I’ve just been asked to give a guest lecture at my university next week, which I am super-excited about. The talk will be a casual lunchtime lecture pitched primarily at Fine Art students, but will also include others from around the University. Because the talk isn’t for a particular subject, I thought I’d take the opportunity to talk about all the interesting projects and ideas that are emerging out of the museum tech field.
Obviously I have my own favourite projects, ideas, blog posts, talks etc that I will be discussing, but this seemed like a really lovely opportunity to ask for your favourites too. Which muse tech projects are rocking your world right now? What is your favourite use of mobiles in museums, or your favourite website? Which blog posts should I direct people to, so as to inspire them to think further about the issues? Which talks/youtube videos have left you thinking and rewatching them time and again for inspiration? Whose work are you loving? Which books/journals etc are you reading?
With the nominations for Best of the Web closing last week, many of you will have already been thinking about some of these questions anyway, but if not, now is a great time. And although recent projects are great, I’d also love to hear about any older projects that inspired you and led you to rethink your work practices or your next project. Where have you drawn inspiration from? What work in other fields has influenced you?
I’d love to hear exactly what inspired you, in the hope that it can inspire other people to be excited about this field too. My hope is that by catching the interest of these hapless young university students early, I can convert them into being totally pro-tech museum-lovers, goers or workers.
So… What is your favourite museum tech idea or project? And what do you love about it?
museum geek 
Koven Smith’s Ignite talk and subsequent panel at Museum Computer Network on “What’s the point of the museum website” was the single most influential idea for me this year. I think it has gotten everybody thinking, really. – Which is great!
http://kovenjsmith.com/archives/432
Hey Lori – thanks! Koven’s Ignite talk has absolutely made it into my presentation for the students tomorrow. I cannot think of something that has been more influential for me, either.
And what an engaging lecture it was!
from a hapless student…
Oh my goodness! I have been rueing that it was so disordered, so it is so lovely to hear it was enjoyable. Thank you so much!
Hi Suse,
this seems like an interesting approach to putting history (in this case science) into context:
http://www.chronozoomproject.org/#/t55/t174/t66/t46/t161/t9/t160/t299@x=-1.261222592586112&y=-27.080794457367983&w=5.579194720252754&h=28.883092270806014
The metaphor might get messy when the information is dense though, e.g. the last 50 years of scientific development.
Are you aware of any body doing something like this for Art?
Andrew
Andrew, have a look at this slide show by Lev Manovich
There are some interesting ideas/projects that he shows there, utilising visualisation to show the hue and saturation of six impressionist artists etc. There is a lot of interesting potential research to be done in these areas in the coming years. It’s actually a really interesting time to be getting into art and technology (both as a theorist, and I imagine a practitioner too).