“I never take audio guides.  I can’t stand them!”

I love that phrase.  I think it encapsulates everything museums have got wrong with mobile interpretation.  I’ve now heard it so often that I’ve resigned myself to producing a polite smile each time I hear it; I’m rarely able to summon the strength to follow it up with an inquiry as to the background behind such a life-changing decision.

That’s now though.  Before, I use to want to explode:

“What do you mean you can’t stand audio guides?  It’s just a piece of hardware.  You realise that the content on them is different at each museum?

Yes, I understand that it was particularly dull the way the director droned on about the uniqueness of Seurat’s painting technique on the last one, and I’m really sorry you paid extra for it, but I promise he won’t be there next time!

And be reasonable.  Did you stop going to the cinema after you watched Titanic?  No, exactly. An audio guide, like the cinema, is just a platform.  I agree that the content on these things can be disappointing, but that’s no reason to give-up on the platform itself.”

Recently though, I realised this kind of rant is pointless.  Despite the (I hope) logic of such outbursts, I’ve come to believe that it’s not the visitor’s fault that they can’t stand audio guides. They’re actually the victims in all this; the museums are the culprits.

Let me explain how I see it.  (For simplicity, I’m adopting the term audio guide to refer to all type of audio-multimedia-GPS-RFID-QR-pod-phone guides etc).

A visitor arrives at a museum and, before breaching the gallery threshold, is obliged into an early decision.  “Would you like to take the audio guide?” the museum asks.

It seems like a simple question.  But if we stop and look at this from the visitor’s perspective – a reasonable action considering audio guides are a visitor service – they’re probably asking themself:

“Well, why in the devil is there an audio guide, and why should I take it?  Especially if they want me to pay extra for it!”

It was this museum-visitor exchange that became a major museum bug-bear while traveling.  Eventually, when a museum asked whether I wanted the audio guide, I’d ask why I should want it.  When this question was not by a shrug, my part of the exchange developed something like:

•  “Interesting. It includes the Maharaja, the Maharini, the Prince, and the Princess talking about what its like to live in the Fort?  And the Queen Mother too?!  Fantastic, that sounds like fun!

•  There’s not a single label anywhere?! So, if I want to know why the Roman’s built this city in North Jordan, and why its still so well preserved, I’ll need the audio guide, right?

•  [Speaking clearly].  Are there any labels in English? iie?  But the audio guide is in English?  Wonderful.  Then I’d love one please.  Arigato gozaimashita.

•  [As someone hands it to me as I enter].  Oh, it’s integral to the experience.  Ok, thank you.”

Without such an exchange, having not yet been into the galleries, I don’t believe that I, nor any other visitor, would have the necessary information with which to make an informed decision about whether to take the audio guide.

At the Handheld Conference Online last week, when asked where they have taken a great audio tour, Alcatraz, a museum whose audio guide is integral to the experience and given without prompting to every visitor, was one of the most popular answers.  I personally found that interesting because when someone tells me they hate audio guides, I think to myself, “send them to Alcatraz!”  Its not that I’m advocating jail time for audio guide skeptics – the prison system would probably implode just at the prospect of so many new inmates.   And nor is it because the Alcatraz audio guide delivers such an engaging experience.

Moreover, I’m thinking; send them to Alcatraz, and I bet they take the audio guide.  Because, in fact, I don’t believe that these people are genuinely ‘anti-audio guides’ per say.  Moreover, after some bad experiences – and to be honest, there are enough bad audio guide experiences floating around for this to have occurred – they are quite rightly fed-up of having uninformed decisions to take the audio guide backfire on them.  So now they’ve decided it’s simple not worth the risk, nor the oft-require financial investment, and swear never to take one again.

But at Alcatraz, by distributing the audio guide to all visitors by default, the museum is ‘telling’ visitors that they need the audio guide: they aren’t leaving the visitor to guess whether they need it or not.

I don’t use this example to advocate the free and universal distribution of audio guides at all museums.  Audio guides most certainly are not a universal pre-requisite for all museum experiences.  And just distributing them free doesn’t actually provide much information to visitors as to whether they are useful.  Rather, I use this example to highlight where a museum is taking the initiative in helping the visitor decide whether or not to take the audio guide.  By contrast, if we provide no information, and simply advertise to visitors that ‘audio guides are available’, we’re actually encouraging visitors to draw on personal notions of whether they like audio guides in order to decide whether to take it or not.

And from my experience, this is what we’re doing.  I’ve illustrated this post with a selection of images of audio guide distribution desks and marketing materials, but this was barely a selection: I find these to be the norm.  Museums rarely provide much information that tells visitors why there is an audio guide, or why they might want to take it.  At my most cynical, I’d say this is sometimes because a lot of museums aren’t too certain themselves, (or because they don’t want to tell visitors that the audio guide was installed first and foremost as a risk-free opportunity to make money), but I’ll save that for another day.

It is ironic that within the museum tech. community we agree that ‘it’s not about the technology’.  Yet, with audio guides, we make visitors opt to take them or not based solely on the technology.

For years now audio guides have been advertised simply as the hardware, and in doing so, we’ve implicitly reinforced the idea that the experience these technologies deliver is similar at each site.  We can’t therefore now blame the visitor if they’ve concluded that they don’t like audio guides, whatever the site.

If someone asks if you want to go to the cinema, before you agree, you ask “what’s showing?”

Like the cinema, the audio guides itself is not, and should not be presented as, the deal clincher.  I know that ‘sexy’ technologies like multimedia tours, and IPodTouches/IPhones currently act as deal clinchers, but like an I-Max, after a couple of experiences, I’m sure the novelty will wear off.  And then what?  Find a new sexy technology in which to package the audio guide?  Or give visitors the information that will help them see beyond the technology, and so make an informed decision on whether its offering the type of experience they’ll enjoy?

Whilst the techie device stuff is absolutely fascinating and I love it, I think we need to dedicate more attention to the latter.  Its here, rather than the technology itself, that I believe we’ve the greatest ground to make up!

This post is an adaptation of a presentation I delivered at AAM conference 2009, entitled “Visitors just want to know ‘why?’” available on SlideShare at  http://tr.im/m5Gt

THE HARDWARE & WIRELESS NETWORKS
The technology for the Stedelijk audio guide was developed by the Dutch electronics company, Philips, and is probably best described as a closed-circuit short wave radio broadcasting system.  Essentially, the audio output of an analogue playback tape recorder served as the broadcast station, and transmission was via a loop aerial.  The audio would be broadcast through the aerial and picked up by listeners/visitors through a portable radio receiver with headphones, when inside the loop.

The system was actually developed for cinemas as a service to the hard-of-hearing.  (This is why the news-footage commentator opens with the quip: “This is not a meeting for the hard-of-hearing.”)  In cinemas the loop aerial would be installed around designated seats within a theatre hall.  Those visitors with hearing difficulties could request a receiver and headphones, and thus receive a personal and amplified version of the movie’s soundtrack when seated in one of the designated seats.

The Stedelijk Museum adopted an identical installation save that the loop-aerial was installed into the skirting board around the outside of the galleries.  This created a larger audio-capture zone, and so was more suited for group visits around a museum, rather than just an individual.

I think it’s interesting here to emphasise the fact that already in 1952 museums were using wireless networks for the delivery of content to visitors.  Although the difficulty of creating a network that provided coverage throughout a museum eventually led to these systems’ demise, the practice has today been resurrected, only that radio has been substituted by WIFI.  Hopefully we’re now better equipped to get over the same reception issues…

And on the hardware front, there’s mileage too in recognising that audio guides derived from a forefather of today’s Audio Induction Loop.  The past fifty years has seen a revolution in audio amplification for the hard-of-hearing: whereas in the 1950s, institutions – like the cinema – provided the hardware and installed the network, now they need only provide the network, i.e. the Audio Induction Loop.  That’s because the hard-of-hearing own their own hardware, a hearing aid, which they use everyday of their life. I think this is a fascinating ‘echo’ for museums today, as we look to move away from owning and distributing handheld guides, preferring instead for visitors to use their cell phones to receive content from a museum-provided, wireless internet network.

WHY
Discovering how the system worked was the easy part: uncovering ‘why’ the museum decided to install it was a little more difficult. (Does that sounds familiar?)  Whilst I found no single source in the Stedelijk Museum archive that answered the question, I’ve deduced the following:

The system was launched for a high-profile temporary exhibition entitled ‘Vermeer: Real or Fake’.  Its function was to provide foreign language tours to visitors.  Since the audio was broadcast silently into the galleries – all visitors with an audio guide would receive/hear the identical audio simultaneously – the foreign language ‘tours’ had to be staggered throughout the day: the technology did not allow them to be run concurrently, (I’ll get onto multi-frequency broadcasts in my next post).  The start of each tour would be announced over the public address system.  And I never found out if visitors were charged extra for taking the tour, though the news footage suggest they were not.

In terms of the visitor service this system provided, arguably, it provided few benefits over a trained docent: visitors still had to arrive at the museum at a pre-determined time to take the tour, and many visitors, like today, expressed a preference for docent over recorded lecture. As the news footage observes however, it did allow the silent peace of the galleries to be preserved. (I’m biting my tongue!)

But I would position this audio guide as about more than just its function: it was also about an ambition to re-conceive the visitor’s relationship with the museum, an ambition which continues today as we explore the potential of IPhone applications and of social networking principles within the gallery space.  In the 1950s at the Stedelijk Museum, the driving force was Willem Sandberg, director of the museum from 1945 to 1968, and internationally recognised for his contribution to many of today’s ‘modern’ museum practices.  As James Bradburne wrote in the foreword to my book:

‘Willem Sandburg, … , who pioneered the first museum audio tour, also pioneered unjustified text (flush left, with equal word spacing), which he believed challenged convention and had important social overtones.  Sandburg was among the first to recognize the importance of the visitor’s as well as the museum’s voice, and to argue that they consist of a dialogue, and not a ‘top-down’ lecture.  Along with Marshall McLuhan, Sandburg was among the first to champion the ways in which the museum had to transform itself – long before the technology was available to do so.”

Other museum practices for which Sandburg deserves credit for pioneering include non-chronological hangs and the museum cafes: for the latter, gallery space was actually reclaimed!

Sandburg’s ideas caused a stir among the museum community, and the audio guide was no different.  Its launch coincided with the ICOM international conference, held in Amsterdam that year, and it’s ‘stir’ was felt internationally, and in few places more so that at American Museum of Natural History in New York, who promptly deciding to develop a similar system.  One of Sandburg’s contemporaries (while admittedly referring to a subsequent installation of the audio guide) enthused:

“The possibilities of this device are so great that in the future short wave lectures cannot be ignored by any museum.  In the future shortwave lectures discussing individual works of art will be installed in such a way that they can be heard by any visitor, at will.”

Above all, I believe that it was the innovation and potential embodied within the audio guide that best explains why the Stedelijk Museum ‘invented’ it.  Whilst one could claim that what was achieved by the system could have been achieved through trained docents, this is too narrow a perspective.  After all, this innovation went on to spawn what was arguably the most successful museum technology of the 20th century, and one of the most exciting of the early 21st century.

I’ve posted more images of the Stedelijk Museum audio guide, together with photos of other – as yet unsorted – handheld guide installations from around the world, onto Flickr.  See http://tr.im/lFWO

Loïc.

TRANSLATION OF DUTCH FILM COMMENTARY
‘This is not a meeting for the hard-of-hearing.  Rather these people are visitors of the Amsterdam Stedelijk museum, who are being guided in a special, modern way.  Via a hearing-aid/listening-device, they are given explanations and are guided to the different artworks.  The spoken text is recorded in various different languages onto a so-called ‘tape-recorder’.

[French language audio]

The audio from the magnetic tape goes via an amplifier to a ring-wire/antenna that is located along the baseboard/skirting of the galleries. The broadcast that comes from the ring-wire, makes it possible to pick-up the spoken word through a simple hearing aid with built in reel/spool, without disturbing the peace in the museum.

The earplugs are being carefully disinfected every time after use. Every visitor now receives such a device, and follows via the ingenious system the directions and indication of an invisible guide.

[Voice of guide; "Here we are standing in front of one of the incredulous falsifications by 'van Megeren' of Vermeer. The holes in the canvas are imputed to the forceful attempts by van Megeren to give the canvas an 'old' look. And if you all look to the right, at the original drawing of van Megeren, you will also see that there is great similarity between this head and that of the Christ-figure in the so-called Vermeer. And now we move on to the next example."]

This dutch scoop in this way of guiding, has generated interest abroad.”

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.