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Post-Digital Museums

The post-digital museum is cognizant of what it needs to consider before committing to a project.When you enter the idea of what a museum is capable of accomplishing you are entering into the realm of the post digital museum. Technology allows museums to reach audiences once seemingly barred from entry. With the ever growing use of in gallery tech, the idea of digitization is something that is an ever growing concept.

This class brings up these concepts of what a digital museum is capable of. It explores the digital medium and how it can enhance the museum experience overall. Still museums struggle to grasp this perfect balance given the large barrier that digitization seems to hold over the smaller museum.

The blog format is an interesting way to do assignments, and though I might be paralyzed by anxiety over submitting stuff online, it is an overall enjoyable experience. Guest Lecturer-wise it’s interesting to see the behind the scenes look at the various peoples involved in the positions in the digital realm. Especially fascinating was learning how many had to start from scratch. In the ultimate post-digital museum, these positions would have standards to fill, but right now, its still relatively uncertain.

Sound Design and Feelings

The power of sound and audio are immense as seen by the various articles. When we hear various leitmotif such as the Jaws theme it elicits a certain reaction. In terms of setting the mood for a jungle exhibit in the natural museum, the stock sounds of a gibbons, birds, and the hissing easily evokes the feeling that you’re actually in a jungle rather than the plastic leaves and taxidermied animals.

We’ve learned about how important it is for a museum to engage in all the senses. Sound as described in the Tiffanie Wen article evokes emotional responses. Oral histories for instance have a sense of authenticity despite the scholarly critiques that they aren’t a useful source because of the fallibility of memory. Creating a mood is essential if you’re transforming audio into a greater experience. Thus this is where sound design comes in. NPR makes use of adding additional background noises to the exiting audio to maximize mood especially during their story time shows. Sound enhancing even reading text and with a good script and some imagination, can bring things to life really well.

Crowd Sourcing: Another Volunteer

Consider the museum volunteer in collections. When they come in, typically they go and inventory items in the collection. For many museums this is a necessary task. However when you consider a volunteer base they range very heavily in skill sets and aptitudes, but are defined by their desire to assist. From my experience in the Clark County Museum there is a wide range of technical competencies from those who can use excel to those who prefer to hand write their inventories. Which brings us to the main problem when combining these two lists. Ultimately the museum wants to put everything in a digital copy, but there is not enough manpower to go around. Additionally with the handwritten comes the need to properly transcribe it. This is where Trevor Owens makes his argument about the usefulness of crowdsourcing.

When it comes to sites like 4chan, the idea of crowdsourcing is framed as a sort of “autism” which more often or not is framed as pure dedication to a singular task. The idea that a couple of people are capable of organizing an air strike on ISIS seems rather surprising, but it’s the ultimate culmination of a pool of skills and interests. As Owens talks about in his article, the ultimate target of crowdsourcing are interested folks with the competencies and the willingness to contribute. Coordination of time and effort is probably one of the major things 4chan is very good at despite it’s reputation as a group of people that don’t like to be told what to do. Give them a goal and they’ll somehow manage to get it done, or they won’t. As anonymous posters they don’t have any incentive.

Now while 4chan isn’t the likely target audience for museum crowd sourcing efforts, it’s indicative of a larger pattern of assistance. When a community gets to work on a task, it generally motivates other people in the community to also participate. Owens talks in the article about how providing the framework for crowdsourcing can lead to greater participation. People like feeling accomplished, and while museums are stuck in a never ending cycle of inventorying, progress can be measured. How many arrowheads does the San Diego Museum of Man have? How many glass bottles or rocks does the Clark County Museum have? Old institutions have a backlog of items just waiting to be discovered, it’s a matter of setting up easy access to do so. The concerns of labor in this sort of crowdsourcing effort are quite clear. Many museums don’t make a money for full time staff, let alone part timers. Compensation is unlikely to occur for most crowdsourcing projects, so it’s much more closer to the Volunteer in terms of importance. Working from home is something many volunteers can already do, and in my case I brought home a large folder filled with inventory objects to transcribe on to excel. In order to properly set up the framework for crowdsourcing it’s simply a matter of setting up a simple site to interpret the data into the specific categories and then send it to a database to be checked. I already experienced this during the canvassing days in Nevada where in Reno only paper records were allowed. The idea of crowdsourcing is less a way of saving money, but more in terms of getting tasks done faster. Unlike volunteers, the crowdsource individual is not ultimately tied to the task at hand. There is a freedom to participate or not, which weeds out many people. While some curation is necessary (like most digital projects) it ultimately saves times as people contribute little by little to a greater task.

Mark Hall Patton and the Clark County Museum

If it hasn’t been apparent for the past few years, engaged company pr departments attempt to make their social media accounts popular and likable. From Denny’s to Sonic the Hedgehog, the idea of a friendly image is very ideal for institutions like museums which rely on regular visitorship.

The Clark County museum has their own facebook page which makes up for the rather small site. From the moment you see the profile image you can tell who is the face of the museum.

His name is Mark Hall Patton, and he’s the administrator of the Clark County Museum as well as the Howard W. Cannon Museum and the Searchlight Museum. He’s also a well known authenticator and consultant over in the t.v show Pawn Stars. Known also as the “Beard of Knowledge” he’s been on the show for a long time. See this youtube link for some clips of him on the show.

Most museums don’t exactly have a staff member that famous around the world, but in terms of outreach it’s a good substitute. The museum didn’t start using his presence until several years ago, and a lot of the familiarity exists there. Is he a trustworthy figure? He certainly builds himself up to be as he’s very much a representative of the museum field as a whole.

Of course social media is important when you consider collective loss. The Las Vegas shooting is one of the most deadly mass shooting in our nation’s history, and given the role of the Clark County Museum, it’s one that needs to preserved and not forgotten. Here is the facebook post about the museum gathering objects for one of the main lobby display cases as well as the permanent collection. Also joining the museum are the memorial crosses which for the past month have been placed behind the “Welcome to Las Vegas” sign.

Not all museums have a Mark Hall Patton, but you don’t need to have one to be fully engaged with the community. Reaching out to the community can be the first step in establishing that sort of familiarity and trust that many museums are trying to do on twitter and Instagram. One does not have to be hip with the memes to do outreach, but just do a good job and let the base build.

#markpatton #clarkcountymuseum #mstdtech

Open Access on the Small Scale

When I interned at the Clark County museum, one of the projects I worked on was digitizing the photo collections of the Henderson Home News. After scanning over four thousand photos you begin to realize the scale of digitization as a whole for smaller museums. Just because a museum is small doesn’t mean that their collection isn’t small. Costs are a big thing in digitization and one which demonstrates why the physical museum space is not obsolete. The articles do highlight the expenses for the larger museums, but even in the small scale it applies. The digital age has high expectations placed on it, and with the ever growing digitization of the world, standards and assumptions raise the bar quite a bit. Small museums find themselves needing to attract more visitors to keep afloat. Quality should not be expected, but poor quality may hurt more than it helps. Combined with earlier digital strategies, its the rough spot of museums moving forward of adapting to the digital age.

In Gallery Technology at NMAAC

Recently I visited the NMAAC and while I didn’t visit all of the museum right away, I did go through the historical portion for several hours. At peak periods even then I noticed there were a few digital tables that weren’t in use. Comparatively speaking stuff like the Greensboro Diner technology was occupied as visitors take the place of those who finish the activity.

When considering digital technology, placement is very essential. These unoccupied digital tables were behind the projector of the various five minute or so video clips. At that point I was mentally fatigued with looking at the exhibit at large and only noticed them when I sat in the back row of the seats. They aren’t eye catching, given their placement, and at that point I didn’t really feel like using the tables compared to finishing the exhibit.

Meanwhile the recording booths at each level were occupied so those tended to be the most used. While I did watch the majority of the videos (and there were a decent amount of those playing) there were some portions in which it got overwhelming. The final layer of the exhibit covers post 1960′s African American Culture and boy did the first section look like a complicated gallery of television monitors. Each of them playing their own video (especially given that each had sound), this was to the point that I kinda ignored a lot of those.

In-gallery tech is only as effective as those who interact with it.

Learning in Digital Museums

When dealing with learning in the digital museum we come to terms with the idea that it’s an “equal access” environment. When you consider how many people have access to the internet across racial and class barriers you get the opportunity to reach out to those communities. A typical museum website doesn’t have a paywall or ID requirements to use. This openness does make it a good repository of information, but like most sources of information, it requires a degree of framing to be more than factoids.

The Early Learning and Educational Technology Policy Brief highlights an important point about the responsibility of access as the gap between those who use digital technology actively and passively increase. Passive use may be one thing (which can cover a variety of programs including simple feel good action= reward sort of things), but it’s in active use that technology is used to it’s full potential. A digital museum can be considered an environment to explore. While a passive use of technology is a simple slide show, story telling is an effective way to encourage active use.

Take this Larco Museum Virtual Exhibit about Ai Apaec. Now while it’s definitely not the most child friendly of exhibits (about the diety of the Moche people in Peru who’s just as promiscuous as Zeus/Jupiter in Greek/Roman Mythology) it showcases a fusion of digital collections and story telling to showcase a story from a different culture. The story given is pretty simple in explaining who Ai Apaec is and his journey. The objects displayed have a simple description, though clicking on the object leads you to a page expanding on the description. Going through the exhibit I learned much more than if I checked Ai Apaec’s wikipedia article. Digital Museums are a repository of information that cannot be so easily replaced.

Museums provide a way to teach kids about things that won’t be typically covered in the average school program. Give kids an example of an exhibit and tell them to curate their own stories. It should be noted the importance of educated assistance by adults to not only assist in interpreting, but to also ensure that the kids are getting something out of the activity. This can change what would be a passive interaction into a much more active use.

Games as a means of sharing non-typical cultures

In terms of my experience as a gamer much of what games are today is a wide variety of choices, some shit, and some great.

Beyond the realm of edutainment you get to a variety of genres which aren’t necessarily pick’em up, but do deal with some stereotypes. For one I’d like to complain about Life is Strange if only because as a time travel visual novel, its not really a ground breaking game nor is it frankly that good of a game.

When you get down to it a game is an immersive experience. From the text based MUDs to the open worlds sandboxes very much common today. Just like how museums aim for a complete sensory experience, Consider the following, how many gamers are familiar with Japanese mythology and culture through video games? Games like Ōkami are very steeped in this aspect where you are playing as one of the many gods.

For instance we can see the Earthbound games and how its kitschy pop culture references depict how Japan views America. There are various cultural differences present in the series which when brought over had to be changed. It’s less obvious that one of the main character’s best friend (Tony) is in fact gay which makes it all the more striking he’s in the Britain analogue where only decades earlier being gay was a crime. Mother 3 has a much more deeper story dealing with the corruption of utopia , themes of loss, modernization, family, brotherhood, gender roles, gender identity, and society as a whole.

Like having time to write about how Mother 3 is such a good story and also a good game is not something I can truly say. I can link one essay here and a panel here (some spoilers because Mother 3 is a game to be experienced. Enough Game Play walkthroughs exists to get a gist of it, but the level of details make playing it yourself.) Of course given that Mother 3 is a decade old at this point you need to find an emulator, a rom, and download the

Of course barring the American indie scene you have rise of Eastern Europe. See the Witcher series by CD Projekt S.A which is very much a Polish game. For a more historical game we can see the upcoming Kingdom Come: Deliverance which is a historical game set in medieval Bohemia (now Czech Republic/Czechia). Here’s a summary of the game.

The year is 1403, the region Bohemia, located in the heart of Europe, rich in culture, silver and sprawling castles. The game is based on a true story – a story of kings, heirs, a kingdom, castle sieges and bloody battles.The King is dead and his eldest son Wenceslas IV becomes the new King of Bohemia.Wenceslas’s enraged half-brother Sigismund imprisons Wenceslas and invades the country with his mighty army. Unfortunately, in the midst of this chaos, your character Henry suffers. The mercenary army destroys your home and kills your family, you are the sole survivor of the bloodbath and it is here that your road to redemption starts. Enjoy the detailed reconstruction of the 15th century landscape. Use weapons that were used by knights. Take part in epic historical battles that happened in Middle Europe and in castle sieges!

What is incredible is how historically accurate it is from the locations (many of which are actually visible) to the combat (a traditional sword fighting style unlike the typical hack and slash of rpgs like Skyrim) to the historical background of medieval Europe (in which you need to be a monk to be any form of literate).

Ultimately ever since the mid 2000′s games have been protected as art by the Supreme court. There will be good games, bad games, educational games, mind numbingly dumb games, but ultimately enjoyment triumphs over all criticism. But then again, this is a person who sunk hours into Zoo Tycoon 2 and really wishes a Greek Revolution game is made.

Hall of Human Life and Blind Conceptualization of Data

To start off, I’ve already seen Sina Bahram’s presentation at MCN 2015. But one thing that did stand out to me was the Hall of Human Life exhibit in the Museum of Science in Boston. When I was reading through Sina’s blog post I noticed he mentioned a prototype created during the Creating Museum Multimedia for Everyone in May 2012.

The device uses sonification to convert the position of the graph to a certain sound. By using different tones and/or pitches you can convert data points on a graph into something a blind person can understand. To understand the importance of this we need to go look at the Hall of Human Life

Now the Hall of Human Life opened to the public on November 16, 2013 and I believe I was in 2015 that I had the opportunity to go visit the museum. It boasts over 70 interactive exhibits which include 15 Link Stations were data is gathered and stored through wristbands given at the start of the exhibit.

These Link Station gather data through various interactive activities like your foot arch or through questionnaires that measure the size of your social network. Now while it may be educational and informative to just do these exhibits, the Hall of Human Life upon gathering this data allows the visitor to explore the data sample of the previous 200 visitors. Each graph is divided based on the few qualities like age and gender.

This can be explored outside the exhibit provided you remember the number listed on the wristband. The website for the Hall of Human Life allows you to view the 150 sample even if you don’t have one and it does use the data to ask questions about what we think is the norm.

Of course this does bring the issue, that the prototype created by Sina was not present when I went there. Certain accessibility issues like blindness wouldn’t mesh well with certain activities like the Link Station where you have to identify faces in an ever quickening pace. Others are more accommodating like the measuring body temperature one, but face the problem of data interpretation at the end when comparing body heat before and after. Much of these stations use visuals to help show the comparisons between the previous visitors as well as to show their own data.

Now there are two parts of this accessibility question. The first is in the exhibit itself. Certain activities are certainly more difficult when you’re blind. Some like the foot arch have people there to help guide you and thus their is less of a problem. But when you’re at the station where you’re measuring how many blue and red dots with distractions being thrown about, is this experience going to be different for Sina? For some of these situations like the facial recognition, the data would not be helpful at all. There can certainly be data gathered for stations like the distraction one provided it targeted a different sense like sound. What should be important to note is that the sense of a blind person compensate for the lack of vision, which is why the prototype is so important. By compensating for this disability here, someone like Sina can participate in the interactives and not feel discouraged as a result.

The prototype as developed deals with the second part which is how a blind person can interpret a data sample. Using sound, data clusters can be conceptualized as well as the position of each data point. Here is a video demonstrating this prototype. While for graphs this prototype serves this purpose rather well, other stations like the body temperature measuring station or the walking efficiency station shown above relies on visuals to show the results. While data is just numbers, the complexities involved in activities like those previously mentioned make interpreting it non-visually that much difficult. The website may show you just the data points, but how do you describe the variation between a slouching and efficient walk?

The two articles written by Sina were done in 2012 and in early 2013. Has he gone to visit the museum again? I’m not sure. The problems he sought to solve still exist in museums much less focused on interactivity, yet his article brings up an important point. The solutions to accessibility issues don’t have to be expensive. Said prototype was constructed in a week with just wood, adhesive, two computer mice, and several other simple pieces.

The key point of his article is how just by following the principles of universal design at the start, accessibility solutions are much more cost-effective as well as simpler to implement. Perhaps all the Museum of Science needs to do is have a more polished version on hand for its blind visitors?

#museum of science boston #sina bahram

Fair Use in Museums

Now fair use is a bit of a tricky subject in the modern era. For one mistakes can be easily be made by the uniformed. Ideas of remixes and such play in part to the common use of sources to created transformative media. But still in this world of copyrights there are some limitations.

Take the case of the HOPE Barack Obama poster by Shepard Fairey. Once it was acquired by the Smithsonian Museum it was revealed that it had used an AP photo as it’s base subjecting the artist and AP into a lawsuit. Now transformative media isn’t exactly in the purview of the typical museum, but dealing with copyrighted images is especially in the background as well as in the objects in exhibits. It should be noted that proper crediting is needed for every image used unless it isn’t and it’s fair use like the wikimedia foundation. Just don’t leave the watermarks on Google Image Searched photos, it’ll cause some problems. I remember a website being taken down for a bit because it posted one of those kind of photos, which makes it all the more reason to be cautious around selecting them.

Digital Websites

In this digital age, the demands for ease of access finds a solution through the museum website. Not all websites are created equal.

For instance the Clark County Museum’s website is one page with image links to basic info about the houses on the site.

Not much about its collection is accessible though. Photos and a few mentions are not enough to mention the collection, but then again how can you find the time to digitize much of the collection?

What a museum should have is the basics that give the visitors a general feel of the museum. The museum website doesn’t need to be complex to give basic details like how to get to the museum or what to expect in the museum. However ease of access does make a museum look more appealing.

What I see is that for two of the articles there seems to be something of a desire to “wiki-walk” through collections. A good search engine and a categorizing system goes a long way to assist this habit. This where many museums fail to live up to an expectation. Objects are not properly entered and as a result they fail to show up on the search. A “wiki-walk” ends the moment they hit a dead end, which is why connecting objects is very much essential. Some museums are a bit more reticent about their collection like the Ghibli Museum which prizes itself on more the experience then the objects itself despite it being the major draw to the museum. It provides enough information to satisfy the curious visitor to the site though. Though my tolerance for site design is much higher, given that I’m used to the geocities and tripod sites of old. What do you mean black background and neon colors are terrible for the eyes?

The Impact of Digital Technology

I apologize for the late blog, but here’s my opinions. The other two were much more confusing.

The way this article goes about its messaging is setting it in more marketable terms. Appealing more to a more goal oriented approach. “Impact” is the main measure that this article is looking at and for good reason. Nobody wants to do something with little pay-off. In the museum world this is especially true with how important time and money is in any project. Small museums may not be able to properly digitize their collection or see the value in it. Even if the time it would take is seemingly minimal, staff-wise or cost wise, it may be much more than it can support. This can be alleviated by volunteers, but not all museums can rely on that level of support. “Impact” of course means coverage, usage, and access by the public from the digital collection. In terms of a digital strategy this is much more important in accessing other countries websites. Say for instance I wanted to look at the collections of the Louvre, or the Acropolis museum, I can access it via a website. The websites come equipped with multiple languages. Of course these are popular institutions whose “digital strategy” necessitates leveraging the power of its collection. They’re concerned with reaching to a global audience, and thus they’ve got a more well developed website. Meanwhile the University of Alaska Museum of the North is just one language. It might be unfair to compare it to the other museums, but its the arm of the local university. It draws over 90,000 visitors a year and is one of the top Alaskan tourist destinations. Does it need to expand its impact? I don’t believe so. It’s very much a research institution, so it shouldn’t feel the pressure that other museum’s of its size might feel in attracting visitors.

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