Last weekend I had my first real-life demonstration of Layar. It was pretty impressive and it occured to me that you just can’t appreciate how it works as you move the phone, when viewing a demo of it on a computer monitor. Listening to KCRW’s Design and Archtecture podcast, I hit on the begininnings of [...]
Monthly Archives: August 2009
Aug 27
WexArts iPhone
I was sent this by the team at Wexner Centre of the Arts. They’re launched an iPhone-enabled part of their website with quite a nice little UI. Here’s a video of it in action.
They’ve also put out their development documents (PDF) for other museums to use.
Aug 26
What’s Next to Digitise?
Following on from my love letter to Augmented Reality, there’s something I touched on at the end that looks like something worth following up. Almost at the same time I was thinking about it, I watched another keynote speech by Bruce Sterling to the guys at the Layar Augmented reality browser launch event. (For those [...]
Aug 25
The Director of Fun
D’aaaaw, isn’t that cute? A six year old applied to be “Diwector” of the National Railway Museum in York. He was only offered the new position of “Director of Fun” and obviously happy to accept the lesser appointment due to the economic situation.
Sam Pointon, I hope this whole exercise is a lot of fun for [...]
Aug 21
From Reality to the Kiosk
I was asked a while back why I’m so interested in Augmented Reality. To me, it’s the polar opposite of a computer “kiosk”, something I’ve hated on several times regardless of touch/multi-touch capabilities. Is comes down to a question of design intent or, more specifically, platform. Brooklyn Museum’s Shelley Berstein has written a blog [...]
Aug 20
Listen to the Gears: 7
Since listening to the Museum of Science, Boston podcast about vaccines a couple of weeks ago, I have been mulling over ideas. They discussed developments in cancer innoculations, but I have been considering the concept that museum visits could be prescribed as defence against aspects of the human condition.
‘Visits as vaccines!
Don’t end up complacant, [...]
Aug 16
Newcurator Locator
Twitter – I block spam and snake-oil salesmen. I don’t tend to follow those who I can’t work out. I follow cultural and creative people like artists, museum workers, some designers/architects and the occasional “magazine” twitter. I’m very careful who I follow and who follows me so you can be sure that my twitter circle [...]
Aug 14
ArtFriday: Shad Nowicki
Just… awesome.
You know, I try to appeal to my highbrow side on ArtFridays. I try to find artists to which I can express an understanding about form and colour and interpret accordingly to thematic pursuit.
Shad Nowicki paints a pizza box with Darth Vader wearing a cowboy hat and and the centre of my brain that [...]
Aug 14
Listen to the Gears: 6
What were you doing when the Berlin Wall fell? Is it something you remember or just something that you’ve read about in history books? German cultural magazine, Arts.21, is running a series reflecting on the country twenty years after reunification. In their latest videocast they investigated how visitors and residents of Berlin remember the Wall. [...]
Aug 14
A Phone-Tastic View: An Xiao’s Kickstarter Project
ArtFriday Alumni and Newcurator favourite An Xiao is using micro-philanthropy site Kickstarter (which I first looked at back in May) to fund her latest project, “Phone-tastic View”– a site-specific physical installation with a mobile phone component.
Awesome. Kickstarter rules means the money has to be raised within the timeframe or it doesn’t get any of it, [...]
Aug 14
Museunions
I promised several times to make a better response to the Museos Unite team about unionising. Out of the recent discussions about Museum Studies graduates, they’ve been kicking around the idea of a Museum Studies Graduate Union. They’ve kinda preempted me slightly with this recent post:
Today, that number has dwindled to around 10 percent and [...]
Aug 13
Notes on Museum Studies Discussion
So much has turned up in the discussion about Museum Studies course. I’m glad how the discussion has turned to what the course should do rather than what they can do. There’s too much flying around to keep track of it all so this is going to be in note form.
This discussion has thrown up [...]
Aug 11
Improving Museum Studies
I’ve seen a lot of blog posts recently about the Future of Museum Studies courses. I am infuriated by how the discussion seems to be along a ciriculum basis and that those providing the courses need to make these minute changes in education practices and pray for a long term gain.
You want to have an [...]
Aug 10
The Thousands
RJ over at Vandalog has announced he is curating THE THOUSANDS, a street art exhibition in November.
He’s also got a dedicated blog tracking the exhibition’s progress. At the moment, he’s looking for more street art collectors and artists to work with him. Email: rj(at)vandalog.com
Aug 07
Listen to the Gears: 5
A recent email told me that the Museums Association is holding a seminar on podcasting. I expect that this will be about the technicalities of recording and producing; content, delivery and publicity. Listening to so many podcasts each week I often consider the pros and cons of each. Consequently I have in my mind my [...]
Aug 07
ArtFriday: Caroline Blake
I wanted photography for ArtFriday this week. It’s been ages since we last had photography.
I made a call on twitter and many got in touch, but there was one artist’s work that stood out for me as exactly what I wanted to show. I wanted pictures of people. I wanted something of the magical-realistic characteristics [...]
Aug 06
Tangible Holograms
A couple of Wiimotes, a concave mirror and a ultrasound-spitting panel and you can feel a tiny holo-elephant run over your hands.
I imagine science museums having a lot of fun with this sort of thing, but I wonder what it could do in terms of a “handling collection” approach.
Why it was two Wiimotes and not [...]
Aug 05
Tales of Museum Doom
Gather around children, I’m going to tell you a story about British politics.
GET BACK HERE.
This is a story about Doom, something British literature has excelled at. Especially warnings of potential Doom. But this story begins a few years ago and encapsulates a lot about British society and ultimately the effect on a certain class of [...]
