#jake barton

[adi-dion]

Well I tasted love so sweet, played around but not for keeps I'd never been knocked off my feet until you came along In the room surrounding me are angels I cannot see I know they come to carry me to where I belong Closer to you

Requested by @singinprincess ♥

[thedigitalmuseum]

Museum as Lightning Rod: Innovation and Invitation An #AAM2022 Keynote by Jake Barton

Jake Barton, Founder and Chief Creative Officer of Local Projects, opened the Innovation focus area of the 2022 AAM Annual Meeting & MuseumExpo with his keynote, “Museum as Lightning Rod: Innovation and Invitation,” followed by a Q&A with Chevy Humphrey, AAM Board Chair and President and CEO of the Museum of Science and Industry Chicago. Watch the full video or read a transcript below.

Note: This presentation includes video and oral histories from the 9/11 Memorial Museum and Greenwood Rising: Black Wall Street History Center that include references to terrorism and racism. If you wish to view the video of the presentation without viewing these sections, please pause at 18:07 and skip to 24:32, and pause at 47:28 and skip to 55:30.

[explore-blog]

It’s the physical presence of other people, the walking and sharing an experience, the bonding in space and time, that touches the deepest parts of us.

Fantastic, insightful Wired essay on the promise and reality of virtual reality by Local Projects founder Jake Barton. 

Complement with physicist John Archibald Wheeler’s visionary 1989 It from Bit theory of the nature of reality. 

[bubbleplan]

MuseumNext 2015 is the most progressive and inspiring conference I have attended since last year’s Re:XD (Re-Envisioning Exhibition Design: Chaos at the Museum) in London. 

If you are interested in the best re-cap on the conference, and if you have an hour to spare, please check out Alin Tocmacov’s report on The Museum Life with Carrol Bossert. That’s my friend museograph​ reporting on all the highlights in much better detail than I can provide here.

To keep it simple, I will sum up the main themes of the conference into two bundles: 

1) Museums are witnessing a necessary blurring between Digital and Physical as Emotive User Experience Design intersects with Human-Centered Physical Design. 

2) Future Museums (and I would argue museums NOW) must pay careful attention to the Social Contract: focusing on well-being, activism, and the social good.

Regarding Digital/Physical:

The Sociable Museum was a fascinating panel including Molly Heintz (SuperScript), Vera Sacchetti (Superscript), Alin Tocmacov (C&G Partners, museograph), Viviane Stappmanns (Vitra Design Museum), and Seb Chan ( cooperhewitt ). This panel covered the questions of how museums perform and facilitate social interaction, not only through digital means, but also through physical experience design. The term “Phygital” was discussed - exploring the intersections between digital UX and physical experience design. 

Jake Barton from Local Projects introduced their latest digital/physical project called City Pulse, at the top of the new 1 World Trade Center. This digital “wreath” (that’s the best word I can come up with - see the image above) is operated through motion detection by paid, trained storytellers (Jake indicated they are comedians) who stand at the center of the wreath. The storyteller recounts narratives and answers questions about the city below, augmented by sweeping animations showing live data about the city. 

Shelley Bernstein from brooklynmuseum​ spoke about the Ask App, which was developed through Agile Methodology over the past year to give museum visitors the opportunity to literally ASK questions of curatorial experts while they are in the galleries. ASK, which was originally tested using iPods and iMessenger, allows visitors to ask a Curator (or, now, an Art Historian trained in the collection) any question they want about the works on display. The beauty of it is that there is a HUMAN on the end of the line who actually answers the questions in real-time. Shelley smartly noted that while the pre-conception is that technology distracts from experiencing art, the reality is that with the ASK App visitors look more closely at the art because they WANT to find questions to ask. They WANT to interact with the experts of the museum. 

Regarding Museums and Society:

In the Conference Opening Panel two people stood out to me as reinforcing the questions of how museums operate as agents in society. Gail Dexter Lord (Lord Cultural Resources) and Tony Butler (Happy Museum Project, and Derby Museums Trust).

Gail discussed her new book Cities, Museums, & Soft Power which she wrote with Ngaire Blankenberg. (Ngaire was also at the conference and was an active  and positive voice in many sessions). She described the role which Museums serve in revitalizing cities. They raise real-estate values and promote economic development in their neighborhoods. She went on to say that with this important role Museums have the soft power to make even more impact. “Museums should align themselves with anti-poverty organizations”, for instance. 

Tony, whose brain is clearly on fire with fantastic opinions, described the fact that museums play an active role in societal and human well-being. Tony commented that museums have not upheld the ‘social contract’ in the past 30 years. Tony’s comments continue to pique my interest and I am looking forward to learning more about The Happy Museum Project and his work with Derby Museums Trust.

My personal highlight of the whole conference was participating in the Inzovu Curve Workshop led by the folks at UX For Good. 

For a good recap on the Inzovu Curve see this piece I reposted from alessandracanella​. 

Based on work that UX For Good did with the Kigali Genocide Memorial in Rwanda, they developed a model for mapping visitor experience which shows that memorials and museums about traumatic events can leave visitors emotionally spent and unable to take action.  If these institutions can provide visitors with elements of hope and healing, visitors may be moved to act, or to make positive change in the world.  

The conference left me with this message: create transformative experiences for social well-being, loosen the divide between digital and physical, and use the power of exhibition design for good. 

[thedigitalmuseum]

Q&A with Paola Antonelli, Director of R&D and Sr Curator of Architecture and Design, MoMA; K8 Hardy, artist, founder of the art collective LTTR; Laura Hoptman, Curator, Department of Painting and Sculpture, MoMA; Randy Hunt, Creative Director, Etsy; and Jake Barton, principal and founder, Local Projects. MoMA R&D Salon 8: The Object, Online, May 20, 2014

The first in a three-part series of salons dedicated to exploring the object, appropriately titled The Object, Online was devoted to unpacking and analyzing the translation of physical objects—uni-, two-, or three-dimensional, and from paintings and drawings to animals, objects, buildings, and environments—into the digital realm for exhibition, explanation, analysis, communication, exchange, and sale, to name but a few purposes.

[thedigitalmuseum]

Jake Barton, Principal and founder of Local Projects, exemplifies the creative use of digital technology for better experience of objects in museums. MoMA R&D Salon 8: The Object, Online, May 20, 2014

The first in a three-part series of salons dedicated to exploring the object, appropriately titled The Object, Online was devoted to unpacking and analyzing the translation of physical objects—uni-, two-, or three-dimensional, and from paintings and drawings to animals, objects, buildings, and environments—into the digital realm for exhibition, explanation, analysis, communication, exchange, and sale, to name but a few purposes. 

[thedigitalmuseum]

Technology and the Future of Museums, recorded April 11, 2013 at 92Y.

Technology plays an active role in shaping the way people learn about and experience museums and their collections both online and in person. Hear from Jake Barton, principal and founder, Local Projects; Seb Chan, director of Digital and Emerging Media, Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum; Mark Robbins, director of the International Center of Photography; and Cara McCarty, curatorial director of Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, as they discuss how technology is being used to reinvent and deepen the museum experience.

[adi-dion]