Just returned from spending a few hours loitering in the Herbert's History Gallery, with Joe Camera-Guy-Whose-Last-Name-I-Don't-Know (sorry, Joe :( ) and the inestimable Sarah Beecham. Our afternoon's adventures were part of a larger research project, aimed at capturing visitor memories and experiences in-gallery, and those wonderful spontaneous interactions you sometimes get around museum objects.
Unfortunately (and unsurprisingly), gallery visitors weren't too receptive to our initial set-up, as we hefted around tripods, and clip-on mics, and thingies trailing wires, and extra lighting doodads.1 After all, nobody wants to feel as though they're suddenly in the Panopticon, least of all people who may not be entirely used to museum and gallery visiting, and whom the busy, friendly History Gallery does such a great job of welcoming. I suppose that's something we knew going in, and something that the project is partly aiming to solidify; that until someone invents a real-life Pensieve and we can harvest visitor memories with our magic wands,2 there'll always have to be compromises, whether it's sacrificing the quality of the footage for the quality of the content, or vice-versa. If we can help to refine established techniques and work towards a better model of live memory capture, then it'll be one small step for museums...
Of course, once we'd pared down operations, not only were passers-by happy to take part, they were comfortable enough to trot out some of the best gems before we'd even got the camera rolling. Ah, irony.
Oh well. At least we learned something?
1I'm an expert now; can you tell?
2Hey, I can dream.
