Notes on Museopunk

Just gathering things together.

* There will be no manifesto, at least not from me. What kind of -punk would start off by laying down some rules anyway?

* Dan Cull has written about Prezpunk ethics and uses big words like “consequentialism” or “deontology” but importantly concludes that “ethics” should be one of “process”. There’s six things at the end of the post that I like.

*I feel that the Museopunk approach to ethics would be to “make your own rather than slave to someone else”. Steal, adapt, change and share. Find freedom in your code rather than submitting to outside influences.

* Don’t be scared to not be part of a club.

* Playwright Howard Barker on his theatre losing its Arts Council funding: “”You can’t tick the boxes if you aren’t doing the work they want. It’s not about art, it’s about sociology. We always fooled the Arts Council by pretending that we were doing things we didn’t do, but, of course, we were going to fall foul of them at some point.”

* Interesting side note; Tweepz, which came from Nina Simon’s delicious feed. It searches through the bio text of people’s twitter accounts. Search for “museum“, get just over 2000. Search “museums“, get around 600. This will include all those who list these as nothing more than an interest, but aren’t you surprised at how small that number is? Under 3000? Now lets knock out those dead accounts and those accounts used as nothing more than press release mechanisms. Let’s guess at a number of actual people actively involved in the museum-twitter community.

1000?

Now, how many of them are freelancers? Students? Graduates? Or just starting out? Now think about which museum-twitters are the most interesting to you?

* Museopunk, like Edupunk, is about priorities. Edupunk puts education above that of corporate and financial interests. The museum world seems dominated by these interests. If the money is tight then staff are the first to feel it. If the funding can’t be found, then the action doesn’t happen. The Museopunk will go and do it anyway.

* The Ohio Historical Society… Just… God, now they’re making stickers.

* At some point, I’m thinking we’ll need a Museopunk toolkit of technologies and applications.

* Also, I need to do a compare/contrst of all these neologisms. I’m thinking the metrocurator and museopunk concept could work without many problems but I see how the “Mutant Curator” (or “Content Curator”, as its known in more grown up circles) will cause problems.

* The Mutant Curator, seen by many in the media industry as their future and saviour. They notice how there are certain people on the Internet (Warren Ellis, Xeni Jardin, etc.) who can drive traffic via their own interests, acting as human filters to the superabundance of information (especially on twitter). 2.0 sites like Digg are crowd-driven and a bit faceless, so the old meeja likes the idea of an actual person (and a paycheck) “curating” the news. This only works with a pedestal. Doomed industries like pedestals. They can put a price on pedestals.

* The Museopunk does not want your pedestal. The Museopunk will make their own.

* Museopunk.ning.com – An open-to all ning site that I’m still tinkering with/breaking as we speak. I think there’s a need to discuss Museopunk and unpick it a bit and create a knowledge base/toolkit.