Loic.

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.

I see you were in KL…did you see the ARIF handheld at Petrosains?

S

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.

Anyway, I hope that your book exists somewhere in Oxford!

Cheers!

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!!

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!

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…

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.