Thanks for the introduction Nik, but where do I start?
My inclination is to dive in and share my confoundedness about the abundance of auto-triggered audio tours in Israel. Or to recall my nostalgia at discovering Japan to be not just the hi-tech whiz country of my imagination, but apparently the graveyard for much of EuropeUSA’s old audio guide equipment. I’ve also got a post brewing about “why should visitors take the audio guide? I often wouldn’t.” And of course there’s the one that will start: “Over the past 11 months and 257 museums across 49 cities in the Middle East, Asia and Australasia the most innovative handheld guide I found was…”
For, since co-editing a book exploring the potential of mobile interpretation tools in the museum (see Nik’s earlier post), visiting museums across those three continents, and contemplating the above is what I’ve done. I quit my job as a London museum consultant / project manager and traveled to cities around the world visiting museums, talking to them about their in-gallery interpretation strategies, and evaluating all types of handheld guide installations.
The following tag cloud shows the location of the 257 museums I visited:
The objective of this research was identify practical (best?) practice principles/patterns within:
- Why do museums around the world use handheld guides, and how are they best used?
- How are these digital tools presented to the visitor, and why would they opt to take them?
I’ll be blogging about my experiences with these questions on Musematic for the next few months, inter-mixing them with quirks from the medium’s history or anything else that grabs my attention.
And because this is my first post – and to highlight just how far handheld guides have limped over the past 57 years – I thought I’d end with a shout-out to the world’s first handheld guide. And no, to my surprise (and annoyance having flown across the ‘pond’ to visit the relevant archives), audio guides weren’t invented in the USA. Sure, American museums were early adapters – the AMNH debuted their ‘Guide-A-Phone’ in 1954, and the NGA Washington’s ‘LecTour’ was premiered by a slightly perplexed HM Queen Elizabeth II when she visited in 1957 – but it appears that the Stedelijk Museum in Amstedam, Holland, actually ‘invented’ them.
When I finally visited this museum, they kindly managed to locate in their storage an old box of the original hardware: in size and the level of design-detailing, they actually reminded me of IPods. I also there rooted-out a piece of 1952 news footage heralding the launch of this Dutch innovation, which I hope you’ll find as fun as I do. See www.snipurl.com/stedelijk
Enjoy!
Loic.
April 29th, 2009 10:00
Dear Loic,
My name is Clarence and I am a MBA student with Bristol Business School, Bristol.
I was just browsing through the net and trying get some imformation on “Audio Tours” and luckly came across your post. It definately impressed me. I am currently working on a Feasibility study – my client have come up with an Bluetooth Equipment which runs on Solar cells and can trasmist MP3 files directly to the visitor’s mobile phones.
As per my research on the internet, I have come across many US Musuems providing Audio Tours through cell phones to the visitors, however no musuems or castles in UK have currently impelemted or undertaken this option inspite of being so much cost effective.
Coming form a Consultancy background and being a Technology lover..I would like to have your opinion on the feasibility of this product.
Hope to hear form you soon.
Regards,
Clarence Christie
+44 7942845557
May 4th, 2009 06:58
Hi Loic,
Many thanks for your post, the tag cloud, and the video! Ironic that those first handhelds look like ipod touches! I haven’t read your book yet, and perhaps ther re some answers there, but I’m curious as to why you didn’t visit museums in Europe? If the Stedelijk was the first museum to use the devices, how has the handheld developed there? Look forward to more posts.
May 4th, 2009 10:47
Great that you’ll be sharing your experiences online, Loic! I particularly enjoy the mobile history bits.
Just to answer Clarence Christie, there have been quite a few cellphone tours in the UK: Tate Modern & Britain & Kew Gardens just to name a few. If you check out the case history on the Kew project on the Tate Handheld wiki, you’ll see the contact details for one of the main suppliers of cellphone tours in the UK; they can give you a longer list I’m sure: http://tatehandheldconference.pbworks.com/Case+Studies
What’s the download speed of the Bluetooth transmitter? When we were looking at that, it was 20sec per mb, so quite a bit longer than most visitors were willing to wait…
May 6th, 2009 08:50
Hi Ephemerald, and thanks for your response.
In answer to your question about why I’ve not included European museums, or American museums for that matter, in the project/tag-cloud, there are two reasons:
1. For clarity, I defined this project as taking place outside of my natural environment; i.e. Europe, and increasingly, the USA. However, being a Frenchman based in London, I regularly visit museums in Europe and fully intend to reference practice examples I have observed there, as well as from the USA, in my postings.
2. I wanted to study museums that operated in a different context to EuropeUSA museums. My logic was that in alternative social/economic/political contexts, museums would adopt alternative assumptions about the role of museums, and the nature of a museum visit / the visitor experience etc. These in turn would influence the use of in-gallery technology systems. My objective was to research these differences, and see what could be learnt from them.
That being said, the ‘museum’ is in itself a European concept/(construct?), so retrospectively, my logic may have been somewhat flawed. But I’ll leave that for another, equally fascinating, debate…
As for your question about how the system was developed, I’m currently preparing a blog post that will hopefully answer your questions. Please though, don’t let this put you off buying my book!
May 6th, 2009 09:35
To add a personal anecdote to Nancy’s response to Clarence Christie, this w/e at the AAM Expo I encountered a fun/interesting device that should earn itself a shelf in the marketplace of low-cost solutions for the on-site delivery of audio to visitors. It’s a fixed-location, ‘self-powered’ audio player which has an in-built dynamo. To hear the audio, visitors ‘power’ the device by turning the crank on the outside of the box. Ingenious concept, no infrastructure requirements, and it must be recession-proof! See http://snipurl.com/torm8
I also agree with Nancy’s comments about visitor’s willingness to wait ‘long’ on-site for a content download. And maybe we shouldn’t be too surprised by this: after all, isn’t the average time spent in front of an artwork less than 8 seconds?…
That, of course, is without the audio guide!!
May 18th, 2009 04:05
Great Post! It is great to see people interested in post-WW2 museum history. I know that in my own research at the Science Museum that a similar system was discussed for at least part of the Museum … oddly, there was no discussion about implementing a system for the whole museum, instead it was being considered for a single gallery. Wish that I could find that reference right now!
Anyway, I hope that your book exists somewhere in Oxford!
Cheers!
May 22nd, 2009 08:54
Thanks Thad for your comment.
And its got me digging out my research on the Science Museum’s audio guide from my attic: I’ll blog about it when I find said materials. But off the top of my head, I think the audio guide was installed initially in one gallery, but then expanded into four others. It started in 1961, was the first audio guide in the UK, and the project was led by the museum in partnership with the Ministry of Works. The latter were concerned that British museums were falling behind their European counterparts with their interpretation techniques; by 1960, as well as the Stedelijk, numerous other museums including the Louvre were using audio guides, but no British museums.
The Science Museum audio guide never really ‘took off’; I think it lasted 4 years, eventually being removed as part of the audio guide hardware shift from radio tours to tape tours. I’m writing about this in my next post. It did though inspire one of my favorite audio guide quotes, by the then Science Museum director, Dr. Ward, about expanding the installation further:
“Tests have merely shown that 9 out of 10 visitors are very enthusiastic about the idea, but I repeat that so would they be if we offered free drinks in the gallery. This proves nothing.”
Loic.
June 4th, 2009 09:10
Loic,
I see you were in KL…did you see the ARIF handheld at Petrosains?
S
June 5th, 2009 07:02
Hi Scott.
Yes I was in KL, but unfortunately didn’t get to visit the Petrosains Science Centre and use the ARIF: I was foiled by the apparently international “museums must be closed on Mondays” rule!
I’m pretty disappointing about that, as, along with the Experience Music Project (Seattle), this was one of the first museum multimedia tour; its most certainly the longest running.
There’s a great Flickr image and description about the Petrosains handheld at http://tr.im/nweN
Why did you ask if I had taken it: have you had the opportunity to do so?
Loic.
June 5th, 2009 07:49
…
Though on second attempt, a little focused googling suggests that you may be the same Scott that coordinated the design and development of the ARIF?
If so, you must have some stories to share from that project.
Loic.