Claire Bailey-Ross

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QRator wins a Museums & Heritage Award for Excellence Innovation

May 17, 2012 / claireyross / 2 Comments

In case you missed the excited tweeting last night we were at a posh awards do.

Last night a contingent from UCL including brilliant people from UCLDH, CASA and Museums and Public Engagement, headed down to the 10th Anniversary Museums and Heritage Awards.  The night started badly as a waiter managed to spill a huge jug of milk all down my back and lovely dress.  But once I’d dried myself off, with the help of Claire and Melissa, and tried to mask the smell of quickly souring milk, the awards got underway.

There were 11 awards in total UCL, were up for three: The move of the Grant Museum for Project on A Limited Budget, the Grant Museum’s QRator project for Innovations and Heritage Without Borders for The International Award.

I’m proud to say that we won Museum and Heritage Award for Excellence, Innovations award for QRator: Visitor Participation Through Social Interpretation.

QRator is a collaboration between the UCL Centre for Digital Humanities (UCLDH), UCL Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA), and UCL Museums, to develop new kinds of content, co-curated by the public, and museum staff, to enhance museum interpretation, public engagement and meaning making by establishing new connections to museum exhibit content.

As QRator is a collaborative project there are a lot of people who need thanking. And in the excitement none of us actually had the foresight to prepare a speech on the night! So a really big thanks goes to Jack and Mark at the Grant Museum who were instrumental in the QRator project; Mark Carnall who worked with me originally in trialling QR codes in the Grant Museum and who is the most forward thinking curator I have ever met. Jack Ashby who writes the content and designs the displays for QRator, and who has the patience of a saint.  To Steve Gray who is an absolutely brilliant developer, and who’s skills in usability and interface design are second to none. Andy Hudson Smith, and Ralph and Martin the original team behind Tales of Things from UCL Centre for Advance Spatial Analysis, Melissa Terras and Claire Warwick who have been a the best support, PhD supervisors I could ever ask for.  Susannah Chan from UCL Museums and Public Engagement for inventing the mounts for the iPads, and spending what felt like an eternity installing them into the Grant.  A big thank you to the UCL Public Engagement Unit for their funding and support of the project, Sally MacDonald Director of UCL Museums and Public Engagement who has been a huge driving force behind the project,  it is so refreshing to have Top Down support for digital innovation in the cultural sector. Without them this project would literally be nothing.

A big congratulations to all the other winners. There was a wide range of really fantastic projects from a sector that has been hard hit with funding cuts, you can see the full list of winners, commendations and the full short lists here.

Designing for community-powered digital transformations workshop

May 15, 2012May 15, 2012 / claireyross / 2 Comments

Today I have been at the Designing for community-powered digital transformations workshop at Tate Britain, London.  The day focused on how different types of  digital transformations are forcing cultural and media organisations to adapt to a new environment in which communities of participants want to interact, to create, and curate.  I was speaking about “Putting the Visitors first” in order to design better, more user friendly, digital experiences in Museums.  I used examples from the Social Interpretation project at IWM and the QRator project at the Grant Museum.    My prezi is below.  Its a bit of hack of an earlier presentation I did with Tom about the Social Interpretation project.  The prezi might not make sense without the notes, but the pictures are pretty to look at ! Most of them taken from IWM’s Collection Online. Nicola Osborne has done a brilliant live blog of the day.  I honestly dont know how she does it! speed demon when it comes to typing!  I’ll have a think about my notes and write them up over the next couple of days.

Digital Transformations: Scholarship vs Passion

April 2, 2012 / claireyross / 3 Comments

N.B.  My notes from the Digital Transformations event, they might not make too much sense; I’ve padded bits out here and there. It might be worth looking at the tweets from the day which are in a handy document here.

Final notes  from the Digital Transformation event. Neil Cummings, artist, and Professor at Chelsea College of Art and Design, discussed Critical practice and on student’s wiki breaking down boundaries between leaner and lecturer Neil then went on to discuss what is public? Public ness. What does it mean to say public space?  Neil highlighted the labour needed to successfully assemble ‘a public’ & host an open event using milk crates.

Daniel Nathan, chairman, totallyradio.com.  discussed radio DJs and curation  The word ‘curator’ gets used sprinkled about quite a lot to talk about stuff people do on the web.   Is digital curation an acceptable term? What does it mean? Is the term curator devaluated? Is what someone does on Facebook comparable to the  training and knowledge which goes into curating collections in museums and galleries? Digital curation involves maintaining, preserving and adding value to digital research data throughout its lifecycle.  dj’s aren’t curators just because they pull music together.

Daniel then went on to discuss Public Radio Exchange. PRX in US is online exchange bringing radio stations, listeners, producers together. Daniel discussed whether or not a public radio exchange would work in the uk.

One thing that came out of this was the idea that in online environments passion is a core criteria for adding most value as dj /curator/editor vs scholarship route to ‘expertise. My instant response was is scholarship not a form of passion? I think they are exactly the same thing. Arent they?

All in all lots of ideas, presentations and discussions to think about.

Digital Transformations: Being Playful. Content provider to Creative lifecycle

April 2, 2012April 2, 2012 / claireyross / 1 Comment

N.B.  My notes from the Digital Transformations event, they might not make too much sense; I’ve padded bits out here and there. It might be worth looking at the tweets from the day which are in a handy document here.

Frances Taylor from the  British Library,  talked about being playful at the British Library and her responsibilities for connecting the British Library with creative industries.  Merging collections and creativity at the British library, it’s very different from serving academic researchers, different type of support is required. The transformation of BL from a content provider to supporter of whole creative lifecycle. Frances talked about celebrating creativity fashion, designers and makers.  The BL Spring Event was used as a case study for opening up collections and being playful. Letting exploration happen.  Its about facilitating interactivity &creativity via offline and online environments and those that are “loose around the edges”

I can sum Frances talk up in the brilliant video she showed us.

This one is my favourite. I’m gutted that I couldnt attend.

Digital Transformations: The Museum of the Future is…

April 2, 2012April 2, 2012 / claireyross / 1 Comment

N.B.  My notes from the Digital Transformations event, they might not make too much sense; I’ve padded bits out here and there. It might be worth looking at the tweets from the day which are in a handy document here.

Jim Richardson discussed the main themes which came out of the MuseumNext conference proposals.

Audience expectations are changing and museums just weren’t keeping up. That’s why Jim  kicked off @MuseumNext.

Jim discussed a visit to Seven Stories  in Newcastle. Which has a brilliant Gruffalo exhibition on, but you weren’t allowed to take photos.  Why?

Jim also discussed social media to empower your audience to advocate on your venues behalf.

  • The museum of the future is….open.
  • The museum of the future is…co produced
  • The museum of the future is… Personalised
  • The museum of the future is… Beyond the venue
  • The museum of the future is… Measured.

I agree with all of those statements bar the measured.  Is the museum of the future measured? is it? I don’t really agree. The website is. But it’s only numbers. I know metrics are important. But really what do they tell us about the visitor experience?  (I don’t like numbers but my point still stands).

What put me on edge after Jim’s presentation was one of the questions from the floor about Crowd-sourcing.  There seemed to be a belief that crowd sourcing is actually uncomfortable in current society and even exploitative.  Katie Smith has already blogged about this here

This is what I meant about having some interesting discussions.  Normally when I attend Digital events, it’s like the speakers are already preaching to the converted.  It wasn’t the case here.  There were a range of views.  It was interesting to hear how perceptions of crowd sourcing could be so extreme. Which made for some interesting discussions in the breakout sessions, particularly when discussing the nature of audience and participation.  Lots of discussions about whether audience is a useful term, as well as ‘authority’ ‘critical thinking’ and ‘expert’ and where should they all be situated in the creative industries.

Digital Transformations: Informed Bewilderment and Ignorance

April 2, 2012 / claireyross / 1 Comment

N.B.  My notes from the Digital Transformations event, they might not make too much sense; I’ve padded bits out here and there. It might be worth looking at the tweets from the day which are in a handy document here.

Next up at Digital Transformations was John Naughton, I couldn’t really hear most of John’s talk, there wasn’t a microphone, and I was sat at the back. So most of my notes come from jotting down stuff of his slides.

  • John quotes Castells with the belief that we are “entering, full speed, the Internet Galaxy, in the midst of informed bewilderment. What is informed bewilderment? An assumption that we have good idea of what stuff is about & make mistake that others do to.
  • ‘We are living in the biggest period of transformation since the invention of the printing press’ – nobody knows where it’s all going just as Germans didn’t know where Gutenberg’s invention would take us”
  • John suggested that the majority of society has “Sheer bloody ignorance about what is going on” when it comes to digital things, particularly the internet. Suggesting that some people think the web is the internet and others who think Facebook is the entirety of the web. I took umbridge at this, are ‘other’ people really as ignorant as all that? I know we shouldn’t make assumptions about what people know. But is ignorance the right term? is it not up to us to educate? Is it ok to accept that ignorance exists? Should we try to combat it?
  • Certain generations were shaped by broadcast tv and now moving to different medium – Internet. How should we deal with this? Has abundance overwritten scarcity in terms of ‘content’, prevails in economies of attention?
  •  Convergence and complexity
  • Convergence delusion.
  • What is our emerging media ecosystem
  • Complexity and viable system theory
  • Does the Internet have a surprise generation machine is at its heart? Are unpredictability and abundance permanent features? How do you design for this? we’ve always had surprises, it’s just digital code copies more effectively
  • Biodiversity: More biodiversity equals more system productivity. Overall, not specific to certain areas.”
  •  permissionless innovation
  • Intelligent filtration. Do we need instructions for checking quality? Can people no longer produce measured criticism?
  • People have always complained about information overload and society has created tools to deal with it. This will continue.

8 Principles for Digital Transformations

April 2, 2012 / claireyross / 2 Comments

Last week I attended the first of four Digital Transformation events. This event focused on Production and Creativity. Digital transformations mean that cultural and media organisations now find themselves in a new environment in which communities of participants interact to create, curate, organise and support cultural experiences.

It was really interesting to see the mixture of people speaking and attending this workshop. The audience ranged from Media practitioners, cultural heritage professionals, artists and academic researchers and this of course produced some surprising discussions about digital participation. And in my mind not all of those discussions were positive. One of the things that hit me during the day and the break out discussions was the term digital. Does digital just mean online? Lots of discussion during the day was about online elements rather than mobile and situated digital tech. Despite mobile becoming more pervasive in daily life, it doesn’t seem to have continued over into the critical conversations being held in the workshop.

This workshop considered three key things:

  • How can the creativity of interested communities be unlocked for maximum benefit?
  • To what extent can the creativity of enthusiasts be channelled and organised to achieve specific goals?
  • What is the role of the professional producer as they find themselves in a community of enthusiast producers, fans, and other practitioners?

Here my notes from the day. The might not make too much sense; I’ve padded bits out here and there. It might be worth looking at the tweets from the day which are in a handy document here.

David Gauntlett kicked us off by discussing the usefulness of the metaphor of platform in transformation of ‘audience’. With a lot of Lego model metaphors. Brilliant stuff. David used the example of Tate Beta, and how cultural online presence has evolved from an online brochure to a channel to a platform.

8 principles

1. Embrace because we want to.
2. Set no limits on participating
3. Celebrate participates
4. Support storytelling
5. Some gifts – exchange stuff.
6. Let them show off
7. Reinvent learning on/offline.
8. Foster genuine communities

Two key points for me came out of David’s talk. Firstly the idea of Celebrate participants, not the platform
This is something I really try to hit home in my user centred design and user evaluation work. It doesn’t matter how fantastic the technology is, it’s the opportunity and the input by the public, users, community that makes any digital project interesting.

Secondly a point made by Jim Richardson on twitter in response to the 8th principle. Jim tweeted;
“Most online communities aren’t really communities… #digitaltrans”
Begging the question are online communities actually communities? How do they form? Can online communities be classed as a community of practice? If not why not? Should we be placing physical terms and characteristics in an online world? Lots to think about on that one.

What’s your best digital experience?

March 16, 2012 / claireyross / Leave a comment

Last week I was asked this question:

What do you consider to be the best digital experience that you’ve seen recently?

To be honest I was stumped.  It’s a hard question to answer! Best digital experience in what context? Something I use daily that I can’t live without, a one of mindblowing experience, a digital experience in terms of museums? What?  And for that matter what actually constitutes a digital experience?

So I did what I always do when I’m stuck and asked the twitters.

Here are the responses:

 @DavidHaskiya: Very recently and in GLAM,http://www.oldmapsonline.org Best search for historical maps I’ve encountered.

 @MarDixon: Hard question to answer.

‏ @DavidHaskiya: With my job and current work focus:http://quirktools.com/screenfly/ More of a productivity tool than an experience though.

@_annapatrick:  Really liked the science museums hunt for Higgs game – fun and informative!!

 @timtfj: How do you see an experience? How can it be digital? (Sorry, pedant mode.)

‏ @MarDixon: Ok, I will go with QR code @AttinghamParkNTand the use of ip*ad used IN exhib @WolvArtGallery Both creativity.

 @johnv_anderson: I’m not sure it’s the best, but it is different:http://bjork.com/# and cool–she demoed an app on

@Mona3Dimaging:  David Hockney exhibition with 18 screens used for landscape and dancing http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/38393/

 @Girlinthe: BBC Your Paintings:http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/yourpaintings/ and its associated paintings tagger:

 @TomGrinsted: In any context? #bestDigital

 @simon_mahony: my new Samsung HD TV

@shelfappeal: Hands down best digital experience? @mattpyke & friends @gaitelyrique last year. Not so recent but not bettered yet, neither.

 ‏@TomGrinsted: Live international doodling @britishLibrary #lates. Took me a while though – loads of different options. #bestDigital

@TomGrinsted: #Android dialler is up there to, because it’s just so god-damn easy.

@Henry_Wellcome: Best digital experience? I long for the golden age of ChatRoulette.

 @simonrae: well there was a fine History of Disco prog on digital TV, but do you mean that sort of ‘digital’?

Plumping all of those together, there is such variety in the responses. Is your best experience a TV programme, which are all recorded digitally now? Or is it a brilliant digital resource produced by museums? Or is it something you use every day? (I would have said my iphone, but if I’m honest the poor 3GS is struggling to keep up nowadays). So what is my most recent bestest digital experience?  I think I would have to go with a one off digital experience.  That of Yvette Mattern‘s stunning laser projection artwork, which opened the Cultural Olympiad year along the North Sea coast. Global Rainbow is a massive, spectacular outdoor laser projection that consists of the seven colours of the rainbow in parallel laser beams stretching 5miles along the coast.  Before we saw it, it was very much a point of humour.  “oh look give them nice folks up in the North some pretty lights to look at, that’ll do, never mind the actually Olympics down in London”.  But when you actually see it, you can only marvel at it.  What made it the best digital experience? Because it seamlessly integrated the real with the digital. It transformed the coastline or the expected into something new. For me that is what a digital experience has to do. Transform your experience into something new. Provide a new way of seeing. That is exactly the Global Rainbow did.  But this digital experience tapped into who I am, what I believe and what I’m proud of.  My Heritage, my regional identity and my liking for pretty lights and visualisations. Can every digital experience do that? And should it?  It was so nice to so many people out, experiencing it together. There is something quite magical about outdoor digital experiences, because then it is a shared experience which creates a new and exciting atmosphere. Again transforming an experience into something new, something shared.

I’d love to hear more about what you consider to be the best digital experience that you’ve seen/had/created recently.

Creativity, Curiosity, QR codes and Science Communication.

March 1, 2012 / claireyross / 2 Comments

Today I had complete science envy.  I’m not a scientist.  I never will be a scientist. But sometimes, I get very very very excited by science.  Today was one of those days.  (and it had nothing to do with David Attenborough!)

I had a great meeting at the Centre for Life in Newcastle (aka TOON) with the lovely and excitable Camille.  Its great when two museoaholics get together, there are lots of ‘ooohs’ ‘excellents’ and ‘ooh brilliants’.  I haven’t been to the Centre for Life since I was an excitable tweenybopper when it first opened. To be fair I still look like and act like an excitable tweenybopper. It was great to go back and get a bit of a guided tour, and see how things have changed, how they have incorporated digital media into their exhibitions and what the future holds.

Camille is part of the Special Projects team and is looking at using QR codes in innovative ways for a new exhibition called Curiosity.  The concept is ace. An exhibition that openly encourages wonderment, imagination, experimentation and exploration. It’s what science centres do best.  I can’t wait for it to open.  It’s coming in May folks.  Check out the Centre for Life’s workshop development blog here for more about it, and they also have a great flickr group.

What made me really happy, was that entire environment of the Centre for Life encourages the visitors and staff explore via play.  Whether that is exploring ideas in digital media for a new exhibition, understanding neuroscience, DNA or making a plasticine insect, it all involved getting excited about it and learning through playing with stuff.   There is a lot of discussion about whether or not using play as a learning tool, and using digital technology to facilitate playful learning is actually doing the job properly.  The question being are we in an Age of Engagement or an Age of Distraction?  From watching people in the Centre for life today, I can very much say that Engagement wins (Even if I am bias, and I was always going to side with the engagement perspective). It’s clear to see that the school groups and children who were visiting the Centre for Life today were having a brilliant time.  But its not just them. I had a fab time too.  Apparently Einstein once said “play is the best form of research”.  We all have a natural curiosity to actively explore, ask questions, make connections, and understand ourselves and our world.   The Centre for Life is brilliant at doing that. Learning isn’t just about facts, it’s about the experience.

Here’s some of my favourite bits from today, all of them in the Make- it Interactive zone.   Which has a range of hands on cool stuff for building, creating, making and thinking.

Pointillism done differently.  Love it. Seurat’s Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte in stickers.  Simple but really effective! Project the painting on a blank wall for 5secs intervals, and let people run wild with stickers. Similar to the amazingness of the Yayoi Kusama installation for the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art.

 

Fill the City.  Anyway you want.

make an insect.. alright this is a person.  but awesome never the less.

It all just makes me want to PLAY!  Do not doubt the power play can have on kickstarting pondering.

 

The Big Picture Show

February 16, 2012February 16, 2012 / claireyross / Leave a comment

The award-winning Big Picture Show is a unique 360° audio-visual experience, showcasing IWM's world-renowned collections of photography, art and sound.

This week some of the SI team has a bit of a jolly up to IWM North. I hadn’t been before, and the only thing I really knew about it was from a BBC documentary about a chap who abseiled down it. So I was expecting interesting architecture, and the odd feeling of being slightly uncomfortable in the space. Believe it or not war museums do scare me. I had reservations about a space being intentionally confrontational, with a want of making visitors feel ill at ease. But I fell immediately in love with the place. You get lost easily, and are never quite sure where the exit is, or if you have come from the right or the left. I can see how to some this would be the worst museum visit ever. I, however, loved it. The museum is really one wonkily-shaped large central dimly lit room with small ‘silos’ focusing on particular themes. There is a chronology, but it isn’t easy to follow, as you do get lost and distracted. The lighting is low (which is going to be a challenge for implementing QR codes) but this makes it feel more intimate. But the major highlight is the story. At North context is King. It is the story which is the focus, not the artefacts. Cleverly presented fewer artefacts has greater context.

One really impressive part of the visit was the Big Picture Show which happens on the hour, every hour. It stops pretty much every visitor in their tracks. You cant help but be drawn in. As a brief announcement is made, the lights go out and the space is transformed into a 360 cinema with photographs and films being projected onto every wall, and audio being played; all focusing on a central theme. I found the experience to be stunningly effective. It was totally immersive, beautifully made and incredibly well executed. Powerful images and audio are a very important and impressive factor of the show, in particular the room acoustics was a big factor in creating a truly immersive experience, it surrounds the audience and allows them no choice but to listen and take notice. Absolutely mesmerising. The Big Picture Show commands attention. And quite rightly it gets it.

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