Posts Tagged ‘museums’

Trash Tracker: Technology and Art

Thursday, July 28th, 2011


(image credit: SENSEable City Lab at MIT)

Ever wanted to see where your stuff goes after you throw it out? We’re not talking about touring landfills here – we mean literally seeing its whole path and trajectory in Technicolor.

Well, a new exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York is displaying the fruits of two MIT researchers’ trash-tracking labor. Carlo Ratti and Assaf Biderman developed these little trackers that tell you in real time where something is for a whole year. And then they did something really cool with them…

They gave the trackers to people to attach to anything they were about to throw out – from fruit to furniture – and turned all that data into cool and colorful visualizations like the one you see up there (^^). The idea is that maybe people will start to pay attention to their trash, or figure out new and better ways to deal with it (i.e. improve their environmental impact).

Pretty cool. Or, rather, pretty and cool…

What do you do with your old electronic gadgets?

Studying You Studying Art

Monday, August 23rd, 2010

In an attempt to improve their offerings, museums have begun a program of patron espionage…

  • Nowadays, museums are supposed to be interactive and engaging. So museums are following their visitors around, trying to figure out which exhibits they like, which placards are confusing, and how useful the museum maps really are.
  • Exhibit evaluation can also be tied to a museum’s public funding, a fact that may be contributing to the visitor observation trend sweeping the nation.
  • In the 1920s, during some of the first observation studies, researchers noted things like length of time spent at each exhibit and the direction they were most likely to turn in upon entering a gallery (right).

Facts & Figures

  • The Detroit Institute of Arts used covert observation (among other feedback collection techniques)  to redesign its galleries in 2007.
  • Museums can dedicate as much as 10% of a program’s budget to the evaluation of its success
  • The Science Museum of Minnesota spends $900,000 each year evaluating programs with its staff of 12.

Best Quote

“Whichever way you do it, a significant portion of your visitors find the map upside down.” – Judy Koke, Deputy Director of Education and Public Programming at the Art Gallery of Ontario, which is entered from the north side