Recently I’ve started evaluating museums iphone applications, based on my experience as a producer of interactive and web based media for museums, and as an avid iphone user.
All the ones I’ve downloaded offer something to engage me when I need it most – on morning subway commutes, standing on lines, and sitting in airports. In other words, I use them the way some people download games or listen to music, to enjoy myself and keep boredom at bay.
So far my absolute favorite is Yours, Vincent: The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh, developed by the Van Gogh Museum and the Huygens Institute – KNAW in 2009 to provide a portable experience of the Van Gogh Letters Project.
What I love is that it offers an immersive experience: you’re drawn into the intimate details of Van Gogh’s life and art. The narrative structure, the letters format, and the fact that his art was personal and small scale make this subject very well suited to viewing on your own device.
The story unfolds in chronological chapters through Van Gogh’s letters, mostly written to his brother Theo. The chapters tend to correspond to the different places where Vincent lived, and the time span he lived there.
Within each chapter there are multiple sections; most present letters themselves, filled with sketches, and read in English as Vincent describes his plans, dreams, troubles, pleasures and work. Others have short interpretive videos of curators filling out the backstory. You can enlarge the letters, to see details of the many sketches Vincent sent to Theo, or study his handwriting.
Most chapters conclude with a gallery of paintings, sketches or watercolors Vincent made during the period covered by the chapter. You can’t enlarge them to look at details- though you definitely want to do that. All you can do is take in the whole image. Yet there’s a surprising amount you can appreciate, even at this screen size. Each one is like a promise – that the real thing will be worth the effort to go and experience in person.
While it’s kind of frustrating not to be able to enlarge the paintings it’s entirely understandable. The app has many video and audio clips and is already a whopping 302MB. Adding higher resolution images might have meant cutting back on the number of images altogether, or on the insightful media clips.
From a user interface standpoint, the navigation clear. There are three main options: Items, the main menu of chapters; Insight, an option which allows you to filter the chapter sub-sections by topics such as “love,” “sex,” “nature” and several others; and Info, with production credits.
Within each chapter, the navigation is horizontal. One nice thing is that navigation slides away while you’re looking at artworks so your view of each image is unobstructed. You can make the video controls disappear too, by simply tapping on the screen.
One minor complaint is that galleries don’t present the paintings in chronological order. If they did, in the gallery devoted to the self-portraits Van Gogh painted while he lived in Paris, you’d be able to see how his image of himself changed over time rather than viewing them in a seemingly random order.
I’ve also begun to explore iphone apps from The National Gallery (Love Art), Minneapolis Institute of Arts (iAfrica), the Brooklyn Museum, and NARB (more of a crowd sourced guide to local museum exhibitions in cities around the world). I’ll be sharing the results of my research about them in the coming days and weeks. The ones from Portland Art Museum and AMNH are on the list next.
If you’ve used any of these applications please share your thoughts. If you have other ones to recommend, let us all know!
Great to have this review, Robin! Here are a few thoughts and questions that came to mind as I read your review and played with the app.
I would have liked to see the app include the interactive and social media functions available on the iPhone; as it is, this is a pretty traditional, one-way broadcasting of content about the collection, so represents a bit of a missed opportunity to engage with audiences in a more dynamic way on the new platform.
Nonetheless, I like the content very much: both the variety and the quality. The videos are really compelling and well-produced (nice voices, photography, editing and length). Like you, I was impressed by how clear the letters and drawings are as well, even on the small screen. Enabling visitors to examine those letters in detail from up close – holding them in their own hands, as it were – is a really good use of the technology. As you say, it’s a shame the images can’t be zoomable in a higher resolution, but the app is already enormous (I had to delete several things off my iPhone in order to download it), so until there’s some clever new compression or streaming technology I think this is a good compromise of quality and size.
When I worked for Antenna, we created a PDA-based multimedia tour for the Van Gogh Museum covering many of these same paintings; I wonder if it is still in use on-site, or if this app is intended to replace it? Your comments point to some elements it might need to work well on-site: a map or other linear/chronological listing of the works that corresponds to the gallery hang.
Historically there has been a lot of concern about using video and even still images on multimedia tours in the museum, for fear of distracting people from looking at the exhibits and artworks. I don’t really share this concern: first, we know that people typically spend more time reading wall labels than looking at the corresponding artwork or exhibit, so in one sense, this is not a new ‘problem’, if it is indeed a problem at all. Secondly, good content and experience design will use the right piece of content, in the right medium, at the right moment to reinforce the intended message. We cannot say that all video and images are bad in the museum, anymore than we can say that all signage is distracting – it depends on the context and design.
In any case, this app seems to have been designed for audiences who are not in the museum. I assume this is in part the nature of Antenna’s Pentimento template (also used for the National Gallery of Art, London tour), but wonder if you (and other virtual visitors) prefer having this kind of experience on a handheld device rather than a larger fixed web screen – where it would be easier to deliver the images in high, zoomable resolution, for example?
Most museums have more ‘virtual’ visitors through their websites and social media content than they will ever be able to have in person. As more and more of those digital visitors are accessing museums’ content through mobile platforms, it makes sense to me that we should be developing handheld programs for them. I’ll be interested to see best practice emerges and develops for museums’ mobile presences, much as it has for fixed web.
Hi Nancy, thanks for your very thoughtful comments and questions. While I agree that social media links would add a level of engagement, I believe there’s a website for the exhibition http://www.vangoghletters.org/vg/ where content would be easier to share through social media, though I don’t think site has that option either.
To answer your question about whether I prefer having this kind of experience on a handheld device rather than a larger screen, I think the answer is that each platform fits a different need. What I love about the handheld experience is that it gives me access to the content in situations where it was never conveniently available before – basically any time, anywhere, and on my own device. It’s kinda like a book! So I can’t wait to try it on an iPad!
I’ll be interested to see best practices develop too – there’s a lot to figure out.
Hi Nancy,
In addition to this app, there was also a new version of the VG Museum’s on-site multimedia tour on a PDA, which reflected the museum’s re-installation, celebrating the The Letters Project. The app was for people who would never make it to Amsterdam – so I wrote it as an intimate experience, much like an journal, as Robin notes. So this is an inherently storytelling experience. The museum also launched a blog with selections from the letters, and that’s the place they were envisioning the social media piece to come in – with comments, links, etc.
(This was indeed an iteration of the Pentimento template)
Robin,
I’m glad you enjoyed the app. I introduced Pentimento while I was CEO at Antenna Audio. I too think its one of the most beautiful and moving mobile apps for the iPhone/iPod touch platform, partly due to the experience design and partly due to Sandy’s (typically) brilliant work in creating content that connects people emotionally and intellectually with the images and objects at which they’re looking.
Regarding the Pentimento application and the intention of this iteration, yes, this particular app was designed for non-visitors. However, Pentimento itself can accommodate both on site and off site “visits” depending on the objectives of the institution and the components that are incorporated into the museum’s customized version.
Looking forward to more reviews!
Cheers, Sarah
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