1. For my current internship I have been researching gallery technology. Blogs like this one are fantastic resources. Thanks, Shelley, for being so brave and open about sharing your thoughts, successes, and failures!

2. Some of you might know about this already, but for those who are looking for “research” rather than “this is what I believe about gallery technology philosophically and anectdotally” (I personally value both!), here’s a link to Minneapolis Institute of Arts evaluation reports about interpretive technology:

http://www.artsmia.org/index.php?section_id=80

The What Clicks? project sponsored by ILMS yeilded a lot of useful insights. Enjoy!

I’m being glib, but it is true. I don’t listen to audio commentaries, I refuse to put headphones of any sort on and I certainly wouldn’t be watching a screen telling me about a picture I’m stood next to.

Do you need to know about history or context to really appreciate a piece of art? Possibly. Do you need to have that information fed into your brain whilst you are actually looking at it? Probably not.

And this is going to sound horribly elitist, and it isn’t meant to… but a lot of people don’t really know how to visit galleries. I don’t know if this is because of how school trips are arranged these days or whether it is the way the Internet influences how we obtain our information, but there is an expectation for things to be both immediate and interactive, in a multi-media sort of way.

Do you think it is pressure on such spaces to attract visitors that then encourages them to include these facilities, as well as the obligatory cafe? I can understand that, but at the same time it is eroding the actual purpose of the gallery making it less a physical space for the appreciation of physical art and more of a rather expensively decorated themed Internet cafe.

Also, that’s an interesting comment about younger visitors and their gameboys. I wonder if anyone’s worked on an exhibit-helper aimed at tweens & teens using PSP’s or some other portable game platform that they’d be comfortable using. I’ll be waiting to see who implements something like acrossair’s augmented reality iphone apps into a museum: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ps49T0iJwVg — it could be really great.

Mostly likely the visitor isn’t there from an ongoing strategic outreach campaign at their group which then makes them feel part of the museums group. Museum visits for many are part of a drop or thrown-in adventure except those that are raised museum-goers.

Many museums and other cultural institutions have a tendency to state there’s no budget for strategic outreach so they should be happy to see visitors taking photos and videos which will probably end up online, tagged?, hopefully… then track backs could be made to at least help the public relations department make the case to development that they had better start quantifying their diversity outreach claims helping to secure funding.

All in all … people want to feel connected where perceived to be disconnected which technology is now helping many feel, especially in museums which have historically and continuously left too many people out.

I have done a good bit of thinking about how technology can enhance various cultural and arts experiences. I get very excited about everything from Second Life re-creations of famous art work (see “Nighthawks” http://www.flickr.com/photos/rikomatic/2494162024/ ) to 3D goggles to augment reality (see http://www.rikomatic.com/blog/2006/07/the_future_of_t_1.html ).

I am not a very sophisticated art viewer — those little labels are essential for me. Modern art in particular has what appearsr to be lots of encoded meaning that the artist is privvy to and almost no one else is. So having a video or audio of the artist describing their work and what they are trying to express is super helpful to me.

I like to fly through a gallery and casually scan the artwork there, until something grabs me and then I might sit for 20 minutes just mesmerized by it. At that point, I want to do SOMETHING. To touch it, to draw it, to write about it, to photograph it. I feel moved and don’t want the feeling to be forgotten.

I think that technology can help people to continue to be moved by powerful art long after they have left the museum. And to share with others what they have discovered. Tech can make it easier for the visitor to recontextualize art, to connect it with her own experience.