Geofencing the Museum
Posted in Technology on 29. Jun, 2010
A new term came up on my radar; Geofencing.
Location aware software for mobile apps are getting more common and more complex, but still function upon the proximity to single GPS points. The problem mobile-side is the significant drain upon the battery.
(Via ReadWriteWeb) Location Labs has announced the beta for its geofencing library for the new iPhone. This will allow new location aware apps to response to more than a single GPS point. In short, you can define a whole sector of GPS points as a single area, place or building. If Foursquare-type apps are your thing, this would mean people would actually have to enter a place before checking in.
GPS real estate. I wonder about the future lawsuit of owning location data. When geofencing data is claimed by a third party other than the people who own the building. Anyway, I’m thinking out loud. The useful part is that a museum that can plot of every corner of its own floorplan can be involved with the next generation of location aware apps. There’s also the function for automatic “checking-in” (To borrow from Foursquare again) and also automatically saying when you’ve left.
Other uses could be improved Augmented Reality apps that provided information exactly over an object without additional location tags (like QR, bokode etc.). Maybe location-aware WiFi? You can only connect to a network when sitting in a defined area.
Or maybe, tracking where you museum users are walking with handheld tours and working out the most popular objects/exhibits and where people gather. Vitally important metrics for museums.
I am seriously interested in the possibility this software could provide for art tours. I am in South Africa and currently working on a project where we will be placing large-scale sculptures in a school environment, a walking tour as such – the purpose of the project is to expose students and their parents to abstraction, encouraging them to engage with art they are not used to dealing with (the majority are only comfortable with ‘traditional’ figurative sculpture, say for instance Rodin, so pre-modernism). We are developing a walk that shows the conversatin between the works, that will be explained in a brochure. But I got to thinking…wouldn’t it be great if you could walk up to a sculpture and get the info directly on your mobile. These kids and their parents are mostly affluent and used to engaging technology. And this could be a great way for them to access the sculpture in a media format they already find accessible. This could even expand further into the realm of public sculpture / urban art – if you had an app on your android phone that when you said I’m here – what’s in front of me?? – and that information is accessible. Most of our public art in the city is not labelled. The possibilities could be amazing.
This is very interesting to me as well. I wonder how this kind of technology could be used within a gallery space to send information about specific galleries directly to a visitor’s smart device.
I don’t imagine that the this kind of tech would be so accurate within the fence that it can pinpoint when a visitor is directly in front of any given piece of artwork, but i can imagine fencing between galleries to give broader information on what is contained therein. would this be correct?