iMac kiosks in The Latino List that record video reaction from visitors.

We are also super excited to see how visitors to The Latino List create their own “speaking portraits” at the exhibition’s community voice kiosk, an interactive that was such a successful part of The Black List exhibition that we knew we had to offer it again.  During The Black List visitors were invited to record on-the-spot videos of their response to the question: “How has race made an impact on your life and accomplishments?”  Videos were published to the museum’s YouTube channel and the best of them could also be viewed in the gallery during the course of the exhibition.  I was blown away by the candor, humor, pride, anger, and power in these videos.  One of the most fascinating things about the responses was their diversity and range.  Not only did each individual naturally have their own personal take on the question, but people reflected on how their own race is perceived and experienced as well as how they perceive and experience people of other races.

For The Latino List we wanted to elicit similarly inclusive and reciprocal responses, so the question we pose to visitors this time—in English and Spanish—is: “How has your culture shaped your life and accomplishments? (¿Qué impacto ha tenido su cultura en su vida y en sus logros?). The word “culture” conjures family and community traditions, and certainly one of the things that unite the stories shared by the Latino List participants is the impact and influences that family and tradition have had on their lives and identities.  The word evokes a range of concepts, from race to religion to heritage, without being  limiting or exclusionary: everyone comes from a culture of some kind, whether they abandon it or embrace it, and it shapes the way they experience the world and, to some extent, for better or worse, the way the world experiences them.

This time, we’re expanding the interactive to include not just visitors to the gallery, but anyone, anywhere, through a bilingual iPhone app.  You can record your video response directly on your iPhone, upload it to The Latino List YouTube channel, learn about the exhibition, and watch videos made by other people.

As always, we want to hear from you:  download the app, come to The Latino List, and make a video to share your thoughts about your culture and experiences.

Since video is something that we see people posting frequently to Twitter, we thought it would be cool to get an artist that works with video to take over the feed for a month to post some clips. Tracey agreed, and rather than posting deep, brooding avant garde art films (that people on Twitter probably wouldn’t have time to watch), Tracey has decided to post her favorite YouTube clips with a bit of commentary about each. Some clips will be funny and familiar while others more obscure, but all will say a lot about Tracey, so we hope our 1stfans will have a fun time watching and getting to know her through them.

In keeping with the interactive vein, I’ll re-tweet some of the 1stfans @replies with their own related video clips on the feed (look for the “WC” at the end of the tweet so you know it’s me posting and not Tracey). We’ve seen a preview and this is going to be pretty wacky and fun!

—

The 1stfans Twitter Art Feed is no longer a benefit of 1stfans membership, but the original feed in its entirety has been archived on the Brooklyn Museum website.

black list by neenna via Flickr.  All Rights Reserved.

Stats

Let’s take a look at the basic statistics.  During the show’s four month run, visitors recorded 482 videos, 236 of which made it to our Black List Project YouTube channel.  Of the 236 that were published on the channel, 96 made it to the Brooklyn Museum favorites playlist.  We had 43,386 video views overall, but keep in mind one video (recorded by one of our security guards) was seen over 23,000 times when it was featured on YouTube during MLK day. Also, the channel was given non-profit status at YouTube which means auto-play is activated for videos featured on our channel and this will raise the view count.

Moderation

The project required a sizable amount of moderation.  Videos went live throughout the day and were post-moderated in the evenings.  Depending on how many videos were recorded, moderation took between 5-15 minutes per day.  When we had higher volume at Target First Saturday, we’d see anywhere between 40-80 videos recorded and this moderation required an hour or two. Interestingly, we received some of our best comments during Target First Saturday and the ratio on those days was much more signal than noise, so even in the volume, it felt worth it. Moderated videos fell into three areas and I’ve left a few of these live so you can get a chuckle:  1) kids goofing off 2) adults goofing off 3) people who would press record and walk away.  There were also more than a few instances of will our hardware make it out of this experiment alive!!??! Only one video was removed because it violated our comment guidelines. Typically, we don’t moderate this heavily, but on this particular project we decided to do so because wading through video content to get to decent recordings is a lot more difficult than scanning text comments for gold.  As someone who did almost all of the moderation on the project, I can tell you it’s a time-consuming process and not one that I’d want to put our web visitors through.  We toyed with the idea of letting the community moderate itself at YouTube (ratings were left on), but we ran into issues there.   For starters, we didn’t have enough traffic to the channel to generate enough ratings on all the videos.  You can see what happens when you look at most viewed.  Some videos were seen a lot (due in part to our featuring the videos in different ways) and others were not seen much at all—had we left all the content, I have a feeling the view numbers would have plummeted out of sheer viewer frustration.

We ran into one significant issue along the way and this is something I was prepared for in my head, but perhaps not in reality.  I was surprised by how many members of the community were sharing racist statements at YouTube (we have never had this problem on other platforms). *wow* can only describe some of the comments that were deleted because they were in such clear violation our comment guidelines.  Only one video was deleted due to a violation in guidelines, but the opposite was true on YouTube, where in my entire career, I have never deleted more comments or blocked so many users. We have a very high threshold, so just know this problem was significant.  There was something about the subject matter of the show, what we were asking and how people were responding, combined with this particular on-line community that generated a lot of issues in this arena.  Now that the show has closed, we will go in and turn off comments on every video and that’s a first for us.

Technical Issues

We had a some technical trouble (crashing, sound mismatches, pixelated capture) in the early videos. We solved it by prioritizing traffic on that part of the LAN and enabling flow control at the switch side. So you need a strong LAN infrastructure where you can tweak a bit if you are seeing problems.  I would not try this over a wifi connection.  We also found lights were needed and we grabbed those at Ikea for very little money.

Archiving 

I don’t have a great answer for this.  Because the videos are uploaded directly to YouTube, archiving them becomes a manual process where we use free tools to download the files back to our systems.  This is a time-consuming process, so we will probably only do this for the ones that made our favorites list.  In addition, the channel and some of the videos with comments and ratings will be screenshot.  The channel itself will stay up for as long as it can be there—we have no plans to remove it.

Success? 

Yes, but there’s more we can do next time.  This was a very simple system which cost us very little in actual dollars.  As low-fi as it was, it worked well to provide something that we couldn’t have afforded otherwise. Staff time was needed for moderation, but other than the volume at Target First Saturday, the time needed to be accounted for, but was not overwhelming.  I will never forget seeing more than one visitor in tears when expressing themselves at these kiosks. Browse through these videos to get an idea of why this was so great.

Given the amount of moderation, I don’t think we’d use these often, but when we have a really important question we want to ask, it will be worth considering.  If I had to do it all over again, I’d make sure we had our favorites playing in the gallery alongside the recording area, so people could get inspired by what others had to say—closing the loop and bringing the voices back into the gallery. For the record, our Education Department was advocating this from the start, but given the time constraints we were under, we couldn’t make this part of the first round.  Nina Simon also has some good reasons for it here that you may want to read.  In a future instance, we’d ideally leverage the YouTube API to allow people in the gallery to comment on and rate the existing videos, but that’s a pretty large project for another day.  For now, we were happy with and learned a lot from this first try.

The Black List Project just opened last week and our education staff really wanted to include visitor response as part of the exhibition. Typically, we do this with our electronic comment books which have been working well for us, but the educators felt that a more personal storytelling was what they were looking for with this show and incorporating video would help fulfill those needs.

The original idea was to set up recording times and take quick video responses in the gallery, but knowing how much editing work would come our way…my response was a very fast and very frustrated “we can’t possibly take this on.” We started thinking about self-service video kiosks, but quickly found engineering a custom solution was going to drain too much staff time and products for purchase were insanely expensive, so no go. Argh!

…well, we found a way and it’s simple enough that anyone can do it. We are taking advantage of YouTube’s Quick Capture feature, which allows anyone to use a webcam to directly record a video to their YouTube channel. We grabbed the two Macbooks we had used for Click!…setup a YouTube channel for the exhibition…fired up the webcams…and locked everything down with wKiosk. Presto, a working video kiosk with no overhead! I couldn’t be more excited that we were able to find a Scrappy-Doo solution that got us over the technical and budgetary hurdles.

Now that we’ve got these working, we are all a little curious to see what in the world happens. There’s plenty of monkey-business going on with our e-comment books—I always joke that you always know when there’s a school group in the building :) That’s to be expected, though. There’s no established community around those books and they can be completely anonymous, so it’s easy to see why someone will goof off. For the most part, the e-comment books work well, we get meaningful comments and discussion from them. Our visitors have come to expect them and we recommend this system as something that has had great benefit (if you are interested in implementing, you might take a look at Nina Simon’s recent post for some ideas).

I have to wonder, though, what happens when you turn a camera on? Are there fewer goof-offs because comments are tied directly to an identity (at first glance, that’s probably too optimistic)? Are there fewer responses because visitors are less comfortable with this format? Are responses more personal because the act of commenting is more confessional (despite the tech glitches we are still working through, maybe yes)? These video kiosks are out in the open in a large space…are people attracted to that or would they rather have a more private setting like a booth? Do visitors shy away from it by the very nature that the resulting video is hosted on YouTube?

Clearly, we have more questions than answers right now and I’m betting we may make adjustments as we go through the run, but it’s kind of fun to try something new and you just know I’ll report back on what we learn :)

We had been running a Brooklyn Museum Flickr group and had always been thrilled by the diversity and the quality of the shots that had been submitted to the group over the years. For the video, we selected 10 photographers who had been part of our Flickr community to participate by photographing areas of the permanent collection. Similar to our earlier Visitor Video Competition, one of the most interesting elements became how each photographer captured objects in a distinctly different way. As shots started to come in for review, I kept finding myself really looking at objects again and noticing how different the photography differed from our own. Objects that I see every day, took on new life and we hope these different takes will help show off the museum in a new way in the final video.

The object photography is stunningly diverse and all the photographers did a phenomenal job coming to the Museum over and over again so Matt would have plenty of material to work with. With so much great work to choose from, I’m glad I didn’t have to select the final takes going into the video. That said, I wanted to share a couple of my own personal favorites from each photographer. You can also check out some of the favorites from each photographer in the Brooklyn Museum: Spring 2008 Video Project group on Flickr.

Ranjit Bhatnagar

Amy Dreher

James M. Hanlon

Sam Horine

Gulshan Kirat

Gretchen Ludwig

Frank Lynch

Trish Mayo

Stephen Sandoval

Matt Verzola

Lessons learned post about the Visitor Video Competition for all the colleagues out there who might be thinking of doing something similar.

• Video is really difficult to produce and edit, so don’t expect tons of entries. The bar for participation is set really high just by the very nature of beast. We had eleven entries in the end and considered that a fantastic turn out.
• Getting the word out was especially worrisome since we had no budget for this and knew the barrier to entry was high. We created postcards and dropped them at local places in Brooklyn and made sure to hit every film school we could think of in the area. Interestingly enough, almost all of the people who entered are Brooklynites and almost all got the word from these cards. We made sure to drop off cards at BCAT and Brooklyn College and had filmmakers from both of those places. I spoke with Andrei, the director of “Mr. Cool” and he found out because he was coming to the event anyway, looked at the schedule online and noticed we were doing it. He brought his camera and called his friend Charles to be in it. Although I’ve not spoken to all the filmmakers yet, I’m thrilled that this appealed to our local audience and the grass-roots “get-the-word-out” really worked.
• Contact YouTube or whichever site you are using to find out how their Terms of Service apply to your project. We did and got some great info.
• I had to laugh at how many rules we had. “Come here to film, but you can’t film anything!” Even though there were lots of parameters, try hard to spell things out and make it as clear as possible. Make sure the staff on the front lines (Visitor Services, Security) know what is going on. Try and have someone on site during the event with copies of rules on hand. I have to say, all the filmmakers followed the rules respectfully, which made for a fun event for everyone involved.
• One of the best things we did was to provide contact information on the web page that detailed the competition. Lots of people had questions and needed last minute help, so making it easy for them to make contact was key.
• We had a registration page for filmmakers to fill out when they uploaded their video, but it would be better to create a page where people can register before they come to film. This way you know what to expect and can follow up with people if necessary. Also, make sure to get their contact info on the registration – some of them might not message through their YouTube accounts regularly, so alternate contact information is a must.
• Provide a page with downloadable graphics, logos, tag lines, etc. Make it easy for filmmakers to use your Graphic Identity properly.
• Arrange for a meeting with the judges very far in advance. I don’t know what happened here except to say time got away from me. Many thanks to Christina, Danny and Patrick for clearing schedules and to Dawn and Kevin for helping coordinate.
• Try and leave yourself enough time to make kiosks and signage once the winners are announced. We didn’t and were scrambling a bit more than we’d like. Many thanks to Bob, Gloria, Pete, Mike, Jessica and Jen for last minute stuff coming their way and dealing with it like the pros they are.
• For the screening, you might think about giving yourself enough time to contact the winning filmmakers and get DVDs that can be played on standard equipment. We did computer kiosks and embedded videos via YouTube, but sometimes videos had trouble loading on kiosks (bandwidth issues) and if you do it this way you are stuck with the tiny versions because of YouTube’s compression.
• On that note, if you go with kiosks instead of DVDs, remember not to use the YouTube embed code. YouTube now shows related videos in that code and it means people start surfing on the kiosks when you would rather them focus on the competition entries! That was a big ‘duh’ moment for me.
• Don’t panic! No matter how many people told me “everyone is going to submit at the last minute”, I just wouldn’t believe them, but they were right. I was pretty worried there for a while!
• Remember not everyone can win, so spend some time making sure all the participants get as much visibility and exposure as possible. Start with great judges (we were lucky here). Cross promote as much as you can. We did so on Flickr, Facebook and MySpace. Write to the editors at YouTube and try and get them to feature it (they did!…but start early on this one because they get a lot of requests). Brooklyn Art Project published a blog post about the competition (thanks, Anthony) and we did a post in our own blog with staff comments. To me, this is the most important step in the process – acknowledge the community and ensure they get the recognition they deserve.

On the eve of the announcement of our judges’ decision, Brooklyn Museum staff wanted to share some of our own thoughts (ranging from the “I-have-to-smile moment” to “the wow feeling” to “sleeper hit artworks”) with the filmmakers who created these videos. Good luck to everyone! Click the ‘more’ link to see our thoughts.

Shelley (Information Systems): I loved “Off the Wall” which I thought showed off the collection and the event in a unique way. Especially the idea of naysayers, who really do love the event in the end. Loved “Mr. Cool” and “The Art Thief” which, to me, really show how both the event and the museum are given over to our visitors’ interpretation. The shot in the Jaygeeoh vid of the people dancing with the Target logo was awesome. How cute are the guy and gal in RapofArt??? VideoMuseum – love the contemporary cats to asian cats counter; love the punchline. Place Together had some of the best crowd shots…really beautiful footage and that great “sold out” shot panning down our First Saturday event board. Superti919 fab fridge, fountain (complete with screaming!), all the art looks fantastic…. Glad I don’t have to judge!!

Tamara (Exhibitions): I thought “The World in the Eyes” was a really clever way to explore our collection by using a common thread to unite works of art from different cultures, periods in history, and media. The video was fun and simultaneously profound, and it highlighted the art really well. The same goes for “RapOfArt” – kudos to the rappers for giving our historic collection a cool and modern interpretation. All the videos were really well done, and did the Brooklyn Museum proud!

Megan (Exhibitions): I love “Mr. Cool” – it brings visual art back into our everyday experience, just like your iPod’s daily playlist, and connects it to other Arts, like dance. “Off the Wall” is another of my favorites as it relates to 1st Saturday with some humor, and in a way that gets at what the program is all about – how everyone can love it in their own way. Jonatanifj on the other hand gives you some nice first-hand moments walking through the Museum, the details with the musicians are especially beautiful, along with some of the collection works like the goblets in the Dinner Party. Another wonderful I-have-to-smile moment was the fridge scene that starts off “Bklyn MuseumQT” – following it with the fountain activity and the shot of the silhouetted Rodin in the lobby was a great transition/contrast. In fact, I would really hate to be a judge as there are simply too many good moments throughout the submissions to even go over here, good-luck to all!

Schawannah (Community Involvement): My fav was Mr. Cool at the Brooklyn Museum, followed by the First Sat. at Brooklyn Museum.

Deborah (Digital Lab): As someone who “lives” in the weekday Brooklyn Museum, when the galleries are bright and sunny–and usually pretty quiet–the view of the nighttime museum was almost startling. The thing I loved most, and it was a thread through several of the videos, was the way people showed off and played with the faces in our art, pairing them with the living faces of themselves and other visitors. The sense of joy and fun was really right there. Crafty Statuary, BklynMuseumQT and World in the Eyes were my favorites. And I’m just going to have to make a trip over here (or work late instead of being an early bird) to see the fountains lit up for nighttime–how beautiful is that? I think everybody included at least one shot of them.

Marguerite (Curatorial): I am really amazed with the talent shown in all of the entries. Each video was compelling in its own way and invited the viewer in. All the participants captured the wonderful atmosphere at the museum. Some were very dynamic while others showed warmth and charm. One video even brought a tear to my eye! I would find it very hard to pick only one entry as the winner! Good work and congrats to all. They all showed a real love for our Brooklyn Museum!

Emily (Arts of Africa, Asia, and the Islamic World): I think “Last Worlds” was my favorite. I loved the montage element of it, and it really makes you examine history, especially in the context of Brooklyn. It was hard to pick just one!

Kathy (Egyptian, Classical and Ancient Middle Eastern Art): The judges must be having a very difficult time choosing their favorite piece! I know that I am. BrooklynMuseumQT’s video incorporates the flyer into the first shot as a visual reminder to save the date. The child bopping along to the rhythm of the fountains is beautiful. The way the shots alternate between the serene and electric bring together the very nature of first Saturday. I really love how seelos66 has the LED sign scrolling over the fountain. Mr. Cool captures how fun and exciting a visit to the Brooklyn Museum can be on a First Saturday as well as any other day. I also love how he interacts with the art objects themselves. I am really glad that the “Art Thief” is willing to share his favorite piece with the rest of us. “Last Worlds” is a work of art in itself. I love how it captures how much one can contemplate during a museum visit. The “RapofArt”, videomuseum, “Off the Wall”, “Place Together”, and “The World in the Eyes” entries all opened my eyes to some objects that I have never really looked at. Jaygeeoh does a great job of capturing the party scene and the original music is fantastic. All of the videos are thoughtful, observant, and well structured. They capture the serenity and the electricity one can encounter at a Brooklyn Museum First Saturday, and it’s great to see that people love this Museum as much as those of us who work here. Great job everyone, and I look forward to finding out the results.

Lisa (Egyptian, Classical and Ancient Middle Eastern Art): I really enjoyed ‘Bklyn MuseumQT’. I loved the music and I thought it was really fun. I loved how it started out with the note on the fridge. I also enjoyed ‘Crafty Saturday,’ I really like the intro with the fountain and the sign welcoming visitors to the museum. ‘Art Thief,’ was great as well. I thought it was very funny and added a fresh take to the contest.

Jim (Publications): “Mr. Cool at the Museum” does a beautiful job of matching the shooting “cuts” in the video to the rhythm of the accompanying music. “First Saturday at the Brooklyn Museum” effectively re-creates the relaxed yet dynamic atmosphere of a FSAT event, which is not easy to capture. “Place Together” does this very well, too, but with a completely different mix of shots. “Rap of Art” — totally adorable; I’d like to see these two presenters leading tours for young audiences. In “Brooklyn Art Museum,” the transition from the headless painted nude to the headless sculpture made me realize how weird such (intentionally or unintentionally) truncated works can look to the public; something to address in our wall labels. The back-and-forth between sedate Victorian interiors and field film footage in “Last Worlds” had me confused at first, but in the end it does make a strong postcolonial point. In “Off the Wall,” the artworks become visitors to the museum — a cool concept. Glad to see the “Art Thief” reformed by the power of art at the end of his video. “The World in the Eyes” draws us in by taking just one aspect of a portrait, the eyes, and making us realize how the art looks back at us. “First Saturday: Crafty Statuary” starts off with some of the best footage ever of the Museum’s fountain. What a range of talent is on view in these videos, which were not made under the easiest conditions.

Marcus (Public Information): The videos look awesome! I especially like how the artworks from the Museum’s permanent collection are integrated throughout each of the videos. Even though some of the videos stray a little from the First Saturday theme, I am glad that the visitors got to spot light their personal favorites. With such a big collection filled with many masterpieces, sometimes the sleeper hit artworks are overlooked.

Jessica (Publications): As a PSA “Art Thief” works well—succinct, humorous, and with a message—a very tight 30 sec. spot. I found “Last Worlds” compelling on the strength of its clips and their unsettling sequencing. Many of the videos are very successful at capturing the feel of First Saturdays: “First Saturdays at the Brooklyn Museum” projects the energy of the crowd, and I liked “Bklyn Museum QT” for its unusual opening sequence that begins with the postcard on the refrigerator followed by that great footage of the kids at the fountain. What I was most impressed by were the different approaches to our collection—not only what the videographers chose to focus on, but also how they cropped their shots or let the camera move over the work—it speaks to the truly individual experience viewing art is.

Madeleine (Egyptian, Classical and Ancient Middle Eastern Art): I loved “Mr Cool at the Brooklyn Museum.” Watching Mr Cool interact with the art and the building itself brought alive for me the joy and excitement that I associate with the experience of seeing great art. I have often wanted to dance around a gallery myself or jump up and down after seeing some work of art that delighted me. He seems to be having so much fun and that is really what is at the heart of a museum visit–the “wow” feeling of being around beautiful things that are there just for you. “Rap of Art” has a similar appeal for me, perfectly capturing the “oh come look at this!” feel of sharing the experience with someone else. I found “Last Worlds” haunting. The juxtaposition of static objects with people in videos makes a wonderful statement about how what is now displayed in museums was once “alive” and used in daily life. The emphasis on eyes and thus the act of looking adds a great layer of meaning that is also to be found in “The World in the Eyes.” “Off the Wall” and “The Art Thief” are both huge, whimsical fun. The first reminds me that I’ve often wondered what the objects would have to say about us if we could hear them. The second captures that feeling of overwhelming greed brought on by seeing something that one would love to take home and live with. I’m glad that I don’t have to judge this competition. All the submissions are great and make me want to spend some more time in the galleries or dancing at a First Saturday.

Sarah (Digital Lab): I liked all of the entries. They were really diverse and fun to watch. Overall, though, I thought Art Thief was funny & well executed. Also, Last Worlds had great music and I really like the way the art was used. It has an original editing style. Mr. Cool was pretty well done, too. If our biggest goal is to show what First Saturday is all about, though, I think Off the Wall does the best job. Really, outstanding entries all around!

Monica (Design): After watching all the videos, it is interesting to see how many and different interpretations of the space and functionality of the Museum can take off from a simple initiative to capture the feeling of the First Saturday events. I personally enjoyed watching the “Art Thief” video, for its provocative humor, positive ending–through the ironic comment to art robbery–and open invitation to return to the museum after a visit. I also liked the “treat” of the postcard, which is a way to take with you a memory of the Museum.

Beth (Library):
The music works very well in “1st Saturday: Crafty Statuary” by Carlos Pareja. The museum at night seems vibrant and exciting; the side-view shot of the fountain is particularly nice. “Bklyn MuseumQT” by Richard Superti does a good job of capturing the total First Saturday experience. Lightshow-party segments and a few quirky details of the collection, sandwiched between fountain action: pretty entertaining.

Allison (Registrar’s Dept.): “Off the Wall” is hilarious — I love how Rfavill gave “voice” and “personality” to the diverse objects in our collection, plus highlighted the fun of First Saturday! I also think MatthewK’s “Brooklyn Museum – Art Thief” was brilliant, witty, creative, and funny. While the concept was simple, it was extremely well put together! Stuggie43’s “RapOfArt” did a great job showing the collection through words, music, and images — that was a lot of work, generating a whole rap about First Saturday and then finding the right objects in the collection to go along with the words! Severny’s “Mr. Cool” does such an outstanding job covering a lot of ground: showing off the collection plus the dancing, movement, and fun of First Saturday. Videomuseum’s entry made some awesome connections between the different art objects, and shows off one of my favorite objects, the Seated Divinity. Alterno45 also drew great parallels between different objects in “Last Worlds.” I love how this person integrated the Brooklyn Museum’s videos into their entry. There was not a bad entry in the bunch. We have some VERY talented visitors!

Lisa (Conservation): Although I had huge reservations when I read the title of ‘Art Thief’, I thought it was very funny, clever and original. It’s true, you can always come back to visit!

Note: All videos can be seen in our YouTube playlist.

On another Target First Saturday note, the Visitor Video Competition was shooting and we spotted a bunch of cameras, which was pretty exciting. From what we were seeing, it looks like we may have a variety of entries from folks shooting with high-end cameras, pro-sumer models, still cams and cell phones. It should be fun to watch the results of this roll in over the next several weeks. More on this soon…