Listen to the Gears: 9

Crowdsourcing or curating, or a bit of each? It’s the talk of New Curator and the talk of the airwaves. Since Pete’s posts Death of the Curator I and II, I have noticed aspects of this debate turning up more and more in podcasts. None in the realm of museums themselves admittedly, but in areas like business and architecture: you’ve got to think laterally here. During the past week, I’ve picked up on these three.

Harvard Business Ideacast discussed the pros and cons of giving the consumer what they have asked for. Does it really work? In talking about business strategies in the recession they championed  ‘Innovation that transforms the meaning of things.’ (Isn’t that kind of what curators do in interpretation?) Business professor Roberto Verganti argued that the Wii would never have been invented if Nintendo had listened to the gamers. Players wanted more powerful passive consoles with more functions. Seems they didn’t know they wanted something to get them up and actively moving and interacting until it was presented to them. His argument was basically, if you ask people you get more of the same and nothing new. While I realise that not all curators will go for radical reinterpretations of their collections either, this does appear a good case in point against relying too heavily on market research or crowdsourcing. It will just be the same old, same old.

On the other hand…

Carol Coletta’s Smart City radio show took the theme of city planning in response to emotions this week. Talking to Vancouver planner Larry Beasley, Coletta asked why experiential planning was better than the more traditional efficiency-of-services based way. Beasley argued that  designing at the level of the human being, appealing to our emotions, would make us want to live in cities again and ‘feel true affection for them’. It is not made explicit but it seems that they have done extensive market research to come up with these conclusions, which are then actioned by ‘the city’. Obviously there is an element of selection going on, or Vancouver could have have ended up with giant candy floss trees and bright yellow municipal buildings. Essentially though, the idea is that the city can then choreograph an innovative vision for their community in accordance with all the things that its people need for feelings of wellbeing.

In the middle of talking about magazines branching out onto the web, NPR Pop Culture put forward that the magazine is the only medium with a distinct point of view, that of the editor, and this distinguishes it from all others. This comment made me stop and think. Of course, I have to disagree.  Museums do this too. Exhibitions, galleries and whole museums are put together from the point of view of their editor: the curator(s). So, if we took crowdsourcing to its logical conclusion, museums would not have the distinct point of view of their editor anymore, the curator. Does that matter?

The debate continues.