You can say the same thing of the long text that are often next to the exhibit in museums. I don't get the point of trying to read some essay while standing in the middle of a crowd pushing. You might as well read the wiki page in the comfort of your home and focus on the actual exhibit in the museum.
I didn't bring my son to a museum to look at screens
241–250 of 404 posts
Re: I didn't bring my son to a museum to look at screens
#242I had a (now defunct) startup in this space some years ago. Maybe I can help shed some light on why things are the way they are. 1. Money. Most museums have no money. They either run on donations, on subsidies, or at the whim of wealthy patrons. They are very costly to run, especially the big ones. They are often in prime real estate areas, many require tight climate control, many also require specialised lighting to…
i'm confused. in what way is this a response to the article? the article laments the sidelining of physical exhibits, in favor of software. you respond that the screens probably have an arduous and expensive procurement process. what's going on here?
I inferred that a museum exhibit setup might be a package put together by a contractor.
And the contract selection process might put a relatively low priority on amount of screen tech in the package.
Museum might get locked into a vendor tech support package after procuring a digital-display-heavy exhibit. Oh joy.
Re: I didn't bring my son to a museum to look at screens
#243Earlier quoted context omitted.
My wife and I toured our neighborhood public elementary school a couple years ago. Almost every classroom we passed the kids were staring at their chromebooks, even in the art room—digital art, I guess [1]. In the music room the kids were sitting at rows of desks with electronic keyboards and headphones while the teacher sat at the front of the class and gave them instructions through a microphone (to be heard throug…
Silly aside: "digital art" is the means by which you legally "buy" weed in DC. You pay for the "art" and they "gift" you a box of special brownies or a joint.
Whoa I had not heard this. I'm really surprised that holds up legally.
Re: I didn't bring my son to a museum to look at screens
#244Earlier quoted context omitted.
It drives me absolutely bananas that the "interpretation" (fancy museum word for "signs") at science museums is so parsimonious. Some fascinating device vital to the history of an important branch of science will have a brief paragraph about the person who invented it, nothing about what it's for, and then just a date and the device name. Often there's little or nothing further even in the museum shop. It's a crying…
Art museums are even worse. "Portrait of Duke von Duke (London, 1841). Oils." Who is this guy in the painting?! How did he merit a painting? What's unique about the style/composition/whatever? Conversely, I went to an exhibit of Napoleonic Art and they had a whole breakdown of the symbolism. For example, Napolean liked bees as a symbol of hard work and order, apparently, and they were snuck into most depictions of hi…
Then there are the “artist statement” ladies on some exhibits where artist get to describe their work on self-aggrandizing terms that only make sense to people with a graduate degree in the field
Re: I didn't bring my son to a museum to look at screens
#245I had a (now defunct) startup in this space some years ago. Maybe I can help shed some light on why things are the way they are. 1. Money. Most museums have no money. They either run on donations, on subsidies, or at the whim of wealthy patrons. They are very costly to run, especially the big ones. They are often in prime real estate areas, many require tight climate control, many also require specialised lighting to…
i'm confused. in what way is this a response to the article? the article laments the sidelining of physical exhibits, in favor of software. you respond that the screens probably have an arduous and expensive procurement process. what's going on here?
[flagged]
Re: I didn't bring my son to a museum to look at screens
#246Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If we can't see it why are we keeping it? Does one get any better sense of something from seeing the original something vs a replica of the something? Does looking at the "original" copy of the constitution under all that glass do anything different than a replica under all of that glass? Would seeing the actual David statue impart any more anything than seeing a replica of it? If you say yes, why do you think any…
Those are all things we can see. I'm asking about the many things that are forever locked in a backroom and you won't be allowed to see it.
I agree. If it only exists so that a select few can actually experience, it might as well not exist at all.
And don't kid yourself, those keepers and creators get full access as well as anyone they deem worthy enough. The rest of us will never be granted that access.
If it's privately funded, good. It affects me nil. But if they take public funds and lock up history or nature just so it can remain pristine for the wealthy or elite to enjoy, then I don't want to have to pay for it. Not that I have a choice in the matter either way.
Re: I didn't bring my son to a museum to look at screens
#247Earlier quoted context omitted.
Art museums are even worse. "Portrait of Duke von Duke (London, 1841). Oils." Who is this guy in the painting?! How did he merit a painting? What's unique about the style/composition/whatever? Conversely, I went to an exhibit of Napoleonic Art and they had a whole breakdown of the symbolism. For example, Napolean liked bees as a symbol of hard work and order, apparently, and they were snuck into most depictions of hi…
Most likely, there is no special backstory and the painting was simply commissioned. And most likely, there no super special composition in that portrait and the style is exactly the same as the style of surrounding paintings. Most paintings dont have a cool backstories. They are just paintings. Art student can see technical details of how they were done, but those are not really interesting if you are not trying to…
But even that basic context is useful and interesting: "in this era it was common for wealthy people to commission portraits." Etc
Re: I didn't bring my son to a museum to look at screens
#248Vindication! I’ve spent over a decade of my life putting physical interactives into museums. I have preached (sold) many museums on the stance that they should put unique experiences into museums that can’t happen on an iPad at home, to varying degrees of success. The museums that have listened are the ones that continue to be wildly successful to this day. They are hard to do right though. I used to compete in comba…
> A lot of those museums have knee jerk reactioned the opposite direction to touchscreen exhibits, only to see their ticket sales slowly drop.
According to what you've written here something close to 100% of those touchscreen exhibits should be broken. Are they?
Re: I didn't bring my son to a museum to look at screens
#249My experience of "the culture": cultural spending cutbacks mean exhibitors are often forced to fall back to the minimal spend of a screen.
It's literally all they can afford.
Re: I didn't bring my son to a museum to look at screens
#250Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI) in the 1970s had a real submarine periscope you could use, a manned space capsule you could look into, a DC-3 airplane you could go into, and a variety of whirring/buzzing physical things to interact with. In the late 90s, I escorted a school group there and it was all screens. It had gone from being a destination worth driving across the state for to being an experience less interesting than a decent web site.