museumsandtheweb.com - mobile technology

The Amsterdam Museum App – exploring heritage in participatory culture

Dickvandijk — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 11:35:11 +0000

MW2011

Published Paper:

Exploring Heritage in Participatory Culture: The MuseumApp

Keywords:

mobile technology

Keywords:

social media

Keywords:

creative research

Keywords:

user experience

Keywords:

narrative

Abstract:

People have always wanted to tell stories about their experiences and to connect to shared meaning and values. The advent of social media enforces this even more. At the same time our mobile phones are steadily turning into digital Swiss Army Knives full of informative, creative and social potential. To make sure the development of new tools and systems is “culture smart” and to explore how “mobile ready” cultural audiences are the Amsterdam Historical Museum (AHM), media lab Waag Society and cultural funder DOEN develop in close collaboration the Amsterdam Museum App.

Strengthening a visitor’s sense of place and context (the outside world, the city) to the museum experience — and therefore, connecting a living society with our formal heritage — means exploring the social dimensions of formal and informal heritage sites and creating new ways of engaging with an audience.

The Amsterdam Museum App is a first step in creating a GPS based, location aware heritage platform, in which museums can create their own multimedia city tours and location based games, that does just this: connecting history and current events to locations in the city in an interactive and fun way, allowing the users to be the curator of their own experience. Publishing their own images, comments or suggestions related to the tour to other audiences on other (social) platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter. The core technology is a proven technical backbone (7scenes.com) publishing location based content to iPhone and Android devices, which is developed further in close collaboration with the project partners.

The development of the Museum App in so called ‘Locative Labs’ – a short, repetitive, interdisciplinary and intense collaboration, think 2 days per week, for 6 weeks - is a unique meeting of curators, media professionals, concept developers and technical colleagues in the AHM and Waag Society. The joint development is based on experiment: rapid prototyping and testing of city tours; and on the spot content development. The Lab setting is one of the methods used by Waag Society to do creative research: explore interaction principles and demo innovative solutions in a real setting, with real stakeholders and real users.

AHM will be the launching customer of the Museum App, after which the platform will be open to all cultural organizations. The Amsterdam Museum App will feature four interactive routes exploring the fundamental aspects of the city of Amsterdam, the creative, the entrepreneurial, the tolerant and the civic agency; connecting the outside experience closely to the narrative of the new permanent indoor exhibition Amsterdam in Close up (opening, May 2011).

In the Labs the partners explore novel social media practices as a new way to engage audiences with heritage. Connecting it to personal accounts and social network communities might help in getting (more / new / different) audiences meaningfully involved.

Type:

Paper - in formal session

User-Generated Community

Site:

http://www.waag.org/project/ahmlocativelab

Authors:

Dick van Dijk

Augmented Reality and the Museum Experience

mschavemaker — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 20:19:21 +0000

MW2011

Published Paper:

Augmented Reality and the Museum Experience

Keywords:

augmented reality

Keywords:

user experience

Keywords:

mobile technology

Keywords:

Storytelling in urban Realm

Keywords:

Future of Curating

Keywords:

contemporary art

Abstract:

In 2009 Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam started the project ARtours. This project investigates and produces augmented reality tours around the collection of the Stedelijk and modern art in general. The project aims at both indoor and outdoor applications:

Indoor as a replacement or addition to the classic audio tour.
Outdoor as a new experience and new interactions with modern art

In both instances not only the current collection is used but also new developed art forms and new narratives will be incorporated in the project.

The paper will describe the project in all its aspects. Ranging from AR technologies and AR mobile browsers to storytelling and enhancing the user experience inside and outside the museum. The two year project is halfway. Several pilots and its conclusions from this first period will be described. One of the pilots is ‘Ik op het museumplein’ (myself on the museum square). Virtual three dimensional art is presented on specific locations and accessible through the augmented reality browser Layar. Outside on the museum square in Amsterdam people with an Iphone or Adroid smart phone with Layar can walk around and engage with virtual art (virtual 3D objects and sound). Another pilot is a virtual art library. Again with the use of Layar users can borrow art objects from the museum and place these objects in the space around them. This pilot was conducted during the Lowlands music festival in the summer. A third pilot is the design tour. In an walk through the city of Amsterdam users can experience (interior, product, graphic) design in it’s context. Users can walk from one virtual object to another and learn more about the object and the place it is linked to.

The project focuses on a wide range of aspects such as technical, user experience, creation and management of information, indoor and outdoor, young and older audiences.

Type:

Paper - in formal session

Augmented Reality

Authors:

margriet schavemaker

Paul Stork

Hein Wils

Ebelien Pondaag

Implementing Mobile Augmented Reality Applications for Cultural Institutions

DBoyer — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 14:27:43 +0000

MW2011

Published Paper:

Implementing Mobile Augmented Reality Applications for Cultural Institutions

Keywords:

augmented reality

Keywords:

mobile technology

Keywords:

public engagement

Keywords:

historic photographs

Keywords:

location-based apps

Abstract:

Mobile applications have increasingly become a regular part of the outreach and engagement strategies of many cultural institutions. As smart phone use grows, some organizations have sought to go beyond typical mobile applications and integrate location-based and augmented reality technology as a way to further access to collections, create new methods for understanding and interpreting the items, and increase communication between the organizations and the communities they serve.

In Spring 2010, the City of Philadelphia Department of Records received an NEH Digital Humanities Start-Up grant to investigate mobile augmented reality technology for use in displaying overlays of historic photographs on the current urban landscape. Users simply point the cameras on their smart phones at a location of interest and the historic photographs and selected data related to the site are automatically accessed right through the camera display. The project utilized the resources of PhillyHistory.org, a collaborative online database of historic photographs and maps from five Philadelphia area institutions, and the PhillyHistory.org smart phone web application, a location-based web app that provides access to the collections via iPhone and Android smart phones.

As a growing number of museums and humanities institutions from Philadelphia to London to Sydney are turning their attention to new technologies like augmented reality to revitalize interest in their collections, this paper will examine the state of mobile augmented reality technology and its current and possible applications for use within cultural institutions. Through an exploration and evaluation of the successes and challenges of the Department of Records’ augmented reality project, we will investigate how this technology can be applied to other archives and museums and whether such efforts have proven valuable as an engagement and outreach tool.

Type:

Paper - in formal session

Mobile Parade

Site:

http://www.phillyhistory.org/

Authors:

Deborah Boyer

Josh Marcus