My slides are here; the podcast of the talk is here. If you have comments or ideas to build on this work, there are pages on the Museum Mobile wiki dedicated to the topic:

• On mobile experience design
• My manifesto for a new mobile information architecture
• And some ideas for a new information architecture

In this podcast, Peter recounts his experiences with mobile multimedia at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) from 2000/2001 to the present day. He also speaks candidly about the future of mobile, companies and business models in the industry, as well as the ‘open source’ project that’s being pursued collaboratively on the Museum Mobile wiki. In closing, he answers questions from Dave Patten of the Science Museum in London, MoMA Learning (Beth Harris, Director of Digital Learning), and educator at the St Louis Art Museum and Michael Mouw from the Minnesota Historical Society.

Be sure to check out SFMOMA’s multimedia programs, podcasts, and in particular, writings by student contributor, Radford Leon, from Herbert Hoover Middle School, celebrated by Peter in this interview.

Peter & I would love to hear your thoughts and feedback on our conversation!

Compare it to Chris Alexander‘s solution for the San Jose Museum of Art. I’m interviewing Chris & Ted on Sunday May 17, 2009 – you’re welcome to post your questions for them here!

Join the opensource ‘Museums to Go’ collaboration on the wiki, and check out our ‘parent’ wiki as well with a wealth of resources collected around the 2008 Tate Handheld Conference. Both museums and vendors are contributing their best practices, solutions and code to the community with the aim of improving access and interpretation to collections around the world.

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…

Beth has now joined MoMA in New York as the Director of Digital Learning. She, Steven and I are joined by Deborah Howes, head of educational media at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Titus Bicknell, technology analyst and former chief engineer for Antenna Audio. Over lunch on New Year’s day in 2009, we talk about why people don’t tend to prepare for their museum visit by downloading podcast tours and other materials – as they might for a run, a flight, or their daily commutes – and what museums can do about it in light of the ‘digital age divide’. We consider the other end of the visit lifecycle as well, in terms of how people can ‘bookmark’ and take information away from the museum for deeper study later – but will only want to do so if the content they encounter during their visit has ‘put them in the picture’ and engaged them. At the heart of the conversation is the question of conversation itself as a context for learning, and how its strategic use helps transform the museum from Acropolis into Agora: a platform where many voices can come together and even the amateur and the outsider are empowered to make discoveries, fall in love, and sing of their passions.

‘Random access’ to tour content, allowing visitors to chart their own route through the museum or gallery, became possible as digital audio technologies replaced cassette tapes. But even as digital audio players increased museums’ ability to offer a wide range of tours and languages on a single device, ‘information on demand’ audio design obviated certain kinds of theatrical and narrative engagement. With the visitor moving between two minute ‘stops’ in no predictable order, the tour could not develop a complex story over time, nor immerse the visitor in a continuous soundtrack to accompany the museum’s visuals. “There are always trade-offs as technology advances,” comments Torgersen. As new 21st century technologies continue to shape the nature of what you can do with content, “you have to decide what story you want to tell first, and then choose the best tools to tell it,” counsels Hardman.

From short-range radio systems and IR triggers to iPhones and GPS – with a short stop to hear how the first movie projector was put on tour – follow two of the pioneers of performative sound as they trace the development of their understanding that “all these technologies are tools; it’s the content that makes them valid.”

A vodcast evaluation of MoMA Wifi and MoMA Audio coming up next. More about MoMA Audio and MoMA Wifi on MoMA’s gorgeous new website!

He is also at the origin of another aphorism I often invoke:
“I have only made this letter rather long because I have not had time to make it shorter.” Lettres
provinciales, 16, Dec.14,1656.

Despite my fondness for this quotation, I am looking forward to having the superiority of simplicity (or KISS principle), implied here, challenged in an upcoming paper from Koven Smith. In response to Tate Modern’s Handheld Conference (Sept 4-5, 2008), Koven will be sharing his provocative insights into the future of multimedia interpretation during the Handheld Workshop at Museums & the Web, April 15-18, 2009 in Indianapolis. After years of trimming away the automatic triggering, the instant messaging and other bells & whistles to make new mobile technologies fit within the old audio tour mold, maybe we’re about to find that our handheld projects don’t even come close to being ambitious enough?

In celebration, then, and anticipation of ambitious new beginnings, I’ll lift the veil on plans for MuseumMobile.info:

If I can settle on an audio signature (or none), the first podcasts for the online course on Mobile Interpretation will come out in the next day or so. I’ve been interviewing interesting and expert museum professionals on how they develop content and use technology for audiences on the move. The last time I edited was using Super8 film and Scotch tape, so getting up to speed on digital technology has been a challenge! But it’s fun to get back to my filmmaking roots with zippy new tools, and learn some of the skills my old colleagues in the audio tour business use to such great effect. I won’t pretend to that level yet, but am inspired by the brilliant and entertaining conversations that I’ll soon be able to share with you!

In the meanwhile, feel free to shoot me questions, demos, suggestions and comments on all things mobile for the cultural world. Anything that looks useful to a broad audience I’ll post on the Handheld Wiki as part of the resources and best practices in mobile interpretation being collected there. Feel free to join the community there, or lodge your contributions on MuseumMobile.info if they are more specifically directed at me.

Yours,
Nancy