Remix Moma - Part 2

Last week I posted about Dave Gilbert's experiment with podcasting "unnofficial audio guides" at Moma, a project called "Apologia: We love MoMA. Hackers hack a platform out of respect for it."   This morning, Dave Gilbert emailed with a link to the NY Times article about his project.  Way to go Dave!

 

These audio guides were inspired by a recent podcasting trend called "sound seeing," in which people record narrations of their vacations so others can enjoy. The use of podcasting has many implementations for museums. For starters, podcasting can liberate art lovers from the museum's clunky audio sets and enjoy the Museum's "Official Audio" more stylist piece of equipment.  It can also liberate museum goers from hearing one view - that of the expert or curator. 

As demonostrated by this project, podcasting can also facilitate visitors creating their own guides and tours.  Which is something a musem would want to embrace, right?  That people have engaged so much with the art that they would be movitated to create their own audio guide and share with others, perhaps people who have never set foot inside the museum before.   This could help boost attendance and help break down the elitist or "its not for me" perception that may keep people from coming through the doors of the museum.

I wondered how the institution views the project.  The article states: "Informed about the project last week, museum officials declined to reciprocate with their opinions, but also made no comments about instituting an iPod ban."  Hmm, if they institute an iPod ban, would it be a violation of free speech, elitism, or just be stupid marketing ....?

  You can download and listen to some of the podcasts on Dave's site and even contribute your own.

One other example of museum podcasting: A New York art Web site, woostercollective.com, recently made a sound-seeing tour of the Jean-Michel Basquiat retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum, which the Web site's creators made in hushed tones while wandering through the show, sometimes quoting from the museum's official audio guide, which they listened to as they chatted.

This project also has wonderful implications for museum educators.  I'm exicted that Webbloged
is not only thinking about the possibilities, but setting up some action learning.   Let's watch all this closely.

Technorati Tag:  ArtMobs

Comments

[Ed]

Beth, tell me more about the value you see in podcasting (and whether/why you think there's really a market for it.) I'm still a skeptic. Any time I have available to listen to something is dedicated to music. I'm just not that interested in the spoken word (except for odd episodes of "This American Life"), and I don't feel like I'm that out of the mainstream--or am I? I realize a lot of people listen to talk radio, and podcasting could fill that space, but it just seems so niche-y. What am I missing?

[Beth]

Ed,

The value in podcasting that I see is specific to enhancing the experience of a museum visitor. I go to art museums to and look and think about the art. I've also used the audio guides, but sometimes they can be - well boring. (The audio guides for kids are far more engaging ...) I say with all due respect the curators of the world and while I learn alot about the art from the "expert" in my headphones -- it doesn't allow me to make it personally meaningful. Listening to a podcast by someone I know or making my own podcast would add meaning to me - much in the same way that tags create meaning for the users of the information.

In terms of the larger market for podcasting, I don't know the answer. But why would Apple build podcasting into Itune?

http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2005/05/podcast_support.html

[Ed]

Thanks, Beth--that's helpful. I definitely see the value of an unmediated, individual voice (uh, literally) in situations like that. I'm still skeptical about the larger market potential (although Apple's moves are interesting, it's not really costing them anything to make iTunes more podcast-friendly, so I'm not sure what it signifies.) It just requires such a significant investment of time to determine whether audio content is worthwhile (as opposed to a website, which can be scanned for relevance in a few seconds.) Given that I prefer to listen to music anyway, that's enough of a barrier for me that I'm just not going to bother with podcasts for general informational or entertainment purposes. But it's interesting thinking about other, more situation-specific applications like your museum guides.

[Beth]

Ed,

I'm an NPR and This American Life junkie, but also listen to music. With that said, I don't necessarily surf audio files like I do web pages simply because of the time involved to evaluate it as you note. I do listen to audio files from a specific source I'm already familiar with if I think it would add to my understanding of the topic.

I think the biggest potential is in the education area and as you write about specific situations like the museum.

This was posted the other day by Will Richardson - an overview of what's happening in the school related to podcasting.
http://www.weblogg-ed.com/2005/05/30#a3613