Channel Newcurator: IBM’s Internet of Things

A short video from IBMSocialMedia, via La Pura Vida.

This is leading up to something in my head. This acts as a good intro, I think. “The planet has grown a central nervous system”.

Channel Newcurator: Compare/Contrast

What these two videos displaying two rather similar iPhone cultural apps. The first one is Hampshire’s County Council preview for there beta 3 app.

Get the Flash Player to see this player.

Location data leads to a list of nearby places arranged in a nice UI. It’s a good directory with links to Google Streetview. Lots of potential to add things to each venues profile.

Now, let’s look at something similar. French organisation CultureClic’s app, also for the iPhone and they also show a Blackberry, Nokia and a Samsung. I figure it works on others. Watch.

Which would you want?

If, you know, it was for your area?

Google UNESCO World Heritage Streetview

More partnerships from Google to work with with museums and heritage. This time working with UNESCO to provide Google Streetviews of World Heritage sites.

Go to google.com/unesco to find out more and use the Google Map app.

MacGregorism: A History of the World

The first programmes of “A History of the World in 100 Objects” kicked off today. The BBC Radio 4 flagship of the project began with the mummy of Hornedjitef. I agree with The Attic’s take that this is clearly a very personal project for Neil MacGregor as it seems to be the biggest cross-media platform he will get to talk about his vision for the museum in a globalised world. I’ve always like liked to call MacGregorism because I feel the man deserves to have an -ism named after him.

I’m slightly surprised at the format and rather glad. I was expecting fifteen minutes of academic analysis of single objects. Instead, Mr. MacGregor uses the object in question to hang the rest of the ranging topic to. Case in point: it was far more interesting to listen to and there wasn’t much of an actual detailed physical description of the mummy and coffin. If you want to know what it looks like, you can look online. Why waste the precious fifteen minutes? I like how this whole project doesn’t assumes that everyone lives in a technological dead zone.

The World’s History is being focused on one object at a time. It is going to be a very British-Museum-branded history, meaning a globalised history. A bold approach that edges more on the importance of the journalistic/media aspects.  I applaud it.

Also on today was the Culture Show special (iPlayer link. Probably doesn’t work outside of UK). MacGregor was good. Kermode and Collings did some very interesting reports in the spirit of the project. Neil Oliver was trying too hard to be poignant and proves his 360 spin shots only work on top of a cliff. Tom Dyckhoff almost made the whole thing an episode of Blue Peter. Interestly, usual presenter Mark Kermode was sent off to the Isle of Man and replaced by BBC World News presenter Mishal Husain.

The website connecting all this together is part brilliant and part frustrating. The flash-heavy main page is probably the best way to search over the actual objects because of a great way they’ve categorised and interlinked the data. My God, it takes a long time though. Ignore the “In Your Area” tab altogether and use the “BBC Area” in the sidebar, trust me. The blog looks to be shaping up into a really good resource.

I will make your life easier to linking to the podcast here, which took me too long to find. I will also give you this page, which I think will eventually turn into the list of all the episodes and iPlayer links. How they’ve organised the lists of the actual programming is a bit of a nightmare. I’m surprised there isn’t a dedicated page on BBC’s iPlayer either.

I’m expecting the “Add Your Object” section will clutter things up pretty soon. You’d need a BBC ID, whatever that is. Would have though signing in with Twitter/Facebook/Google would be an option. For some, this aspect will allow them to add to the project as a whole as well as learn some basics in collection management (Honestly, the BBC offers a better collection database than some museums I’ve known). I see this causing problems already, like why is Swansea Museum adding stuff as an “individual” and not a museum?

No dedicated twitter account? I suppose it’s going to be all over the official British Museum one anyway.

All together, this is clearly the beginnings of something impressive. I’m looking forward to the rest.

The First Annual Newcurator Awards

This time last year, I launched newcurator.com. Since then, this site has developed into many different areas, expanded into some very interesting subjects and has had its readership grow beyond all expectations. To mark this occasion of newcurator’s first birthday, I want to thank all the people who commented, followed me on twitter and facebook, submitted guest posts, everyone who kept returning to read and everyone who ever clicked on one of the adverts.

Over the year, I have read and written about many things concerning the Future of Museums through a very particular lens. As is the custom to look back over the previous twelve months and find some kind of conclusion, I wish to start the Newcurator Awards. A very simple affair. Only three categories: Person of the Year, Museum of the Year and Website of the Year. No shortlist, no voting, no judges apart from me, no fancy images/trophies. Three awards to where I just want to hold up in recognition the efforts that have impressed me.

These awards are for those who are equal parts Now and the Future. Now, they are impressive. In the Future, they are going to make a difference. Without further ado, I present the winners.

Person of the Year – Maxwell L. Anderson

You only have to look at the incredible level of work coming from the Indianapolis Museum of Art to understand what Mr Anderson has that is lacking in so many other museums across the world: an entrepreneurial leadership that allows his stars to shine. Think about the marvellous ArtBabble or the great efforts the IMA puts into its social media/networking. Think about the level of transparency the IMA has, such as the deaccesioning database or the statistic generated by the dashboard. Think about free wifi, which is painfully lacking in so many places still. This just scratches the surface of what the team at IMA does.

Think about the aneurysm some museum directors would have at the mere mention of some of these things. Mr. Anderson has often spoken on the metrics to measure the success of the museum, which has put the IMA on an international stage of recognition where it would be so easy for him to say no, to be too cautious, to stick with simple goals. Mr. Anderson thinks big and allows his staff to think big. Whilst the successes of the museum and the online aspects deserve as much recognition as Mr. Anderson, it is the adoption of his management style in other museum would definitely make him part of the Future and the first Newcurator Person of the Year.

Museum of the Year – Brooklyn Museum

One of the major points in remembering the past year is the financial hammering museums took. Brooklyn Museum was no exception, having cutbacks to avoid layoff and a small rise in ticket prices. This didn’t stop them winning three awards at the Museum and the Web Conference, having one of the first museum iPhone apps as well as a mobile guide, leading the way in the Wikipedia Loves Art project, the 1stFans community, releasing a collections API and a great program of exhibitions without excessive use of the “blockbuster”. All this in the face of incredible adversity. Brooklyn Museum is an inspiration and highly deserving of the Newcurator Museum of the Year.

Website of the Year – Museos Unite

There are an incredible amount of amazing museum websites and blogs out there that have been going on for a long time, but I give this award to a blog that has only been going for six months and has totalled just over 30 posts. Why? Because of what it represents. Nothing is more important to the Future of Museum than the development of new museum staff. This blog looks at those trying to gain entry-level positions despite being highly talented and still facing uphill struggles. There is nothing so poignant than reading in the sidebar that of the four contributors, two have moved into other industries, one cannot afford union fees and another has no union to join. “Recession” was probably the most-said word of 2009 and Museos Unite looked to keep the interests of those hardest hit in museums; those at the bottom of the pile. For capturing the zeitgeist of museums in 2009, Museos Unite is the Newcurator Website of the Year.

Congratulations to the winners. Now let’s fire up the engines of 2010 for the upcoming year and keep moving towards that Future.

British Museum Advert on Korean Air Boeing

Via The Attic. Just leaving this here as opposed to delicious or tumblr. Great time lapse video that stirs up a lot of thoughts.

Nonprofitable Museum Actions

Museo Unite put the question out there.

Here’s the challenge: how can museums (and museos) make money enough to pay salaries while furthering their mission? “If you build it, they will come” is not working. We need to do more. Any ideas on how we can put the profit back in nonprofit?

Mission, as they rightly point out, means you can’t resort to opening cinemas. Getting people through the doors by any means is out of bounds. The museum mission has to be part of it.

If only it was that simple. There are plenty of other unspoken rules. Let’s say you have the opportunity to put on an exhibition that fits your museum’s mission/identity/policy and it has some real star quality to it. Win-win? Nope. You’ll gets all kinds of people crawling over you saying things like “conflict of interest” or “buddy-buddy”. I really feel for the New Museum. They have gone through some real unnecessary treatment. As if a trustee and supporter of a museum would take his resources to some other institution. Why would they want some other organisation to benefit? And why on Earth wouldn’t you want to work with people you’ve worked with before and have a close personal and professional relationship with?

Once upon a time, this kind of action was called an Art Movement

Also, we should be applauding Damien Hirst. I say that whilst not being his biggest fan. He paid money from his own pocket to keep an exhibition free and without having his name plastered next to some corporate logo.

“So museums need to start thinking more like for-profit businesses, right?” says Museo Unite’s Kat Hinkel. Of course there are hints to be taken from the commercial world, but be too much like it and you’ll will have people folding their arms in disgust. Contemporary artists? But they have agents and collectors! Public viewings would raise the prices! Scandal! Scandal!

The philanthropy-grantmaking model was unsustainable, as proved by it didn’t work in an economic meltdown. Well, the other option is go for international megaphilanthropy (via The Art Law Blog), which isn’t always an available option  and I don’t know how this exactly fits within a museum’s mission.

We just can’t win, can we? The required sweet-spot between financial stability, museum mission and corporate interest is a tiny speck surrounded by a lot of foot-stamping and indignation. Be aware when trying to answer the question, there’s a lot more to a nonprofit’s status than just the finance.

“Materiality and Intangibility: Contested Zones”

INCOMING GUEST POST/PLUG FROM THE ATTIC.

Hi! My name is Jenny, and I’d like to extend to you all an invitation to attend the Leicester University School of Museum Studies’ PhD Symposium “Materiality and Intangibility: Contested Zones”. Organised by the PhD community here at the world’s oldest department for Museum Studies, it aims to challenge the fixed division between ‘the material’ and ‘the intangible’ which is so prevalent in museological thought. It runs on Monday 14^th and Tuesday 15^th December and promises to be a fantastic occasion!

For the bargain price of just £20, you get lunches, refreshments and two days worth of speakers and events. Keynote speakers include Dr Richard Sandell, Dr Sandra Dudley, Professor Sue Pearce and Dr Kostas Arvantis. Delegates are attending from 6 different countries, so the international mix will be great. But there is so much more – we’re running an art show as part of the symposium and (this is my favourite part) we have by and large banned PowerPoint! Speakers have had to come up with inventive methods of presenting their work and we hope that many of you will join us to come and see the results.

If you want more details, or to download a booking form, please follow these links.

Provisional Timetable

Booking Form

Jenny Walklate is a PhD Researcher at the University of Leicester – You can contact her via jaw50(at)le.ac.uk, piratemoon on twitter and as a regular blogger on The Attic, the Leicester Museum Studies Blog.

Museum Currency

Just throwing this idea out there. Hopefully someone with greater economic knowledge will come up with some points.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the Brixton Pound, and other similar attempts of community currency. As described on the organisation’s website behind it, the B£ is intended to help promote local businesses during recession. Money that sticks to Brixton is the tagline. From a BBC report:

Proponents of local currencies say they boost the community’s economy by keeping money in the area, but critics dismiss them as fashionable gimmicks, tantamount to protectionism.

“A local economy is like a leaky bucket. Wealth is generated then spent in chain stores and businesses. It disappears leaving an impoverished local economy,” explains Ben Brangwyn, part of the team behind the Totnes Pound, launched in south Devon in 2007

The report goes on to talk about the problems (and there are some great ones in the comments), the fundamental one being that they are seen as nothing more than gift vouchers.

It is just gimmicky? I think there a certain flaw in restricting use to an area, but think about Book Tokens. They helped promote the giving of books as presents (especially when it was difficult to be certain what type of book to get). So why not promote visiting museums? Use them either to pay entrance fees (Yes, many UK museums aren’t free), for tickets to special exhibitions (like in the Nationals) or use them in the shop.

I’ve not been able to find such a scheme. I’ve found vouchers for individual museums but I think it needs to be on a wider scale. It may work locally: museums/cultural institutions of an area/state/region could form a partnership to accept these. I think it would work best on a national level. All museums in a country accepting and issuing Museum Currency. An international Museum Currency would be even better.

I’m sure there could be a better name. Museum Denarius? Go for the historical reference?

This is for the UK, I’m afraid. I don’t know if there’s an equivalent in other countries. I wonder if it could be possible if the Museum Currency was an automatic declaration for Gift Aid, which is tax relief to increase the value of a donation. I do know some museums do this on an entrance fee. Yes, yes, I realise that it’s not that simple.

Comments welcome on this. I think there is a lot of scope for interesting things.  A new “currency” could be dismissed as a marketing ploy or just for tourists. Well, it would benefit museums by being just that.

Listen to the Gears: 11

‘What’s the real story, then?’ asked a man of his eight or nine year old grandson, who had said that the museum’s text about the portrait of a 16^th century gentleman farmer ‘wasn’t right.’ The boy told him an epic tale of bullfighting instead. It was fascinating to listen to and underlined for me the power of images on the imagination.

Photographer Taryn Simon’s recent TED presentation was about her work taking images of ‘secret sites and worlds we wouldn’t normally get to see’. She discussed two projects: photographs of other-wordly, behind-the-scenes locations, and wrongfully convicted people at crime scenes. Simon is interested in the multiple truths attached to images and opined here that the viewer’s perception hinges on the intent of the creator. She brings forth some compelling ideas about the use of photographs in criminal convictions for instance. In explaining the intent behind her own photographs, she outlines her own intent in presenting them, but what if she didn’t? What would we think? As she suggested, I would bet that it might not be exactly what she had just explained to us. There are always other stories surrounding the work: the idea of the other, the alternative.

The reading of art changes over time and with new evidence or thinking comes reinterpretation. Traditionally we learn from art historians about the meanings behind works. ArtBabble’s newest partners, SmartHistory made use of new technology to present a different kind of discussion about classical art. Describing themselves as a ‘dynamic substitute’ for traditional art history learning, they used Second Life ‘correspondents’ (real-life art historians) to interpret using a recreation of Michelangelo’s ceiling to the Sistine Chapel. In conversation they explained its significance, making, which techniques were used and focus on particular scenes, all of which you might expect from a traditional lecture. What made the difference is that it being Second Life, it can be viewed in the round and they can also fly about to see things close up. I would love to see this used to greater effect giving alternative explanations and with opposing historians and interpreters having debates in-situ in Second Life.

Or what about some children giving their opinions?  In the Our City podcasts, schoolchildren made recordings about their hometowns in a worldwide learning experiment. I do wonder how much input the children have into what they think is important in their city and how much the adults guide them. The episodes I have listened to describe their cities in rather pedestrian terms. Whilst I realise that there has to be guidance, they could use the children’s own language and creativity to a greater extent.

This leads me to an idea. Make a podcast wherein children could to tell others about both the real and imagined stories of the paintings. What would it be like to step inside a Gainsborough or a Mondrian. Would it be hot or cold, would there be other people or creatures in there? What might have happened just before that captured moment? This could lead to a large-scale outreach project set up between museums and galleries worldwide to supplement traditional art history and promote wider engagement between children and paintings.

Kind of like a cross between the Dictionary of Imaginary Places and a Jasper Fforde novel, but in a podcast.

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. Surprisingly, on asking the public, people of all ages could not really remember where it had once stood. Although much of has been removed, this really surprised me. It really isn’t that long ago. Do our individual memories really overwrite such a monumental physical change in the cityscape so quickly? I tried to think of some more instances to mention and even investigate, but could not come up with anything on the same scale. Forgetting where the old town hall once stood is one thing; the Berlin Wall seems quite another. The question is, does it matter? The Wall lives on in museums, in films, as the parts still standing and in souvenir form on mantelpieces the world over. Its significance will not be forgotten, but it seems that its location might.

NPR’s Pop Culture podcast discussed the seminal British TV programme Playing Shakespeare. In 1984, Ben Kingsley was the only universally known actor featured in the programme but now it appears filled with the greats. However that’s not why I’m recommending that you listen to it. Pop Culture highlights a line from the then little known Sir Ian McKellan about how definitions of acting ‘naturally’ change over time. King Lear was played very differently in the British Empire of the 19^th century to how he is interpreted today. The grand certainty of the delivery reflected how the nation was situated in the world. It is an argument that lends itself to museum collections. The interpretation of museum objects depends on the social norms of the time, often causing controversy if it does not. For instance, in the West we generally no longer display galleries of taxidermied stags’ heads as blood sports are less popular. There is discussion and debate about the inclusion of golliwogs in children’s museums. Cases that have not been updated for some time can reflect past racist, sexist, and colonialist attitudes on the part of the museum.

I must ask, is it right to just hide this history of interpretation? Museums reflect the cultural mindset of the times in the same way that theatre does, but we have the chance to tell a further story. Dilemma labels which highlight that which is ‘out of touch’ (often in ethnographic displays) are nothing new, but I suggest using them more often in all kinds of exhibits to provoke debate from visitors and from staff.

Child psychotherapist Camila Batmanghelidjh suggested an amusing 60 Second Idea to change the world. She believes that skating on rollerblades would make political meetings less boring and generate more creative thinking with faster outcomes to tough problems. She has tried and tested her theory with various physical activities in meetings, including yoyo-ing and reports that it works. Could this be an experiment for museum staff? Would the economy of thought help in curatorial decision making? Let me know if you try it out… if you can get it past a health and safety risk assessment, that is!

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 a lot of associated sub-issues. I said Museum Studies courses should be doing everything in their power to get their students into proper work. This has started conversations about opportunity, wages, volunteering and the reasons for doing the course in the first place.
• I’m going to come out with my opinion on the whole “education as its own reward” ideology that isn’t intended to provoke any further discussion. I simply cannot understand why anyone would want to believe this. It seems to be such a lovely way of dismissing greater values of a qualification, and smacks slightly of an education culture that wants you to be a customer for the designated time only. My reasons are because education is so damn expensive. All the scholarships and bursaries won’t make up the fact someone is going to shoulder a huge amount of debt. Is that it’s own reward? No, I believe ruining your credit rating is an investment/risk based upon your future earnings. Who would want to invest £50,000 just to earn £15,000 for the rest of their lives?
• If that still is your reasoning, then all the more power to you.
• Remember, all this is about improving the Museum Studies course to improve the outcomes for the graduates.
• Something I believe in: Graduates are intelligent and mostly resourceful. Give enough time, a graduate will learn what you need them to do. Also, all graduates have their own ideas.
• I need to think about the idea of a Museum Studies course (or any similar course, thinking about it) acting as a recruitment department for museums. How would that work? A course would act as the interview process. Then many (all?) museums would be attached to it as a “sponsor”. Years of training *for* someone. Of course, this may be limiting: there are many very interesting people in museums who didn’t take this route. We can’t close them out.
• Let’s look at volunteers:
• I believe their to be two kinds of volunteer. 1) Those doing it primarily as a kind of hobby/social occasion 2) Those doing it as advancing their professional status/CV building. Of course you can do both.
• Mia: And FWIW, TV, film and fashion also rely on volunteers or unpaid interns – working for a year unpaid to get your foot in the door is more common than not. (Yes, and look at the major problems with those industries because they’re not dealing with this. TV and film are getting kicked around because they wish to hold onto a status quo, which is often why they blame piracy for everything. I won’t comment on how the fashion industry works since I know so little about it. I guess it’s because there’s a lot of money and very few people. I think sports teams are similar except they spend fortunes on developing youth teams)
• From my analysis, people have a problem with the route of Degree>Volunteering>Entry-Level position. It relies too heavily on the middle part for an unequal benefit to the end outcome when the beginning.
• A person does a Museum Studies course. Personal Benefit, Professional Benefit, Massive Costs.
• A person does volunteering. Some Personal Benefit (if you enjoy it), Professional Benefit (if it’s worthwhile), Massive Costs (travel costs etc. and the fact that you’re not earning).
• A person gets an entry level position. Maybe Personal Benefit, Professional Status, Small Reductions towards Debt.
• This person’s route has very large costs compared to a standard professional status.
• And what about Museums and this route? Massive benefits from Course (creates enormous potential workforce to pick and choose from), Massive Benefits from volunteering (Free work force that’s quite skilled), Only Costs from recruitment.
• Well, that’s one way to look at it. And now tell me there’s not a sense of Doom? If there’s a history of personal failures to get into the museum industry, then talented people will write it off. Then where will the Future come from?
• Hence why I think reliance on volunteers is unsustainable. imagine the big numbers here.
• DICLAIMER, NOT SERIOUS: If we lost all the current museum chiefs, what would happen? They’d be replaced? By the second-in-commands? Now what would happen if we lost all the volunteers? Who’s the most important? Is that sustainable?
• The Real Problem: Degree>Volunteering>Entry-Level seems to be the *only* route into museums. We need more Routes. Ideas? I’m thinking Degree>Museum Start-Up.
• Paul Orselli great post “Smaller-is-better” (maybe combined with my Metrocurator thoughts) is a very powerful idea in light of these discussions.
• Another great post from Colleen Dilenschneider. Yeah, maybe this is consider a “miracle course”, but it’s something to aspire to, right?
• One of my favourite outcomes of all this is Museos Unite. They’re doing a much better job at collecting and advancing all this discussion than me. I promised them a proper set of thoughts about Unionising. I’ll hopefully get those thoughts down tonight.

Is anyone else rather excited about all this?

ArtFriday: Paul Steen-Blake

I can’t believe that after all this time, I’ve never featured Paul Steen-Blake on an ArtFriday. I must correct this at once.

Paul describes himself as an artist/journalist and you can see where one side influences the other. His relatively new blog BETWEEN THE NEWS is about the spiralling 4th/5th generation warfare in geopolitical hotspots. Paul has the columnist’s knack of explanation, prioritising the inform in information. How does he describe his ARTBLOX series? “…buildingblocks that can be used to illustrate complex ideas or simply to decorate”.  These are images you’d expect to see adorning long articles in Monocle-esque magazines. Except without the words, the meaning of the image is still accessible. And they look damn cool.

I want to call Paul an “urban artist”, but I wouldn’t want to tar him with the same brush that seems to cover most graffiti writers. Paul concerns himself with cities, these large hives of human socio-economic activity that is also the setting for the world’s battles. So he makes a tabletop game of urban warfare in a scale model of Grozny, surrounded in imagery like it’s your very own war room.

In response to the increasing use of UAV surveillance in the military, he built his own.

You can find more of Paul’s work at his website and you can follow him on twitter.

© Paul Steen-Blake

© Paul Steen-Blake

© Paul Steen-Blake

© Paul Steen-Blake

Listen to the Gears: 3

There has been an interesting juxtaposition in the podcasts that have caught my notice this week. They have been either about the very latest developments in technology for the future or the preservation of things that are being lost.

APM’s Future Tense talked to NASA about their communications projects. They have already tweeted from space, but aim much higher (and further) than that. By building an interplanetary internet they want to be able to make the most of spontaneous interactions with space vehicles and telescopes. I’d love to think it could be this:

‘Take more macro photographs of that crater, send them to the Hubble telescope and copy the email to the Smithsonian so they can archive them at the same time.’

Normally in space exploration, you would have to plan to take those photographs on your next mission, so this would get things working much faster. How could this technology have an application for museums? Could we send data out there instead of just retrieving it? A virtual space museum? I would love to hear what you think.

The BBC World Service special report Save Our Sounds discussed the changing soundscape. In a thought provoking podcast, they covered urban sound design, lost soundscapes and are preserving sounds by charting aural turnover on an interactive map.

Sound is often used in museums: as part of audiovisual display, as oral history or in interactives. What I find more interesting though is the sound of the museum itself.

If you closed your eyes for a couple of minutes what would you hear? It really depends on where you are. There could be the hubbub of school groups or the quiet contemplation of people considering art on the walls. The hushed but frenzied excitement of somebody discovering an object they love and telling their friend. A film quietly playing to itself on a slow day. The scratch of a pen on paper as someone takes notes. Footfall, chatter, excitement, boredom. And behind the scenes? Typing and papershuffling in the offices. A telephone conversation. The whirr of machinery in conservation services. The clatter of someone making a cup of tea in the staff room.

I bet that your museum sounds different in all kinds of ways to the one where I work.

I think that it would be an interesting experiment to have a museum sound art exhibition. Chart a day in the life of a museum, edit the snippets and pipe it into a gallery. I would love to people-watch while the visitors figured it out. Very subtly done, it might seem like a haunting.

Too self indulgent? Or just seeing things from a different perspective? I think it is worth a shot.

I started off talking about new technology. All technology gets old eventually and will probably end up in a museum. Here is a great videocast by The Stuff of Genius about that once brand new technology, long range radio.

Listen to the Gears is written by August.

ArtFriday: David Jensenius

I’ve wanted to do an ArtFriday on a sonic/audio artist for a while now. I felt ArtFriday was becoming too two-dimensionally heavy. Problem being, I confess, is how little I fully understand or comprehend audio art. I just lack the language. Then again, I’m of a generation that can just about remember music videos on television and the first generation to be sold the concept of large amounts of digital music in your pocket. This may be why I’ve often been annoyed at audio art whenever I have gone to a place to experience it. I’m just not wired that way.

Also, visual artists greatly outnumber audio artists in all the social networks I’m part of. So I’m glad David Jensenius emailed me. I was also pensive that it may mean nothing to me. I listened with my big Sennheiser headphones. My response to David’s email: “I like this”. This is my brain being rewired.

David’s use of space fascinates me, especially as I’ve never got on well with audio art in actual space. Sitting at my desk with a decent pair of headphones, listening to 7, I got an incredible amount of work done. I was somewhere else, gently surrounded yet kept at a distance by the sounds of a social situation that I recognised and was alienated from but actually didn’t exist. 7 is made of seven layers from seven different places.

(D./C.)e-NTW:v.2.0 continues the theme of space/non-place as traffic from an email server is translated into sound. This is the music from between-places, from Send to Inbox across a gap you only partially know about.

Iraq 2006 horrified me. Machine gun basslines fed directly into your inner ear makes you realise that this is the noise you’ve zoned out when watching the news. Accompanied by Anne Rhodes singing the numbers of the death count as both Valkerie and game show scoreboardEach number counted with a “Ta-da!” as Iraq becomes a Hollow State.

These are all spaces/places. 7 is the place I know, yet didn’t exist. (D./C.)e-NTW:v.2.0 is the place I don’t know, yet I’m sure exists. Iraq 2006 is the space that I may never know and struggle to think exists anymore than a hole of failure in the Middle East.

David Jensenius is on twitter and you can find his website here. Go to Listen/Watch and listen to these three pieces with a good pair of headphones or speakers. Then listen to the rest.

Serota/MacGregor

The video of Nick Serota and Neil MacGregor at the LSE is up.

They talk UK politics (I agree with Serota about nobody wanting to be Culture Secretary). They talk about geopolitics with MacGregor clearly pushing his internationalism. Interesting he associates it with London as the City of Diasporas. They talk about the Marbles. I like to think my insight was right. The question of ownership is redundant, the question of taking it around the world is more important. They talk about sculpture, the Olympics etc.

Then Bamber Gascoigne makes them take about the future, museums and the Internet. It was Serota’s answer that stood out for me:

The big challenge for big institutions over the next 20 years is going to be to what extent we wish to simply remain authors and to what extent are we going to become publishers?

Boom. Serota shows why he’s one of the most important museum directors in the world. MacGregor spoke about the Internet providing access, which is fair enough. Serota sees the Internet as a medium of information and museums as sources of information. Curators will be far more like Editors (Ahem! Okay, I said magazines, but I think the statements are still relevant). Okay, it may not be what comes out of a MW200x conference, but

It makes me wonder why Jonathon Jones still has a job at The Guardian. I’ve never seen a cultural critic so out of touch.

Listen to the Gears: 2

Summer holiday season is upon us. What do you see and do when visiting a new place? Guidebooks point us to the highlights of the city or region, but what of other local things?

Smart City podcast discussed spottedbylocals.com. This tourist information blog, described as an ‘atlas of emotion’ is made up of suggestions of what to see and do by local people. For them, the best things in the neighbourhood are different to the guidebook ideas. It seems that seasoned travellers even say ‘sometimes the tourist attractions are the least interesting part of the trip’. Well, this doesn’t bode well for museums and galleries does it? They’re often the highlights in the guidebooks. What to do?

I suggest that museums play on this idea themselves, making use of their local visitors. An exhibition project combining local topographical art, personalised Google maps and visitors’ connections to these places and objects has potential. It could breathe life into tired collections and provide a way to get local people in the doors, as well as visitors from further away. It’s a similar idea to those exhibitions where the whole point is that visitors write their own interpretive labels. This information mapping could be extended even further. Adding catalogue data to the map would be valuable for staff and researchers. It would allow them to see the locations of finds or views. Map your collections using local knowledge. Like a visual version of oral history?

Listening to The Future and You, I kept the mapping idea in mind. American guest Robert Hooker discussed trends in IT, globalisation and immigration in the UK. It is always interesting to listen to an outsider describe your own environs. Some of what he said didn’t sit comfortably with me, but it did make me question how narrow my own experience is. Sometimes I find this reflected in the narratives that museums tell. Migrants will inevitably have different views and experiences of the local area. Being an outsider allows you to see things in a different light. Running a museum project to harness these narratives could create a new layer to the map. Or a new map altogether. A way of charting local history as it happens from multiple viewpoints.

Kansas Historical Society’s Cool Things in the Collection focuses on and discusses the biography of one object per podcast. A story cloth made by Hmong refugees narrates the story of the escape from Vietnam at the height of the war. This narrative textile seemed to me a predecessor to the mapping idea. The traditional use of fabric to tell a story that can be packed up and transported with you for easy accessibility has correlations with today’s Internet use. Save your map online and you can open it up for perusal through any Internet connection, wherever you are. Evolving the mapping idea in another direction, a virtual map could even chart the ethnic minorities’ diasporas and journeys to the local area.

Technology has moved on but the importance of storytelling has remained a constant. Local museums need local narratives. Bring them up to date.

Listen to the Gears was written by August.

An Idea Brewing – Suggestions Welcome

I just want to pull these three links from my delicious account. There’s definitely something here that needs more thought. Chime in with any additional add-ons.

1. dropstuff.org – I think I understand this. There’s a giant mobile hut covered in LEDs on one side that acts as basecamp for all the editing/curating. There are also a bunch of what they call DS_HOTSPOTS, which I think are vending machine-sized physical links to the network. The Dropstuff network integrates five other 2.0 social networks as sources of creativity. You see, they have three layers to what they display: professional, “open stage” and workshops. It all meshes together wonderfully.

2. Armadillo: The FEMA Trailer Project – The MIT Visual Arts students turn one of the FEMA trailers used as temporary housing into a project incorporating design, politics, ecology, art, research and science. If you imagine this as a mobile museum exhibition, it goes far beyond that as simple temporary space. I’m not suggesting it would have to be exactly the same, but seeing this would feel like participating in an ongoing workshop. I don’t know if I’m being clear here, but you can see the difference between this and a cargo container with things hanging on the inside, right?

3. Pop-up Shop – KiosKiosK is a temporary/short-term shop front to sell creative products as part of a regeneration plan.

You see how I think there’s something that can meld these three things together. I was thinking along the lines of pop-up shops acting as stations and front-of-house to mobile museum exhibition workshop trailers that are all linked with a hydra-connected network of social networks and vending machines. Thrown in QR Codes and GPS for fun. If there was a way I could incorporate mini-satellites, I would.

There’s something missing to all this. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but I think its lacking one more stolen integrated idea. These three allow for extremely high-end mobility and flexibility as well as a solid foundation where needed. It may seem art-heavy but it really doesn’t need to.

Thoughts?

More Museum of Tolerance Irony

What is it about Museums of Tolerance that unite people against them? The last one was a simple spat about planning permission.

This time, the plans to build a Museum of Tolerance on top of a former Muslim cemetery have lead to a Jewish-Muslim coalition to block the plans. It almost warms my heart to see people breaking down barriers in order to work together for a common goal of keeping something sacred.

Weirdly, the site is currently a car park. The argument used in the courts was that nobody objected to parking your cars on the dead. Still, I don’t think it’s a great example of tolerance to point out other people’s failings. Then again, they never claimed to be a Museum of Tact.

To me, I think there is a greater shame in this. Tolerance Museums do great work and are important in the theatre of global politics. We need museums to bring us together and act as seeds of definition in the scary swirling mass that is the globalised civilisation. If this museum goes ahead or not, it will forever be tainted with the actions that lead up to its founding as being entirely in opposition to its fundamental mission. This can only damage the concept of a museum.

Also, I hate the architecture. Nothing says Tolerance than a big ol’ wall in a city that’s a bit sensitive to the meaning of big ol’ walls.

Listen to the Gears: 1

Listen to the Gears is a new podcast-related column written by new staff writer August.

I recently attended a symposium where all speakers had been tasked with ‘mixing up the conference experience’ in any way they chose in order to offer an atypical angle. One paper was successfully presented via Skype. Another delegate revealed behind-the-scenes of her digital textile practice instead of the finished artwork. These different ways of working were well received and I kept them in mind whilst listening to this week’s podcasts. What ideas came up that could offer fresh perspectives for museums?

There seemed few podcasts that did not mention the iPhone upgrade CNET UK and wired.com’s Gadget Lab both weighed up its pros and cons in very different styles. I suggest that the lauded voice recording system on this and other smart phones could record instant reactions to objects and exhibitions. In a wifi hotspot files can be emailed straight to a curator. These clips can be processed and fed back into the galleries via headphones adding an extra dimension to the exhibition. The application might also be used for oral history collection. Don’t you all want to know what the visitors are thinking? Of course public participation is open to abuse and would need managing. It may make an interesting project for a group of interns.

Anthropology podcast ‘absolutely intercultural’ discussed the idea of virtual mobility in relation to university exchange programmes. Instead of actually travelling to another country, classes from the host university are delivered to students in their home university. The presenter was very keen, but admitted that not all believe in the idea. While I am not sold on cultural exchange without the actual exchange, it may have an application in museums. In literal terms, it might appear forward-thinking for children from Britain and Israel to take museum education classes together by video link  (as happens with some schools in remote regions). However this could stray into dangerous territory by using museums as tools in global politics. More practically, an extended family of global staff working remotely on projects where being onsite is not needed expands opportunities for recruitment.

The Museum of Science, Boston’s Current Science and Technology podcast explained in simple terms the 5D data storage system that is currently under development in Australia. The implications of disks which can store 7.2 terabytes of data each are enormous for museums. How many disks would it take for the catalogue of the British Museum. Or the Smithsonian? I like the idea of a whole museum being on one disk. Museum store in a drawer.

The best listen this week was BBC Radio 3′s Arts and Ideas. They discussed  how cultural figures ‘become adjectives’ (Orwellian, Dickensian etc). Back in January Pete suggested ‘McGregorism‘ to describe the global policies of  the BM’s director. Who else from the museum world might earn their own adjectives? Will we talk of Serota-esque and Lowrian display or Andersonian collecting policy in the future?