Regular readers know that this is one of my favorite art related blogs for its deep thoughtfulness and uncommercial concerns in discussing the modern museum experience. Rock on, Museum 2.0!

One of my favorite theoretical constructs is “social objects” –the idea that the most consistent social and dialogue experiences are mediated through shared experience of artifacts, stories, or images.
 
In 2005, Jyri Engestrom coined the term “social objects” and the related “object-centered sociality” in the context of designing successful online social networks, and I’ve been applying the idea in the physical design of exhibits. The basic idea is that by providing tools for people to discuss and share objects, they can come together in collective experience.
 
In a physical setting, I’ve found that successful social objects tend to be provocative, relational, active, or personal. Dogs and stuck elevators are social objects. Exhibits that visitors point at or photograph themselves with are social objects. Exhibits that ask visitors to work together or compete are social objects. Social objects help us connect with others, and they become focal points for conversations with friends and strangers alike.
 
Today, a colleague introduced me to a different description of social objects, one that comes from the world of poetry instead of technology. The term is “the third thing”…..

Continue reading here:
A Poetic Take on Social Objects: The Third Thing

I love this the Museum 2.0 blog. Here’s their latest from a conference in New Zealand.

This week at the National Digital Forum in New Zealand, a librarian stood up and said, “one of the great challenges of this sector is to make preservation sexy.”

People laughed with incredulity; no matter how CSI-like the pitch, it’s hard to capture public attention with preservation projects. And yet earlier in the week, at the Zealandia nature sanctuary in Wellington, I’d seen some hints of how to do just that.

Zealandia is a nature preserve with a big hairy audacious goal: to restore a neglected valley into a haven for native birds, plants, and a few special ancient species. Their signage is upfront and specific about this plan; the large sign at the entry says, “It will take 500 years to reach our goal.” Miles of public trails are littered with evidence of the ongoing efforts: volunteers at work, temporary feeders and enclosures, experiments ongoing and hibernating.

Zealandia provides visitors with a beautiful, peaceful experience in nature. There are interpretative trails and helpful staff to aid visitors in tuning in to the bird sounds and identifying the native animals now thriving in the preserve.

But the thing that stood out most was the sense that Zealandia is a place of action, where projects are actively underway. Many of the projects—like a huge, specially designed fence to separate birds from lizards until the populations of each stabilize—were both impressive in scale and were communicated well as short-term steps on a long path to a thriving natural habitat.

As a visitor, I repeatedly ran into objects, staff, and signs explaining the specific science at work on the preserve and how the project was evolving. The interpretation was frequent, clear, and adult in tone and content. I felt respected as someone who could understand science and might be interested in more than just a nice walk in the park…..

Read the original post:
Preservation in Action: Ambition and Excitement at Zealandia

We love Museum 2.0.

Last week, Jim Richardson and I hosted MuseumNext , a 24-hour workshop for museum professionals focused on bringing new, wild museum projects into the world. It was held in Newcastle in the north of England, and about 70 folks from around the world (but mostly Europe) came to play, learn, make stuff, and help each other work out challenges inherent in trying to make risky ideas happen.

Thank you to everyone who came and helped co-create an exciting experimental event in a beautiful city. MuseumNext had four main sections: Interactive activities , including an opening workshop with a group of designers associated with an extremely wonderful exhibition called Doing it for the Kids featuring sustainable toy designs.

Participants sewed sock aliens , injection-molded army men, constructed robots , and drew animals. We also ended the entire event with one of my favorite exercises, the Exquisite Corpse game, in which participants co-created comics of their craziest museum dreams. “Wild idea” sessions , featuring six dream projects, some already in motion, others firmly ensconsed in their creators’ heads. Folks from the Utah Museum of Natural History , Worcester City Museum , Manchester Art Gallery , Centre for Life , Netherlands Architecture Institute , and the Knowledge Media Research Center (Germany) brought projects they wanted to make happen…..

See the original post here:
Reflections on MuseumNext and Facilitating Brainstorming

A new entry from the ever-thoughtful Museum 2.0 blog:

Over the past year, I’ve noticed a strange trend in the calls I receive about upcoming participatory museum projects: the majority of them are being planned for teen audiences. A large number of the collaborative projects of which I’m aware (in which staff partner with community members to co-develop exhibits or programs) are initiated with teens. Even the most traditional museums often manage educational programs in which teens develop their own exhibits, produce youth-focused museum events, or provide educational experiences for younger visitors. And while I enjoy working with youth and consuming their creations as a museum visitor, I’d like to call into question the idea that they are or should be the primary audience for participatory experiences. Why are teens over-represented in participatory projects? I see four main reasons…

Read the rest here:
Why Are So Many Participatory Experiences Focused on Teens?

Another thoughtful post from the Museum 2.0 blog.

I spent last week on vacation in the High Sierras rock climbing. Between high-altitude hijinks, run-ins with wildlife, and very long days of hiking, I finished John Falk’s new book, Identity and the Museum Visitor Experience . In it, John provides a model for the museum visitor experience based on one fundamental idea: people visit and make meaning from museum experiences based on their ability to fulfill identity-related goals and interests.

In other words, if you are a curious person, you will go to museums to learn new things. If you are someone seeking spiritual refreshment, you will go to museums to relax and recharge. Different people in the same museum on the same day can have very different experiences–and memories of their experiences–based on the personal context in which they enter.

John details five identity needs that are well-served by museums: explorer, experience seeker, recharger, professional/hobbyist, and facilitator….

Go here to see the original:
What’s Your Leisure Identity? Does it Bring You Into Museums?

Another thoughtful and comprehensive post form the Museum 2.0 blog:

I’m working on a section of my book about sharing social objects and am writing about the most common way that visitors share their object experiences in museums: through photographs.

While doing research, I found myself digging back into old arguments on museum listservs about photo policies and I want to add my two (very opinionated) cents on this. While the majority of experience-based museums like children’s and science museums have unrestricted noncommercial photography policies, many collections-based art and history museums continue to maintain highly restrictive photo policies.

As I understand it, there are five main arguments for restrictive policies:

• Intellectual Property: Museums must respect diverse intellectual property agreements with donors and lenders, and in institutions where some objects are photographable and others not, it’s often easier to use the most restrictive agreements as the basis for institutional policies.
• Conservation: Objects may be damaged by flash photography. Some conservators argue that if non-flash photography is permitted, light levels in the galleries may be increased to accommodate visitors’ cameras, which indirectly damage artifacts.
• Revenue Streams: Museums want to maintain control of sales of “officially sanctioned” images of objects via catalogues and postcards. If people can take their own photos, they won’t buy them in the gift shop….

Read the complete post here:
Museum Photo Policies Should Be as Open as Possible

Another example if incredibly thoughtful and purposeful thinking about the art experience from Museum 2.0– we love this blog!

I’ve spent the last two weeks working on the third chapter of my book about network effects of social participation. This can be an incredibly technical topic, as it focuses on the ways that platforms (online, exhibits, museums) can harness the individual activities of many visitors and create meaningful experiential outputs that connect people to each other.

And it’s brought me back to a blog post I wrote a year ago about the Science Museum of Minnesota’s Race: Are We So Different? exhibition. Race is a remarkably social exhibit; visitors spend a lot of time pointing things out to each other and talking about them. Paul Martin, VP of Exhibits at SMM, took several photos of people in the exhibition over its run, and he noted something strange: there was an incredibly high percentage of photos in which someone was pointing at an exhibit label, artifact, or component.

In many cases people were pointing at things that were simple in design and form–quotes, statistics, facts and figures. But the content was so remarkable that visitors felt the need to just to consume it but to point it out to others….

Read more from the original source:
Pointing at Exhibits, Part 2: No-Tech Social Networks

Last month, the Christian Science Monitor published an article entitled, “Museums’ new mantra: Connect with community.” It took me a couple weeks (and various museum blog responses ) to realize what bugs me about this article–it treats “connecting with community” as a marketing ploy, a “mantra” rather than a mission. While there is much talk about supporting participation and making museum content relevant, the word “community” hangs like a poorly-defined carrot on a shtick. The article ends with this unfortunate quote from marketing consultant Roger Sametz: “It’s all about making personal, meaningful connections with a community, now.” It sounds as if Mr. Sametz is frantically casing city streets with a heat-seeking metal detector, on the hunt for a miscellaneous batch of confused folks whom he can stun into “connection.” …..

Continue reading here:
Eight Other Ways to "Connect with Community"