Archive for the ‘art’ Category

Suggestions for iAfrica: Connecting with Sub – Saharan Art, an iPhone app

Thursday, February 18th, 2010

iAfrica: Connecting with Sub-Saharan Art is an iPhone app developed as part of an eponymous exhibition at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts (MIA), on view through April 4th, 2010.

The application contains images and related information for 28 objects from 14 African countries, as well as an interactive lamellophone. This feature is the most fun, since it turns your iPhone into an instrument you can actually play to make lamellophone sounding music!

The app’s main menu has icons for nine options, and a “Leave Feedback” link that takes users out to a visitor survey on MIA’s website. The obvious nav options are :

-       About

-       View All (objects)

-       Map

-       Lamellophone

Then there are five other choices:

-       Ethnographic

-       Sensorial

-       Aesthetic

-       History

-       Provenance

After reading the About section, I realized that these choices refer to the exhibition experience in the Museum, where visitors are encouraged to consider each object from five perspectives. The mobile content developers tried to carry the same experience over to the application.

Clicking on one of the five icons brings up an introductory statement that explains why it’s important to know about the objects from this perspective: “ethnographic” answers the question “How was it used? “Aesthetic” answers “What makes it beautiful? Etc.

Within each section there are two navigation options: View Objects and Main Menu. In View Objects mode, you see a full screen image of the object and can tap a little “i” for Info button that raises a transparent screen with label information. Unfortunately you can’t enlarge the images to see details.

The label lists location, object name, medium, size, acquisition details, and object number before getting to the description. The descriptions left me hungry for more information.

From the navigation I expected to learn about the objects in each section from a specific perspective. So I was a little disappointed to see the same label information presented about each object, whether I was in the Aesthetic section or the History section. It’s not clear why certain objects were chosen to appear in particular categories. Several of the objects appear in more than one category.

It seems like the label content came right off the gallery walls. While it’s always a good idea to repurpose content rather than create it for one platform, it’s also important to optimize the presentation of content to take advantage of a platform’s capabilities.

On the iPhone I would have appreciated larger images so I could zoom in to more easily appreciate the details of these unfamiliar objects – see the aesthetic qualities, imagine the tactile surfaces, locate the specific parts that define their use.

Also, the difference between the five perspectives would have been clearer if more detailed information related to the perspective in each section was provided, whether that was text, audio, video or just links to more info on the museum site or elsewhere on the web.

Finally, the survey linked to Leave Feedback is intended for visitors to the gallery, which is a little confusing when you’re coming from your phone. IPhone users could have been offered a link to email their comments directly to the museum.

There is definitely lots of interesting information here, but if MIA had taken advantage of the capabilities of the iPhone, and understood more about users expectations, I think they could have made this a much more engaging experience.

You can download the app here. Please let me know about your experience with it.

Why Yours, Vincent is a Great iphone app from the Van Gogh Museum

Sunday, February 7th, 2010

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.

Yours, Vincent iPhone appSo 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!

Posted via email from mediacombo’s posterous

Blogs About Art Finally Get Some Respect!

Sunday, January 31st, 2010

Blogs offer serious journalism, breaking news, diversity of views and opportunities to connect directly with readers. Not all blogs, of course, and it hasn’t always been this way. For years people have criticized bloggers, claiming that they’re just a bunch of opinionators, not trustworthy sources of information – no one vets their facts or holds them to standards of journalistic practice.

I recently moderated Blog This!, a panel discussion whose purpose was to review how the role of blogging in the art world, by institutions, individuals, and entrepreneurs, has evolved over the past few years and whether it’s finally time to give art bloggers some respect!

Moderator Robin White and Panelists: Kelly Shindler, Paddy Johnson, Barry Hoggard, William Powhida, Ed Winkleman. Video thanks to James Kalm.

Our panelists were chosen because their blogs are well known in the art world, and because they represent a cross section of types. As my museum readers know, even institutional blogs have had to work hard to develop a community of readers and commenters. On the internet it’s not easy to gain the trust of an audience. 

Panelists 

Barry Hoggard, who runs the Culture Pundit network and the calendar ArtCat,

Paddy Johnson, publisher, editor and writer of Artfagcity,

William Powhida/williampowhida.com, artist

Kelly Shindler/ founder of the art21 blog (part of the PBS series on twentyfirst century art, Art21;

Edward Winkleman/edwinkleman.blogspot.com, art dealer

This line up had 130 people glued to their seats at X Initiative in Chelsea on January 15th, listening to their favorite bloggers answer questions about their blogging goals, roles, ethics, and efforts to keep things cordial when comments get out of hand.

The panel was sponsored by ArtTable, organized by Heather Darcy Bandhari of Mixed Greens, Lauren Pearson of Art Cycle, and myself.

We asked panelists these questions:

When so many newspapers and magazines are going out of business, or at least cutting back on reviews and criticism, can blogs honorably take up the slack in publishing art journalism and criticism and spread the word about new artists?

Are they trustworthy sources of information? What kind of ethical standards do they have? 

How do they fit with other social media services like Facebook and Twitter?

I’ll try to summarize the panelists’ most salient comments.

In response to questions about the trustworthiness of personal blogs vs branded print journalism:

-       Ed said – while the purpose of his blog is basically to promote his gallery, if he disrespects his readers (and those are the ones that matter because they are the only people paying attention to you) they’re stop reading.  Essentially, your readers keep you honest.

-       Barry pointed out that the role of the press should be to question people in power as well as to report on events; when a lot of print and TV journalists in this country don’t ask hard questions you could say they call into question their own ethics; some bloggers have taken up the role of asking hard questions – in the art world and about the news in general

-       Since serious writers and critics are migrating to the web, all the panelists agreed that galleries should include blog reviews on artists’ biographies

-       Kelly said that on the art21 blog, which focuses on presenting the artist’s voice, they had some issues with whether artists should write about their own work.

 

In response to questions about commenters and developing community:

-       Ed said “if you hit too hard at somebody they never come back so if you’re interested in changing someone’s opinion do it over a series of comments;

-       Paddy and Kelly agreed that there’s a lot of self-policing among community of commenters – they start to take care of themselves;

-       Kelly pointed out that a little debate strengthens the community

-       Still, all of the panelists moderate their comments now, to keep the conversations relatively focused and civil.

 

In response to the question of how blogs, facebook and twitter work together:

-       Paddy said different audiences prefer different tools so a blogger who posts to all three places will be talking to a wider group of people than simply those who read and comment on the blog itself

-       Paddy also said these are great ways “to break up the echo chamber of the blogosphere”

-       Kelly and William Powhida concurred saying that Twitter and Facebook are a useful interface for promoting the blog and developing other conversations

In response to a question about how to develop a successful blog:

-       Ed pointed out that Blogs are measured by traffic – one way to get more readers is to link to other blogs;

-       Ed said  – find your voice – it’s what makes your blog unique

-       I said – write about what you’re passionate about = strong content

-       Paddy added – update frequently

-       “The central currency on a blog is generosity,” in Ed’s words, “the more generous you are the more comes back to you.” He blogged about the panel, expanding on these topics before and after the panel.

 

After the panel Jerry Saltz, art critic for New York Magazine, wrote  “Excellent panel at ‘X’ last nite on Facebook. His comment that “younger critics should just say what they like/don’t like about works of art,” generated 138 comments and developed into a lively conversation about blogs, journalism, the state of art criticism, whether it’s a conflict of interest or not to accept gallery advertising on a blog about art, and who people’s favorite art writers.

And artist and videographer Jim Kalm wrote “I’ve always loved the whimsical freewheeling give and take of the blogosphere … creating a virtual Exquisite Corpse.”   He also posted two videos of the panel discussion for you to check out.

So I would say that blogs, for all their flaws, make a significant contribution to the cultural, intellectual and political conversations that inform our choices and actions every day.  Bloggers, keep on bloggin’!

Posted via email from mediacombo’s posterous

Who Shot Rock ‘n’ Roll

Thursday, December 31st, 2009

What a great show at the Brooklyn Museum! We went yesterday before it got crowded. While the photographer’s backstories are interesting, it’s really all about the pictures, the performers, the music, and your own memories. As well as people you knew.

Just a few of the pictures that stand out: a beautiful shot by William “PoPsie” Randolph of Jimi Hendrix in a suit playing back up for Wilson Pickett; a mesmerizing photo of Radiohead; Keith Richards as a proud papa; David Bowie’s 1973 music video “Life on Mars.” Only one thing – there should have been more women in the show.

It’s up until January 31st and it’s an energizing antidote to winter.

 

Posted via email from mediacombo’s posterous

Decode: Digital Design at the V&A

Tuesday, December 15th, 2009

We just got back from a trip to London, an actual vacation, where we saw a few wonderful museum shows between visits with friends and family. One of the best was this brand new show at the Victoria &Albert Museum. Luckily for us it was opening day so there wasn’t much of a crowd and we got to play with everything without waiting. When word gets out the gallery will be swamped!

For some reason the curators put one of the dullest pieces at the very entrance, but just to the right is a captivating work of digital nature by Daniel Brown. It’s as close to “art” as anything digital I’ve seen:

Digital Garden

Here are a few other pictures of installations from the show:

While the lush tropical garden growing at the entrance isn’t interactive, many other pieces in the show are, including the two shown above. A couple of the data visualization pieces, like Flight Patterns, were seen in NYC at MoMA’s Design and the Elastic Mind show last year.

One of the coolest pieces is called Exquisite Clock. It’s composed of six screens whose numbers tell the time in hours/minutes/seconds. The numbers are represented by objects, landscapes, vegetables and other things that people have photographed and uploaded to the Exquisite Clock website. The site then feeds the installation in the gallery with images that tell the current time as it changes every second. Here’s what I mean:

Exquisite Clock17-27-22

17:27:22

Exquisite Clock17-30-08

17:30:08

Why is this cool? Because you can stand in front of the installation in the gallery and download the iPhone app that allows you to upload a picture from your own phone right to their website or take a picture and upload it. I did this when we were there last Tuesday, and just now saw my picture for #6, a snapshot of the Highway 61 sign, show up on the website clock as I was capturing these pictures to show you.

I could go on. But you should see Decode:Digital Design for yourself. Go to London! While you’re booking your flight, check out the website.

Working With Open Source – the IFPDA website

Wednesday, April 15th, 2009

If you love looking at fine art prints, or collecting them, or just always wondered if that print hanging in your hallway is actually a Rembrandt, you’ll be delighted with the new website we developed for the International Fine Print Dealers Association. We built it in Drupal, version 6.0.

 

The primary goal of the IFPDA is to promote the 168 member art dealers and the fine art prints they sell. It offers multiple entry points for both novice and experienced collectors looking for information on artists, dealers and specific artworks through a number of specific features :
• the homepage flash animation highlights 168 captioned artworks, one to represent each member dealer;

• the database constantly refreshes most pages with new images of prints, exposing visitors to a wide variety of artwork;

• a different member is featured on the Member landing page every day

• the Artists page offers a search by genre, that helps visitors start looking at prints, even without any prior knowledge of artists’ names or other useful search terms;

• the calendar, What’s On, displays print related exhibitions and events around the world, filtered by date, location and type of event;

Phase 2 development will include creating a virtual exhibition module so member dealers can curate print exhibitions on the website.

 

This customized drupal database allows for multi-level site administration, so IFPDA staff and member art dealers can publish new content, text and images to specific areas of the site at their convenience. Ananadaroop Roy is our drupal developer on this project. Jessica Findley designed this site, and it’s sister, the IFPDA 2009 Print Fair site.

AAM Video Podcast Tutorial

Sunday, June 22nd, 2008

At this year’s AAM conference I gave a tutorial on how to produce a video podcast. There were two identical sessions, and at each session, one of the 30 participants won a new FlipCam! This is a great little video camera that fits in the palm of your hand and costs $100.00. You can’t really go wrong.

 

If you’re interested in a quick and easy way to get started producing your own podcasts, you can download the handout here. Please let me know how it works out. I’d be happy to do a workshop at your museum. If you decide you need something more polished to present on your website or for iTunes U, I can help you produce those too.

Museums and Visitors: Interacting on the Web and in the Galleries – Part 2: Using Blogs

Monday, February 18th, 2008

This is Part 2 of a five part conversation with Holly Sidford. Please see the Archives to access the other parts.

Holly: There’s a real tension between scholarship and entertainment. Scholars should not necessarily be expected to be entertainers and vice versa. But museums are public institutions and if they want to make a claim on public money and philanthropic money (which, given the tax advantages of philanthropic giving, in a sense is another form of public money) and attract visitors, then they must pay attention to what visitors are attracted by, what’s interesting to them.

Visitor Voices, published by ASTC

Robin: Here’s a very interesting example of such thinking. I was reading about an experiment organized by The Cantor Art Center at Stanford, in a new book called Visitor Voices edited by Kathy McClean and Wendy Pollock. In 2004 The Cantor opened “Question,” a presentation whose purpose was to address questions from visitors such as: Who decides what is art or who is an artist? Where is the meaning in a work of art? This looks like my kid could do it so why is it hanging in a museum? They put it all out there for ten months letting visitors know that no question was inappropriate, making people feel comfortable in that space of not knowing, and there were lots of opportunities for them to enter into conversations with staff and docents. Visitors really got into the spirit of the show, and follow up studies showed that it has deeply affected the way the staff collaborates and incorporate learning goals into exhibitions.

Holly: Why does the way objects are displayed and the experience of moving through an exhibition have to be so staid and formal? Break it up, cut it up, have more fun. It may not guarantee that younger visitors will come, but without such incentives, they are likely to give museums a pass. There are just too many juicy alternatives.

Giving people a chance to participate and have a dialogue makes it juicier, without eliminating scholarship.

Robin: Actually we suggested an early version of this to the Newark Museum back in 2000 for their web site, when we were producing the multimedia components for their American Art Galleries. We wanted to set up a place on their site where visitors could email questions to the curator, who would respond on a weekly basis.

Now there are over 250 museum blogs where directors, curators, staff and visitors have dialogues about objects, exhibitions, best practices – you name it.

Holly: It’s really about how genuinely a museum wants to engage an audience — any kind of audience but particularly a new audience. One of the great examples for me – it’s almost 20 years old but it’s still a model for how to engage a new audience – is Kathy Halbreich’s work with teenagers at The Walker Art Center. When Kathy first got to the Walker, very few teenagers were connected to the museum in any way, which is too bad because it’s a museum about contemporary culture. Kathy and her staff convened a committee that represented “24 hours in the life of a teenager”: the school superintendent, people who ran youth clubs, the coaches from the local sports teams, people from Dayton Hudson department store. She tried to get people who interact with teenagers in a variety of ways to sit down and talk about how the museum could be more meaningful to them. She got a lot of ideas but one of the most important was: Talk to the kids themselves!

Walker Art Museum's teen website

So the Walker composed an advisory committee of teenagers. The teens visited every department in the museum; staff talked to them about what was interesting and what would be appealing to their peers. Together the kids and the museum staff designed an array of programs that have since blossomed, including employing teenagers in various departments, strategies for engaging teens in shows and activities, and developing marketing plans that consider teen audiences. The point is they took the time to learn about this “new” audience and then developed programs and offerings of authentic interest to them. The museum has maintained their conversation with the kids over time and the result is increased attendance and real credibility with a new and enthusiastic demographic.

Robin: In fact the Walker has just launched a new version of their teen website; one half, the business side, is for museum educators and other grownups, describing The Walker’s current teen programs. The play side of the site is composed entirely of blogs generated and produced by WACTAC, the Walker Art Center Teen Art Council. They blog about music, art, films and events both Walker related and not, and post their art works and interviews – it’s a museum-sponsored site for and by teens. Since this age group is comfortable with blogging and social networking, it’s an appropriate technology for attracting teen participants.

SFMOMA's Olafur Eliasson exhibition web page

And speaking of museum blogs, here’s a daring example from SFMOMA. For their current retrospective of Olafur Eliasson, they’ve created a blog on the exhibition website itself, where visitors can directly post their comments about the show. In essence visitors become guides who share their collective experience of the work. SFMOMA is allowing visitors to critique the exhibition, to contribute interpretations, optimize the experience for others and consequently, engage a wider audience. Our conversation continues in Part 3: Using Podcasting, Part 4: Using FaceBook and Part 5: Sharing Content.