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You can help create photo museum exhibit

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You can help create photo museum exhibit | UTSanDiego.com

http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2012/jun/29/MOPA-Soapbox/?print&page=all

"Soapbox!' will be based on choices of visitors to museum and website
By James Chute Friday, June 29, 2012

Something wonderful has broken out at Balboa Park’s Museum of Photographic Arts. Visitors to the museum are talking about photos — striking up conversations with total strangers about how one photo might compare to another. “It’s been really fun to see groups discussing the images,” said Deborah Klochko, the museum’s director. “Sometimes it’s a group of friends or a family group that comes together. But sometimes it’s a group of people who just happen to be here, discussing how they are going to rank a piece of art.”

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You can help create photo museum exhibit | UTSanDiego.com

http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2012/jun/29/MOPA-Soapbox/?print&page=all

The catalyst for the welcome exchanges is the museum’s new, technologically advanced touch table that has been installed in the galleries. Using software developed in collaboration with UCSD’s Pacific Rim Undergraduate Experience and Japan’s National Institute of Information and Communication Technology, the table allows visitors to view and rank 120 images from the museum’s permanent collection. When the ranking concludes on Aug. 5, the top 40 photos will be assembled into a gallery exhibit, “Soapbox! The Audience Speaks,” on view Oct. 6 through May 12. “The technology is certainly important, but it’s not the most important,” Klochko said. “It’s the content (that’s most important). It’s how people interact with it, and what they learn from it. And so we are really trying to work hard not to just have a bunch of gadgets, but to really have a means for people to interact with the collection and with ideas related to the exhibitions.” MOPA has been a regional leader in technological innovation and experimenting with ways to make the gallery experience more interactive. The institution was among the first local museums to use QR codes and iPads to provide an additional level of information for visitors. And MOPA continues to explore ways of presenting its collection on the Internet. Last week, it added an online component to “Soapbox! The Audience Speaks,” allowing visitors to its website to also participate in the crowdsourced exhibition. “We’ve been an incubator for some of these new ideas in the park, showing their value and showing that they work,” said Joaquin Ortiz, MOPA’s digital interpretation manager. “What starts to happen is other museums come by and say, ‘Oh, we didn’t think we could do that just yet,’ ” and then they are inspired to try something similar. But many of those technologies have provided a relatively solitary experience. The light table, supplemented by a big-screen monitor, allows group interaction and has become a focal point of the gallery. “Especially on weekends, it’s in constant use,” Ortiz said. “We weren’t expecting that. We always kind of undershoot these things (in terms of expectations), not because we want to but because technology is so new to museums. But what we’ve found with this is people were waiting to use it, some people were hovering around and others wanted to do it again and again and again.” The museum and its collaborators, funded by a grant from the Institute for Museum and Library Services and aided by the Balboa Park Online Collaborative, have been working with the table for more than a year, using open-source software that will be available for use by other institutions. The UCSD students involved in the project recently won a MUSE Award from the American Association of Museum for the table’s first incarnation, “My Gallery.” But that software’s interface was deemed too complicated for museum visitors. In its present manifestation, the evaluation process is turned into a game. After you (or your group) rank 10 photos with star ratings, you get a short video reward. For level one, the “Brownie” level, it’s Klochko with Tino, her pug (she protests if you call it a dog) thanking you for your participation. “When people are here, they may only want to spend a few minutes on something like this, so it needs to be something you can immediately dive into,” Ortiz said. “We worked really hard in trying to develop a way of keeping the process very immediate.” As you continue ranking images, you get more rewards (each level is named after a type of camera), with one-minute video presentations that go

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You can help create photo museum exhibit | UTSanDiego.com

http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2012/jun/29/MOPA-Soapbox/?print&page=all

behind the scenes at the museum. If you rate all 120 photos, you’ll get (spoiler alert!) a round of applause from the entire staff and you will be listed as a contributor when the exhibition goes up in October. Of course, you aren’t really looking at photos; they are digital renderings of the photos. There are numerous, albeit often subtle, distinctions between the digital image and the physical object, and some degree of compromise is inevitable in putting them on a screen. Consequently, the museum had to get permissions from the photographers that their photos could be displayed in digital form. “We are always concerned about that,” Klochko said. “Because even though we are a museum of photographs, to us, they are still objects. And seeing (the object) in person is still the best experience. What you don’t get online, or on the multi-touch table, is a sense of scale and a sense of process. “But, if you can get people excited and interested so they want more, then you’ve been successful.” The museum is looking at additional uses for the table, including inviting artists to create work specifically for that medium. And it continues to search for new partners and work with cutting-edge technologies (including one that delivers specific content to visitor’s cellphones at specific places in the museum, without QR codes) to find ways for people to interact with the museum and each other. “I’ve said from the beginning (in 2007, when she took over the institution from its founding director, Arthur Ollman), really what I want is to tear down the walls of the institution,” Klochko said. She might leave the glass wall in front of the museum intact, however. “As we move toward 2015, which is the 100th anniversary of the park, we’re very interested in turning the glass wall of our entry area into maybe a giant touch screen,” Klochko said. “But how do we do that? What’s the technology going to be in two years? We’re starting to add that to our thinking and planning.” Such technology is available. If the museum is able to pull that off, look for even more discussions to break out. jim.chute@utsandiego.com • Facebook: U-T Art & Music • twitter: @sdutchute © Copyright 2012 The San Diego Union-Tribune, LLC. An MLIM LLC Company. All rights reserved.

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Summary Something wonderful has broken out at Balboa Park’s Museum of Photographic Arts.Visitors to the museum are talking about photos — striking up conversations with total strangers about how one photo might compare to another.

Description
The museum and its collaborators, funded by a grant from the Institute for Museum and Library Services and aided by the Balboa Park Online Collaborative, have been working with the table for more than a year, using open-source software that will be available for use by other institutions. The UCSD students involved in the project recently won a MUSE Award from the American Association of Museum for the table’s first incarnation, “My Gallery.”

Tags: Creative, Crowdsource, Crowdsourcing, exhibit, museum, Open Source Software, photo, Soapbox, technology

Posted by Benjamin Fossel

Jun 30, 2012 05:28 am GMT Viewed 887 times

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