where the the tripod was and therefore no camera. [if it doesn’t work] And… that’s one of the challenges with 360, and with so many other new technologies. And that’s a reason why it’s good to have really clear, specific measures of success for these kinds of experiments. For 360 video, the immersive nature of it, and the fact that it works on specific platforms we’re interested in makes it a good tool to add to our toolkit.
- Max Anderson’s Ignite talk at MCN 2014 gave a hilarious description of what museum directors hear when people tell them about new digital technology projects; that it means “rapidly obsolete distractions.” Digital equals an over-hyped, over-mrketed solution looking for a problem to solve. Virtual Reality, or VR is probably the grandfather of all over hyped technologies. How many of you feel like you understand what VR is? VR, virtual reality, is used to describe technologies that replace one of your sensory inputs, usually, but not always sight, with a computer-generated input that uses your body to let you navigate in a virtual space. Rather than pointing and clicking, you turn your head, move your limbs, and things happen in that virtual reality.
- This year, however, we’ve seen VR turn into consumer products. Samsung, Facebook, Google and others have all launched VR viewers, betting that the market for these devices is going to be huge. The trouble is that there is, as yet, very little decent content to display on these gadgets. [if mostly yes] Good. VR, or virtual reality, has been around long enough that it’s already been through the hype, and is just this year starting to come out of the trough of disappointment. Despite this, Gartner still thinks it’s 5-10 years away from mainstream adoption.
- The Gartner company publishes a lot on emerging technologies and how they’re viewed. For several years they’ve been publishing what they call “The Hype Cycle”. It’s the tendency of new technologies to excite interest beyond their value, get over sold by enthusiasts, face a terrible backlash where everybody disparages them, and then eventually find their place in society.
- One of the probems with new video formats is that there several different kinds of viewing experiences you can have that employ simliar devices. You could be looking at a computer-generated scene like in a video game, or you could be looking at 3D video, like this scene from Lake Baikal. The work to create these different kinds of experiences is totally different, though the user experience is the same; you put on a headset and look around.
- The dream for museums and heritage sites in general is that these immersive experiences can become educational and aesthetic ones. Google Expeditions is a good example of one of the pioneers in this. You can not explore the Museum of Cosmonautics virtually, but you can learn about the museum and its displays as though you were physically there.
- And let’s not forget old-fashioned methods like big, big screens. This news headline from last week promoting the new Museum of the Bible in Washington D.C. spends a great deal of time talking about the technologies that will be used in the new building, including…
- A theater with projections on not only a huge screen, but all the walls and ceiling. Talk about immersive.
- The National World War II Museum in New Orleans spent several million dollars on a 50 minute long big screen presentation that tells the story of America’s involvement in WWII.
- One digital trend that has been changing the field is the success of non-institutional or “grassroots” initiatives aimed at the museum field. The ability of digital media platforms to amplify voices has been being used with great effect on both small and large scales to effect change. I’ll mention three; hashtag activism, podcasts, and blogs, and then share a personal example.
- The abilty to rally people around a cause has been greatly simpified by the Internet. In the 20th century, an American might write a letter to the editor of the local newspaper to raise a complaint. Now, they do it on Facebook, or Twitter. The # hashtag has become an important way to organize and mobilize people around social issues.
- Museums have already been feeling this for the past few years. Efforts like #svegliamuseo in Itlay, and #DropBP in the UK have been very successful at focusing public attention on museums’ (real or perceived) shortcomings. In the US, #museumsrespondtoferguson has gained substantial visibility and enough credibility as a forum for discussing race in museum practice that many of its organizers were part of a series of meetings at the 2016 AAM conference, the national museum conference, devoted to issues around race. Issues that had traditionally failed to get onto the agenda of conferences. It has been joined this year by #MuseumWorkersSpeak, which draws attention to issues around workers’ rights and labor issues. And both show no sign of going away. Paying attention to what hashtags are trending in the workplace will become a standard part of museum practice. There is also this interesting phenomenon of more “feel-good”, awareness raising hashtags, which generally originate outside of a single museum and become regional, national, or global events. Hastags like #askacurator have grown to include museums all over the world. The idea of an #InstaSwap, where museums in the same city give their Instagram accounts to another museum for a day, have been copied several times over. Most of these happen outside of the normal channels of command and control, partly because of how social media is still seen as a fringe environment, and partly because they happen at a speed that requires most museums to short-circuit their usual decision making process, so as not to “miss out” on the fun.
- An informal gathering of people connected with museums to explore new community-centered visions for museums. We intend to create a new hybrid structure, Museumhive, that generates socially relevant content through a series of informal, engaging meetups and Google Hangouts. Like a hive, the structure involves a community, members who come and go and take part in building the hive. Participation is wide, the barrier to entry is as low as we can make it, and there is a tangible outcome to the effort – digital publications all on the theme of "The Distributed Museum"
- An informal gathering of people connected with museums to explore new community-centered visions for museums. We intend to create a new hybrid structure, Museumhive, that generates socially relevant content through a series of informal, engaging meetups and Google Hangouts. Like a hive, the structure involves a community, members who come and go and take part in building the hive. Participation is wide, the barrier to entry is as low as we can make it, and there is a tangible outcome to the effort – digital publications all on the theme of "The Distributed Museum"
- You might say that the digital realm is just another human society that is geographically dispersed and embodied differently, via devices. But the digital realm feels different to me. If it resembled any form of life, the digital realm looks more like an amoeba than a human society. So I’d like to propose some other ways we might be digital. Image: Social_Network_Analysis_Visualization.png courtesy of Wikipedia
- Here are Bracy’s steps for networked organizations work with audiences, both in person and online. How many of these are challenging for museums?
- An informal gathering of people connected with museums to explore new community-centered visions for museums. We intend to create a new hybrid structure, Museumhive, that generates socially relevant content through a series of informal, engaging meetups and Google Hangouts. Like a hive, the structure involves a community, members who come and go and take part in building the hive. Participation is wide, the barrier to entry is as low as we can make it, and there is a tangible outcome to the effort – digital publications all on the theme of "The Distributed Museum"
- So I use this as an example of the kind of visibility one can achieve in the digital realm, without any institutional buy-in, or even knowledge. In 2014 I was having separate conversations with a couple of colleagues about the lack of things to read for those of us interested in progressive practice in museums.
- We saw a need, and decided to fill it ourselves, without asking anyone for permission first.
- Rob, Suse, and I talked a ton, plotted, and drafted a statement, and then tried to encourage others to join us. Boy did I spend a lot of time on Google Hangouts that year! Lots of time…
- This time around, for the next experiment, the CODE | WORDS collective decided to explore what an old-fashioned correspondence could look like in the digital age by engaging pairs of authors from around the world to write to each other about topics of mutual interest. This being the 21st century though, they’ve exchanged emails, sent audio files, handwritten letters, and who knows what else will happen before we’re done?
- And so the last trend I want to discuss is the extent to which dealing with social media has penetrated the everyday work of the museum, well beyond those are typically “in charge” of social media. No longer the sole domain of the Marketing department, social media, and digital engagement in general, is moving into the mainstream of what a 21st century professional does.
- “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” -Peter Drucker
- **CULTURE is the manifestation of VALUES*** Values have a tendency to be bullshit --- translating them into a culture, actually acting on those values, is the really challenging part. “Culture is the manifestation of values.” -Jan Gunnarson
- Lack of staff time Lack of funding Lack of technical skills Shifting management thinking away from a series of fixed cost projects to a program of ongoing development “Over 60 per cent of UK arts and cultural organisations report that they are constrained in their digital activities by a lack of staff time and funding, and over 40 per cent report a lack of technical skills such as data analysis and database management” From Digital Culture: How arts and cultural organisations in England use technology
- Here’s one of the things I’m proudest of from my time at PEM. When we launched our blog two years ago, the common wisdom was that nobody would write for it. Who had time? It wasn’t their job! They didn’t know how to write for the web! The typical responses to new things. Since then, the social media team has spent a lot of time and energy providing professional development for our colleagues, which was certainly not in my job description! But it’s been vital to our success online. Nobody learned any of this stuff in school, and museums are places where people pride themselves on expertise. So trying to make our museum a place where continuous staff development takes place is a core part of my professional practice now.
- So what does digital literacy look like in real life?
- Here’s an example of one of our major efforts of 2016 – getting all our curators to post on Instagram. They all have smartphones, they all take pictures of things that interest them. All they needed was a little help, a bit of pushing, and permission from the institution.
- And the results speak for themselves. Each account is a reflection of their own unique view of the museum, and the interchange that happens between them is a precious commodity that the world can now look in on. When folks go on about ”post-critical museology” or “the distributed museum”, here’s a glimpse of what that can look like.
- And that wraps up the formal part of my talk. I'm happy to answer any questions you might have. This presentation will also be up on Slideshare, so don't feel like you need to have taken perfect notes.
- Спасибо!