#museum making

Hi folks—I'm excited to announce that I'll be presenting not once, but twice at this year's Museums and the Web conference. First, I'll be co-presenting with fellow research assistant Liam Andrew on the art discovery app we've been developing at HyperStudio, MIT's digital humanities lab. I'll also give a talk on my thesis research examining the emergence of museum initiatives inviting audiences to experiment with new technologies. I've included the abstracts for both paper presentations below.

This year's Museums and the Web takes place in Chicago from April 8 to 10. Hope to see you there!

Playful Engineering: Designing and Building Art Discovery Systems

How can we engineer the discovery of art? HyperStudio, MIT’s digital humanities laboratory, has been tackling this question through the development of Artbot, a mobile website that encourages meaningful, sustained relationships to art museums in the Boston area. Artbot combines two strategies to enable users to discover cultural happenings in the city: a serendipitous approach that allows users to explore via linkages between art events, and a recommendation system that suggests events based on a user’s interests. Using Artbot as its primary case study, this paper will examine the design and building of art discovery systems. First, it will survey other examples of art recommendation and discovery systems, such as Magic Tate Ball, Serendip-o-matic, Artsy, and the Powerhouse’s OPAC 2.0 collection project. Then, we will discuss the frontend design and backend technologies behind Artbot’s discovery engine and consider how other cultural institutions can implement these approaches.

Museum Making: Creating with Emerging Technologies in Art Museums

Hackathons, startup incubators, maker spaces, and innovation labs. These terms are common to the world of tech, but recently, they’ve appeared on museum websites and in press releases. The last few years have witnessed a wave of art museum initiatives that invite audiences—from casual visitors to professional artists and technologists—to take the reigns of creative production through experimentation with digital media and fabrication technologies.  Where is this interest in engaging audiences with hands-on, technological creation coming from? And how are museums, which might lack the necessary funding and technical knowhow to work with new technologies, able to make these initiatives happen? This presentation is informed by the extensive historical and ethnographic research I have conducted for my master’s thesis in comparative media studies at MIT. This presentation is informed by the extensive historical and ethnographic research I have conducted for my master’s thesis in comparative media studies at MIT. Case studies include the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s Art + Technology Lab, a program that awards artist grants and mentorship from individuals and technology companies such as Google, DAQRI, and the Jet Propulson Lab to develop art projects and artistic research; the Peabody Essex Museum’s Maker Lounge, an in-gallery space in which visitors are invited to tinker with high and low technologies; and the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Media Lab, a section of the Digital Media department that invites both visitors and artists to experiment with new technologies through programs such as 3D printing workshops and hackathons.

For my grad school thesis, I'm investigating an emerging wave of museum initiatives that invite audiences to experiment with new technologies. Among my case studies is the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's Art + Technology Lab. This program revives the spirit of the original Art & Technology program, an effort led by curator Maurice Tuchman from 1967 to 1971 that placed artists (Andy Warhol, James Turrell, and Claes Oldenburg, to name a few) in residence at tech and engineering companies such as Boeing. In its current incarnation, the A+T Lab invites artists to apply for a grant of up to $50,000, as well as support from the Lab's partners, to explore artist applications of emerging technologies.

This summer and through next May, I'll be hard at work on my thesis research project, Museum Making: Creating with New Technologies in Art Museums. Over the past three years, art museums have launched initiatives inviting audiences—from casual visitors to professional artists and technologists—to take the reigns of creative production and experimentation with new technologies. Hackathons, startup incubators, labs, 3D printing workshops, and maker spaces are just some of the offerings that fall under museum making. From the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Media Lab to the Peabody Essex Museum's Maker Lounge, I'll be investigating how these initiatives have emerged and the impact they are having on communities of creators.

While many types of cultural and learning institutions—especially children’s museums, science museums, and discovery centers—have long incorporated making and creative technologies, my research primarily focuses on technology initiatives at art institutions. Among other things, I’m interested in exploring the implications of museum making on concepts of aesthetic value and creative production.

Museum making initiatives have only been adopted in art museums in the last few years. I believe this research project is an excellent opportunity to trace the historical precedents of these initiatives, while also observing how museum making develops and imagining its implications for the future of cultural institutions. Although this is a specific movement happening right now, the debates around it address broader questions: How do change and innovation happen in cultural institutions? Who gets to make cultural and art objects? And who gets to bestow aesthetic value on these new forms of art?