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Archive for March 2009
March 18th, 2009
Consumers in Sainsbury’s, who may already be overloading on the orange of the supermarket’s core branding, are now finding themselves swamped in the bright three-tone stripes of its Basics range. It’s a clamorous visual reminder, as if one were needed, of the hard times facing the economy.
As the gloom seeps from high finance down to the high street, purse strings are contracting, leaving retailers and brands jostling for a slice of dwindling consumer expenditure. Moreover, with the battle-ground for these customers very much in the aisles, the final decision over which product goes in the basket, and which is ditched or switched, is driven in no small measure by their pack design and branding.
It is, therefore, a crucial form of advertising that plays out before shoppers, right at the point of product selection. Dave Brown, chairman of design agency The Brand Union, cites its work for Andrex promotional packs as a case in point. ‘When you’re looking at this stacked on-shelf, what you’re really seeing is a 48-sheet poster campaign,’ he says.
This ability to double as visual advertising has always been one of packaging’s primary strengths, but even more so now, as shoppers consciously and carefully adjust their baskets to save a few pennies here and there. While marketing specialists have argued for years that the real battle is taking place on the supermarket shelves, some agencies complain that brands are not doing enough to promote themselves in store.
‘Consumers are starting to take more notice of product presentation in-store,’ says Sarah Hamburger, account director at market research company Spring Research. ‘We know that they read the copy on labels, and this seems to be an increasingly good way to stand out.’
However, consumers are not alone in feeling the financial squeeze. Retailers and manufacturers, too, face budget cuts in their marketing activity. Packaging design is just one element in a gamut of marketing communications channels that need to be considered.
B&Q packaging and point-of-sale manager Jonathan Couper explains how costs have to be controlled in this market. ‘We have reduced the amount we will invest in design for 2009, which I expect is the case for most companies,’ he says. ‘The reduction is not dramatic, as the business still recognises the importance of good design, but we have made a conscious decision to seek out smaller agencies as they deliver greater value and have significantly built on the use of brand guidelines.’
‘Budgets are being cut,’ agrees Jon Davies, managing director of packaging design agency Holmes & Marchant. ‘But it’s not necessarily fees that are reducing; there are just fewer projects around. And clients are asking for more. We have to demonstrate value in real terms: return on investment, awareness, sales, whatever it may be.’
According to Davies, brand owners should not be considering a complete structural redesign because it will not deliver within the first year of investment in the current climate. The trick, he says, is to look at tactical branding work which takes in the whole marketing communications mix, unifying it with a consistent aesthetic and single strategy. This is an approach that Holmes & Marchant has taken for its clients, including Guinness and Cava producer Freixenet.
Kate Waddell, managing director of consumer brands at design agency Dragon, argues that the smart route to keeping a portfolio alive on-shelf is to dovetail some design ‘refresh’ work with a product innovation or addition to a range. ‘If you bring in a new line and tweak the design, you can achieve a halo effect,’ she says. Tweaks and refreshes are less expensive and risky than range-wide overhauls, but not everyone agrees that a conservative approach to design investment is what is required.
‘Packaging on shelves in the multi-brand retail environment is mostly disappointing, dull and predictable, with the majority of ‘new’ design being shy tweaks and almost imperceptible updates of how it has always been,’ claims Nina Jenkins, creative director at Added Value UK, a brand development consultancy. ‘Despite their alleged frugality, consumers still want to be seduced by new options and feel that their choices are fresh and relevant.’
While many FMCG purchases are fairly functional in nature, there is always a potential aspirational element. Jenkins’ assertion that consumers ’still want to be seduced’ chimes with another observation from Waddell, that shoppers do not want marketing to remind them that they have less money to spend.
As supermarkets’ budget ranges are pushed to the forefront against the back-drop of a struggling economy, it could be argued that product packaging that talks of pleasure and high quality, not just value, will be most successful.
Waddell believes there to be an opportunity for so-called challenger brands, which sit below the well-known brands, to ramp up their premium design cues so that consumers do not feel negative about trading down from the leading brand to save money.
Certainly, many shoppers switch to a ‘checks and balances’ approach to shop-ping, trading down in some categories, but permitting themselves to indulge in others.
In either case, it is clear that the role of packaging design is hugely important in influencing brand perceptions and purchasing decisions. However, the dynamic is far from simple. Many factors remain at play, and a straightforward shift to cheaper, basic ranges is unlikely to be the sole outcome of constrained spending.
Designers agree that it is crucial for clients to keep an eye on the long-term strategy of a product range and that packaging should be seen neither as a ‘cheap’ way to spend marketing budgets (compared with advertising), nor as a relatively unimportant element that can be cut from the branding schedule.
‘Packaging redesign in circumstances like these is often a kneejerk reaction to make marketers feel better - leading to results that are often counter-productive,’ says David Haseler, strategy director at design agency Smith & Milton.
‘The same thing happened in the last recession. The pack is an easy place to do things, and there is plenty of relatively cheap pack design for marketers to find by shopping around.’
As in all areas of marketing, design and innovation, the debate rages over whether it is more expedient to cut budgets or to keep spending through the hard times to renew growth when the economy recovers. Realistically, some brands will benefit from an affordable and modest refresh, while some may need the shot in the arm provided by a more substantial design investment. Perhaps the crux here is the time frame over which brand owners expect to see a return on this investment.
Either way, as Jenkins points out, packaging has a lot to live up to. ‘After the strategy, positioning, advertising and marketing is said and done, the moment of truth is when the shopper is face to face with the choice of packaged products. It is essential that the pack is irresistible, with clear, simple standout from all the others on offer. Cautious tweaks will not engage, but intelligent, compelling and relevant redesigns based on good ideas - that’s another story.’
This article was written for Marketing, 3 March 2009.
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March 18th, 2009
Some would say that electronic media is at its most powerful in a museum gallery when you cannot see the technology - when immersion is everything and the clunky realities of hardware and software evaporate into a seamless, fluent experience. As any designer will tell you, equipment limitations should never be allowed to hinder or obstruct the function of a product, space or installation.
Ideally, all traces of a system’s innards - its wires, projectors, power sources, sensors and computers - would be hidden from view, while their visible effects combine powerfully to wow and educate visitors in equal measure.
This is much easier said than done: hardware can be expensive and hard to conceal, software prone to ugly crashes. Not only that, but high-end technology pervades our everyday life. Familiarity with the button-less iPhone and the wireless Nintendo Wii desensitises us to just how clever they are, posing some tricky questions for museums looking to make an impression as well as educate.
Nonetheless, some relatively simple technologies still have the capacity to create exhibition magic when they are built on a great creative idea.
Coupled with specially-written computer software, things like sensors, cameras and triggers can help to make a museum space or historic interior come alive in ways we still tend not to encounter elsewhere.
While touch-sensitive surfaces are becoming more commonplace, such things as motion-triggered light patterns, sounds or projections are still the domain of the museum and installations created by new media artists.
These types of “invisible” technology can be used in a variety of ways, to different ends. Your intention may simply be to stimulate the senses and entertain; it may be to encourage physical interaction with an exhibit, or perhaps to entice people to investigate an environment in a non-linear way.
INDUSTRIAL STRENGTH
In Verket, an historic ironworks in the Swedish town of Avesta, a sensory exploration of smelting works and blast furnaces is delivered using hand-held flashlights.
Visitors investigate the dark space, shining torches on glowing targets to trigger media or cause dormant machinery to lurch into motion. An invisible coded beam travels from the flashlight to the target hotspot telling computers in the background what type of event to trigger.
Verket is a complex and large-scale installation demonstrating how sensors and triggers can encourage investigation of an historic site where the building itself is one of the principal exhibits.
But the beam transmitters and receivers are basic technologies: the complexity comes in what is triggered, via software, when the two meet. And this could be something as simple as illuminating different areas of a darkened model, or triggering video footage.
ON THE RIGHT TRACK
Another “invisible” technology is radio frequency identification (RFID), which can be used to tie together a visitor’s experience of an exhibition, tracking their progress as they go.
For the Science of Survival touring exhibition, created by Science Of (a consortium of the Science Museum, London, and Fleming Media), computer exhibit specialist Joe Cutting provided technical consultancy on a system that uses radio tags to follow each visitor’s choices on a number of its interactive installations.
Users carry a unique RFID tag that is read by a card reader on the front of the installations. In the interactives themselves users make various lifestyle choices and at the end of the exhibition a concluding Future City projection automatically compiles these choices to show their environmental impact on a community in 2050.
“Science Of were interested in using a tracking system and considered barcodes, fingerprint scanners and email addresses, as well as RFID, but radio was the simplest,” says Cutting. “The cards are pretty cheap - around 30p each at the time - if you buy [them] in the thousands. An RFID supplier will offer a range of readers and tags, operating at different ranges. We used some of the simplest short-range ones.”
In The Science of Survival, the radio tags are tracked by software written by Ico Design Consultancy, the exhibition’s lead design group. From a curatorial point of view, the system links the content of the different installations, ranging from eating and drinking to transport and building, so that each forms part of the concluding section, giving an experiential mirror of the narrative thread already present in the subject.
For visitors, the invisible nature of radio communication means that this linking feels seamless and effortless. “We wanted something interactive that would be personal, putting visitors at the centre by showing them something they’ve made at the end,” explains Malinda Campbell, the creative director of Science Of.
The tracking system also gives Science Of access to anonymous information about how many people are using each exhibit, as well as content generated by their choices.
“Although it was driven by the narrative we wanted - that is, to show people, without preaching, how their decisions could impact the climate - there is also lots of information you can gather from this kind of tracking,” says Campbell.
“For anybody looking into such technology, I recommend thinking hard at the beginning about what you will want to know later. And testing is vital: you want to make sure the concept and software work before you order all the kit, but you tend to order all the equipment late on in bulk, so it can get very last-minute. Prototype and test with real people as much as you can.”
Software is likely to be a key component in any installation that uses sensors, cameras or triggers, because it is the software that determines how the information gathered from these input devices is translated into “content” or output.
If you are thinking of commissioning something that tracks or detects visitors in some way, you may end up working with software programmers who are subcontracted to the lead exhibition designers.
For example, an installation at the Curve, a new Rafael Viñoly-designed theatre in Leicester, uses cameras to track people’s movements, translating them into a mimicking “silhouette” played out in LED lights. Jason Bruges Studio designed the system, using software programming and motion capture by Chris O’Shea, an interactive designer and artist.
A wide-angle camera tracks the shapes of people passing through the Curve’s glass foyer and relays this information to a computer. The software then translates these shapes into instructions for a light controller that manipulates banks of LED lights on the inside of the vestibule. As each LED spot can be controlled individually, certain spots are switched off in real time to recreate the visitor’s “shadow” on the walls of the cube, copying their movement.
Tim Greatrex, a designer at Jason Bruges Studio, says the Curve installation was designed to reference physical performances in the theatre, not to perform any didactic function. But it does demonstrate how technologies as simple as a camera and LED lights could be employed - with the right software - to respond in all manner of ways and animate spaces.
OUT OF THE SHADOWS
Another example of physical participation is Mexican artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s Frequency and Volume installation, which was installed in the Barbican Centre in London in 2008. This uses cameras to detect shadows cast by visitors on a white wall and translates the position and size of these shadows into a radio frequency and volume respectively.
In this way, the radio spectrum is rendered visually, and participants can tune the installation’s numerous amplified radio receivers into different radio stations by walking around and altering the size and location of their shadow.
Again, Lozano-Hemmer’s work is not specifically educational (although it was originally conceived to get people thinking about the ownership and allocation of radio spectrum in Mexico), but it is another example of how sensors can help generate dynamic spaces that respond to visitors and so seem alive.
The basis of most of these technologies is pretty simple, but their application can become complex. So, as with any digital installation, it is paramount that at the outset you have a clear curatorial aim in mind and that the chosen system is the best way of meeting this objective.
This could be encouraging exploration of a space, linking and personalising installations, or perhaps unravelling a complex or abstract idea.
When approaching designers to create this kind of electronic media display or installation, look for those with interaction skills and remember that you will need reliable computers to make everything happen and to keep it all running.
Maintenance for other hardware may be provided under a contract with the hardware manufacturer or installation company, but it is worth checking this, particularly if a whole exhibit is dependent on the technology.
On the plus side, LEDs, printed circuit boards, RFID tags and camera technology are all getting cheaper and more flexible. So, armed with a strong creative idea, good designers and a skilled software programmer, a little invisible magic may not be out of reach.
This article was written for the Working Knowledge section of Museum Practice, Spring 2009.
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March 18th, 2009
While it is true to say that the whole of an exhibition or gallery should be engaging, there are some techniques that are specifically designed to pull visitors into a subject, most often using some form of interaction.
Electronic media is offering ever more ingenious and enticing possibilities - from following the clash of arms on the battlefield of Culloden in 1746 on the Battle Table at the new visitor centre there, to discovering what Winston Churchill did, almost to the day, during his life via the 15-metre-long Lifeline at the Churchill Museum, London.
Where visitors have actively engaged with something they are more likely to remember that experience, personalise it and take something from it. As Peter Higgins, the creative director of museum designers Land Design Studio, says, it is about emotional connections. “All interactions are based on input, output and feedback. The more you’ve been emotionally engaged, the more you remember it.”
Electronic technology is playing a big role in making interaction possible, largely because it is the “intelligence” of computers that provides the feedback in the model. A more typical installation than oversized tables is the standalone touchscreen kiosk, loaded with software to respond to various input decisions from users.
While kiosks have their place, the downside is that they offer a rather pedestrian form of interaction, which is often detached from the physical presence of the exhibition and its objects.
At their best, interactive installations can deliver engagement in a more fluid, instinctive and social way than a straight computer screen, especially when groups can use them simultaneously.
Encouraging people to explore is crucial. The Nobel Peace Center in Oslo, Norway, is built almost entirely on digital installations, all predicated on the idea of visitors exploring the Center in their own way. Using an array of sensors, digital media and computer-controlled lighting, many of the installations respond to people’s physical presence (see link 1 below).
This is a thoroughly high-tech solution for an unusual museum: it contains just one object, a Peace Prize medal. But it shows that there is a range of interactive techniques that can be used to engage audiences through exploration.
At the National Waterfront Museum in Swansea, a panoramic photograph of the view from nearby Kilvey Hill is projected across a 300-degree screen. Overlaid on this screen are three coloured locator bars controlled by tracker balls set into three consoles in front of the projection.
As users pan their bar across the view with the tracker ball, a “telescopic” magnification of the area selected is shown on the console screen. Embedded in the vista are a number of hotspots, typically places of cultural or historical interest, which emerge as the bar moves over them. Selecting these reveals greater layers of detail on the touchscreen below, using text, images and video footage.
“We wanted to recreate this great view of Swansea and looked at ways to achieve that,” says Damien Smith, director of ISO, the design group that created the display with lead designers Land Design Studio.
The high-resolution image was obtained by fixing a special rotating camera on a purpose-built scaffold at the site and photographing each “slice” of the view, three pixels at a time. Because the resulting photograph is so large, no more images were needed to get the “telescopic” magnification on the consoles.
But aside from the specialist camera needed to capture a picture with enough detail for the huge projection and zoom, the rest of the installation was created using relatively standard equipment: three high-definition projectors, synched across the 300-degree screen, standard tracker balls, touchscreen technology and PCs running bespoke software.
“It’s also quite a striking ambient piece, with little touches, such as the sky gradually darkening,” says Smith. “And the visitors get some information about the content through pop-ups that appear over the hotspots on the main projection. What we’re often trying to create in these kind of installations is something attractive, ambient and large scale, while also offering rich detail at the personal level.”
REALITY CHECK
The Swansea panorama is a step towards another kind of interactive interpretation, dubbed “augmented reality”. Museums are only just beginning to explore its possibilities.
One early adopter is the Museum für Naturkunde (Museum of Natural History) in Berlin, where the designers Art + Com created five “media telescopes”, or “Jurascopes”, in the World of Dinosaurs gallery.
When pointed at the actual fossil remains, these viewers offer a computer-generated image of the fossilised bones that “grow” muscles and skin, before taking a walk in a Jurassic landscape. A computer reads where in the gallery the Jurascope is pointing and presents the corresponding view and animation on a screen embedded behind the eyepieces.
What is interesting about this installation is not so much the individual technologies, but the intuitive simplicity of its presentation: everyone knows how seaside-style telescopes work, so they look, pan and discover.
A similar system by the same company called Timescope is installed on a street in Berlin. It offers views of Tauentzienstrasse and the surrounding area taken at various points in history, as well as an on-board web camera feed of the live scene. Users can literally turn back (or fast forward) time using archive material and set artwork in the real vista before them, watching buildings come and go.
Although these media telescopes require some specialist hardware and software, the concept is simple and flexible and their appeal is as enduring as that of the old Mutoscope, or “what-the-butler-saw” machines of the 1900s. The key really lies in the programming of the software that delivers the content to the final “view”.
If you are thinking of commissioning something similar, look for designers with skills in programming and interface design, as this is where it will succeed or fail. Naturally, if the viewer is destined for the open air, you would need to consider robustness of product design too. It must be weather- and vandal-proof.
MUSICAL ACCOMPANIMENT
There are more straightforward methods of promoting engagement with the objects on display in an exhibition. In the Music Gallery at the Horniman Museum in south London, a simple projection system allows visitors to explore and interact with the array of musical instruments displayed in showcases opposite. The layout of the cabinets is recreated on the projection table (the projector is placed vertically overhead).
Users can scroll through animated images of the instruments using large navigation buttons. Both projector and buttons are linked to software on a PC. A musical instrument can then be selected to reveal more written information and, crucially, a performance recording taken from the museum’s sound archive, which plays on speakers or headphones.
Designed by Ralph Appelbaum Associates with Rom and Son, this direct exploration of the collection does not even require touchscreen technology, just a projector, PC, navigation buttons set into the table, some speakers and sound-absorbing material above the tables (all times three, as there are three tables in total).
Margaret Birley, the keeper of musical instruments at the Horniman, says the installation has been popular and robust. It has been working since the end of 2002.
“We wanted to give people the opportunity to hear the instruments in the showcase, as well as add to the information on the object labels with things like instrument decoration, who made it and who might have played it. It also allows us to showcase recordings made through our fieldwork,” says Birley. The content has been updated to include, for example, the recently discovered composer of a previously anonymous piece.
The Horniman Museum’s musical tables show how fairly simple interactive technology can provide a direct link with the objects in the space to encourage exploration. In a more high-tech way, the National Waterfront Museum’s panorama and the Museum of Natural History in Berlin’s media telescopes also link digitally-delivered information with the real and physical.
And this is where technology should really excel: it should not promote playing with gadgets just for the sake of it, but allow visitors to connect more deeply with objects and subjects on show in ways that are intuitive, educational and perhaps even rather enchanting
This article was written for the Working Knowledge section of Museum Practice, Spring 2009.
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March 18th, 2009
In the traditional gallery of exhibits behind glass pure, unobstructed consideration of the artefacts is considered paramount. Interpretation beyond captions and a few supporting images is minimal, or absent, and the space is organised so as not to overwhelm the works themselves. In short, the atmosphere is relatively neutral.
But in contemporary exhibition design something more evocative, perhaps even provocative, is often in order, demanding an injection of drama and ambience.
Such theatre and atmosphere are important components in storytelling and, for many curators, invoking stories from the collections is exactly what exhibitions are all about. While a few star objects may be commanding enough to conjure a sense of time and place on their own, many sit statically and quietly inside glass cases, leaving the scene-setting to various other design elements.
Although heavy-handed scenography may not always be appropriate, generating some dynamism around objects can animate a space. And one of the most effective ways of creating atmosphere and ambience is through light and sound. Moving images and spoken words can be used arrestingly to make a point, or recessively to set a mood.
But for real atmosphere, you need to think beyond the traditional screen. Large-scale projections in particular can literally wrap the viewer up in images from the collection, as well as the stories and ideas it holds.
TRANSPORTS OF DELIGHT
At the London Transport Museum’s Design for Travel gallery, a 12-metre-long “screen” is created by projecting a continuously moving film on to the floor and end wall of a long, narrow space.
Around the gallery, examples from London Transport’s rich design heritage - maps, posters and signs - are exhibited in showcases, but the films help to shape the feel of the space and give context to the physical exhibits.
Organised into six thematic “essays”, the looped film showcases hundreds of items that could not otherwise be displayed, including archive footage, stills and animations.
To achieve the gallery-long video, the design and motion graphics company ISO, working with the museum’s lead designers Ralph Appelbaum Associates, split the film across seven high-definition projectors, running in synch, with the frames digitally “stitched” together to play out across the gallery as one piece.
“It’s an enclosed, dense space which only holds a tiny sliver of the amazing design objects the museum has,” says Damien Smith, the director of ISO. “They didn’t want it to be static, but to bring things to life and delve into the huge volume of the archive. The films work in two ways because they can wash over you or you can watch them as detailed visual essays, each relating to the different physical displays.”
Rob Lansdown, the assistant director of support services at the London Transport Museum, says, “One of the issues we face is that we’re dealing primarily with transport vehicles and we can’t make them move. So we’re always looking for ways to inject movement into the galleries.”
Another way of setting off static displays in a dynamic way is through LED lighting, a technology that continues to become cheaper and more powerful. As LEDs are easily controllable by computer they can be used to set up semi-abstract moving displays, suggestive of subject themes or movement, but without the distraction of video imagery.
At the new BMW Museum in Munich every single square inch of wall inside the museum’s central space is clad with white LEDs, behind opaque, sandblasted glass. The solution, dubbed “Mediatecture”, involves millions of tiny lights controlled by four computers running special graphics software.
Created by Art + Com, working with the lead designers Atelier Brückner, it results in walls filled with fluid imagery, some abstracted from the cars’ design details, others using line art, water ripples or curtain sequences to give a sense of movement. This dynamic backdrop then plays around the otherwise static cars on show, reflecting on their surfaces.
“The best way of creating a dynamic space is through moving images,” says Joachim Sauter, the creative director of Art + Com. But unlike more cinematic projections of content, BMW’s Mediatecture purposefully lacks detail.
“It’s about making a facade and not making big screens. This is very important: people should initially just see it as the building’s glass facade and only on second glance realise it’s moving. If you make it in a cinematic way, it becomes more important than the objects.”
SOUND AND LIGHT
The Museum of London Docklands desired quite the reverse effect for its permanent London, Sugar & Slavery gallery, designed by At Large. Tom Wareham, the curator of the gallery, says they wanted people to literally stop and think about the subject at hand.
To make this happen, it commissioned a son et lumière show that would spontaneously play every 20 minutes, transforming a section of the gallery into “theatre in the round” (See link 1 below).
It is a more intimate version of the Big Picture shows at the Imperial War Museum North, where images are projected on to the double-height surfaces within a cavernous gallery.
Large-scale projections offer an “architectural” way of creating atmosphere while at the same time unlocking content from the stored collection and telling a story (or indeed, switching between the two). From a hardware point of view, high-definition projectors provide the quality needed for large projections, but these can be expensive.
At the London Transport Museum the seven projectors cost around £6,500 each, although you would not necessarily require seven for a simpler show. Bear in mind that carefully installed multiple projectors can deliver films with unusual aspect ratios to suit the gallery space.
If multiple projections do need to be synched - to project across a very wide wall, for example - you will also need a PC running software to piece the split “frames” back together, as well as PCs to drive each individual projector.
The projectors themselves use bulbs that will burn out, so you will need to keep an eye on those too. In a chain of linked projectors, every bulb should be changed simultaneously to ensure consistent brightness, even if only one is starting to dim.
UNINTENDED EFFECTS
Hardware aside, the effectiveness of projections may well come down to the clarity of your brief and the production skills of the company compiling the footage - look for designers specialising in motion graphics. And be aware of any “dizzying” effects that large-scale image movement might have on visitors, as well as possible concerns for visitors with epilepsy related to flashing lights.
These are not always easy to test, as Lansdown discovered at the London Transport Museum. “The scale is such that mock-ups don’t necessarily show you what you’ve done until it’s in place. Some of the images of posters moving initially felt as though the rug was [literally] being pulled from under your feet.”
A more ambient and abstract way of bringing a space to life can be achieved using wall-spanning LED lighting. A software programmer can animate these lights in a range of ways, linked to sound, video or image input, for example. LEDs themselves continue to become cheaper, as do the programmable computer chips that control them.
And there is another benefit over conventional incandescent lighting too: with hardly any power lost as heat, an LED’s lifespan can be upwards of 40,000 hours - important for exhibitions running all day every day.
So, whether you are after an intervention, a mood setter or a sense of movement, motion graphics, film and sound can suffuse a space very effectively, especially when delivered at scales that go far beyond the traditional television or computer screen.
This article was written for the Working Knowledge section of Museum Practice, Spring 2009.
Posted in Design, Digital, Exhibition, Interaction, Museums | No Comments »
March 18th, 2009
Electronic media and museum exhibitions and galleries are not always cosy bedfellows. Yet the temptation to use electronic hardware in exhibitions is strong, and growing. Visitors expect some form of digital installation.
When they work well, electronic media can really add something to a gallery, delivering an informative and entertaining experience that you cannot really get elsewhere. At other times, computer hardware can be little better than a distraction, and when out of action, it tends to be conspicuously so.
Getting it right, then, is important. Design, hardware, software, installation and maintenance costs can all stretch budgets, so you want to be really sure you know why you are commissioning any given bit of kit and that it is going to do exactly what you want. This is not as simple as it sounds.
Many curators, quite reasonably, may have little interest in techno-wizardry, yet still feel obliged to commission something digital and hands-on for their exhibition. They turn to designers - often late in the process - to inject a few interactive elements.
There are two main weaknesses in this arrangement that are worth bearing in mind. First, technology should not be commissioned through a sense that a museum or historic site is incomplete without it.
Instead, there should always be a compelling case that it helps a particular objective, even if that is primarily to entertain. Second, electronic media should not be bolted on at the end of the design and planning process in a rush, as is often the case (perhaps to meet the perceived obligation to use it).
INTEGRATED APPROACH
If there is a “philosophy” of digital media and interactivity in museums, it ought to be holistic, part of the fabric of a show - conceived along with artefacts, other exhibits, the architecture, and the types of visitor you are aiming for.
Damien Smith, the director of ISO, an interactive and motion graphics production company, says that museums need to approach electronic media with fresh eyes.
“Technology is often misappropriated in museums and can be fetishised. It’s not about the latest toy, but about strong concepts and the simplest way you can deliver them. We need to start defetishising the technology.”
Peter Higgins, the creative director of Land Design Studio, argues that designers and museums need to stand back and consider what they are using and why. “There are three reason: the Nintendo Wii, the iPhone and Microsoft Surface (multi-touch screen technology),” says Higgins.
“These things are now on the high street and they are also better, more robust and more intuitive than most things we can put in an exhibition. So who cares about a touch table? We need to rethink what we’re doing. We have to really think about new media as part of the whole visit, based on the unique museum experience, not ‘can we have a bit of interactivity here?’”
Gripes aside, there are worthwhile special effects that can be achieved with well-conceived electronic media - some simple, some undeniably high-tech. Motion-tracking cameras, programmable LEDs (light-emitting diodes), projections, media telescopes, radio tags and infrared (IR) detectors can all produce different effects in an exhibition space.
They can be used to create atmosphere and ambience, drama and theatre. They can be used to encourage exploration and engagement, teasing people into richer content - layers of information beyond those on labels and graphic panels. They can even track visitors’ experiences as they move through an exhibition, recording their interactions with various installations.
PRACTICAL CONSIDERATIONS
Before looking at the specific examples, it is worth noting a few general considerations. Cost, testing, reliability and maintenance are crucial. Malinda Campbell, creative director of Science Of, a partnership of the Science Museum, London, and Fleming Media, which organised the Science of Survival touring exhibition, says testing interactive installations can be tricky.
“It’s very important that you try the design with the actual kit, but the problem is you tend to order all the hardware in bulk towards the end of the design process for economic reasons,” Campbell says.
“You don’t have this nice two-year lead-time where you can test everything out. So we had to simulate the user experience with real people without ordering all the equipment. You have to know that people understand it before you pay out for the gear.”
Joe Cutting, a consultant and former member of the digital team of the Science Museum, London, says a common mistake is to try to put too much or too little content in an exhibit.
“If you put too little content in your exhibit then you are effectively relying on the interaction and spectacle of the exhibit. If you put too much then you are in danger of creating an encyclopaedia, and there will be too much for users to take in.”
Installations using electronic media rely on some computer software, much of it bespoke, so you will need to plan for software development time costs. If you are using off-the-shelf software you will need to pay for licences for each PC running the programme. The multiple projections at the London Transport Museum, for example, are synched using third party software called Watchout.
If you are having software written especially for an exhibit, think about the ongoing intellectual property (IP) ownership of the programme. Typically, museums want to keep control of software IP, but there is an argument that this is not necessarily in everyone’s best interest, as Smith explains.
“We are looking at creating simple generic software that can be reapplied for other clients, for example page-turners, visual databases and so on.
“One of the areas I fight regularly on the contractual side is the retention of IP in the software. Many clients are advised to try and grab ownership of content and software, which runs counter to accepted practice in many industries and ends up warehousing software that is never developed. Perhaps museums could benefit from having suppliers with an open inventory of software products,” he says.
Cutting says smaller museums can save themselves a lot of heartache by buying software that has already been developed, perhaps for a larger museum’s exhibit. “Your visitors won’t know the difference, you’ll know what you’re getting before you buy it and it’ll be a lot cheaper,” he says.
WHAT’S THE BUDGET?
Drawing on experience working with museums large and small, Cutting says that, for a simple exhibit, you will need a budget of at least £7,000 for the hardware and software. More complicated exhibits will start at around twice that. The cost of housing the hardware, your time and the cost of maintenance are extra.
“If you spend less than this then you’ve either found some clever way of saving money or are taking some risks with the success of your exhibit,” he says.
You will need to plan how you will maintain your exhibits. Simple things such as reinstalling software when it crashes, dealing with wires that get unplugged and cleaning touchscreens can be done in-house. For complex set-ups the company responsible for installation typically remains involved in maintenance.
David Small, the director of design consultancy Small Design Firm, says museums must expect ongoing costs for maintaining exhibits. It pays to plan ahead. He cites the Nobel Peace Center, Oslo, as an example of prudence and forward thinking (see link below for case study).
“[The Center] had a deal with the manufacturer of certain screens to buy lots of spares when the model reached the end of its production. The units were available for a fraction of their original cost.”
OPEN ACCESS
Access for visitors with a disability is an important consideration, and needs to be thought about at the outset. At the National Waterfront Museum, Swansea, all the screen-based installations and major interactives incorporate British Sign Language along with English and Welsh subtitling, making the museum the most Disability Discrimination Act-compliant in the UK.
At the Horniman Museum, London, the three interactive projection tables in the Music Gallery were specifically positioned to allow visitors using wheelchair access all around.
The details involved in planning any digital installation are intricate and the scope of examples in this Working Knowledge section precludes detailed descriptions of every technique. As much as anything, the projects outlined in the following articles are intended as inspiration and guidance, rather than blueprints for precisely what to do. Each subject, collection and space will demand its own approach.
But bearing this in mind - and keeping an eye on the budget - you can really start to let your imagination go.
This article was written as an introduction to the Working Knowledge section of Museum Practice, Spring 2009.
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