The International Spy Museum in Washington, DC now offers an amazing taste of what it’s like with a GPS-triggered game and tour of the city. Inspired by two real FBI cases – Operation Lemon-Aid, conducted in 1977, and KITTY HAWK in 1966 – Spy in the City is a 1.2 mile (1.5 hour), $16 experience using the BarZ Adventures GPS Ranger device. Code-named ‘Geo-Cobra’, the multimedia handheld uses Flash to simulate the experience of receiving text messages, audio, video, photographs and other breaking intelligence from headquarters as you track a foreign agent. You scan for fingerprints, descramble audio messages and decipher local monuments to identify your quarry.

It’s an ambitious application of the new technology, offering lots of important lessons for others interested in trying the treacherous world of location-based mobile, as well as exploring the value of gaming in education. For those less intrepid, this interview with the tour’s author, Amanda Ohlke, and the Museum’s Executive Director, Peter Earnest, also shares ideas on lower-tech mobile programs like scavenger hunts, and how they can be leveraged for team-building and other group experiences. After all, “it’s not about the technology” – though I do try to get some hints from Peter, a former spy with the CIA himself, as to what new mobile tricks we might inherit from the clandestine services in the next generation!

So don’t be surprised if this podcast self-destructs after you’ve heard it…

Nina Simon with Morris Louis's Faces, 1959, at the Smithsonian American Art Museum

In January 2009, I got to revisit that painting and many other artworks in the American Art Museum, including an exhibition of Frank Gohlke’s photography, with Nina as we talked about our experiences and aspirations for mobile interpretation. Along the way we recalled Peter Samis‘s trope of ‘visual velcro‘ in describing how interpretation can be essential to helping visitors connect with certain artworks in particular. We talked about the power of dialogue and the conversational tone, as exemplified in the SmartHistory.org podcasts. Our views of cellphone tours and headphones got tossed around, with an idea for podcasts that can work both as gallery tours and as learning experiences beyond the museum. And we shared our enthusiasm for games and how they can bring adaptive learning experiences to museum interpretation, referencing Jane McGonigal’s talk for AAM’s Center for the Future of Museums.

Thanks to Nina, I got to look at the art museum for the first time through the revealing lens of the science museum. She pointed out that science museums often invoke their visitors as scientists or researchers, helping them make discoveries and relive in some way the subject as professionals experience it. Why, she asks, do art museums not position the visitor as an artist, curator, or art historian? How can we all – visitors and museum staff alike – give ourselves license to create and innovate within the museum experience?

Hear the podcast…

This was my first year attending WebWise and I was mightily impressed by the quality of the debates and the organization. It was extremely useful to me to broaden the view a bit and see how libraries and archives share and differ in their struggles and approaches to Web2.0. I twittered most of the salient points I gleaned from the presentations; you can see these and the contributions of others at #WebWise.

My only trouble with the conference was that the organizers, understandably, wanted the slides for my presentation a good 10 days before my talk so they could put them in the conference’s printed binder. But being uncharacteristically punctual in delivering my slides meant that by the time the conference rolled around, I was thoroughly bored with what I had to say. With Len Steinbach‘s encouragement I rewrote the presentation and tried to fashion it into a sort of game at the last minute, finishing 15 minutes before our panel started, and of course having the obligatory technical problems getting it onto the presentation computer to boot! Ah, the sweet smell of terror and adrenalin! Thankfully, Titus Bicknell provided IT support by phone and saved the day, yet again.

Here are my slides from the talk; feel free to download and use them as you wish. I ask only that if you have a chance, please try the American Art Museum‘s new game, Artful Abe, and let me know if you think it works. It’s our first attempt at using Google Maps and Flickr to create a game that can be played both on-site and purely online for those who can’t make it to the museum. We have one intermittent technical problem we could use some tips on resolving: occasionally the text in the Google Maps pop-ups spills beyond the border of the pop-up box. Other than that, I think the content, as always, is our biggest challenge: is it too easy, too hard, engaging? If you have suggestions on how we can improve, I’d be extremely grateful for them.

Slides ci-dessous; si vous voyez les ‘Notes’, vous pourriez lire la présentation en entière:

Le lien au webcast de la presentation arrivera bientôt…

Version anglaise…

I’m off to the Pompidou Center tomorrow, to speak in their seminar, “Museology, museography and new means of addressing the public,” (Muséologie, muséographie et nouvelles formes d’adresse au public 2008/2009) on Wednesday, hosted by their Institute of Research and Innovation (IRI). My talk is called, “Games in the Agora: What’s at stake in the 21st century museum,” and in it I’ll try to use American Art’s Ghosts of a Chance ARG to illustrate some of the principles I hold dear about the museum mission in the 21st century:

You can download my slides here: N Proctor Pompidou11 Feb09

And here are some other great references on Ghosts of a Chance and gaming in museums in general:

Please share other great reads you know of in this field with us too!