4/12/06

“UK Museum Association Preview!” (#523)

Stinger REPORT Skinny!

(24/10/06) In what will become a more prominent component of Stinger coverage the ‘Edutainment’ sector is reviewed as the leading museum and visitor attraction market gathered in England for the Museum Association conference and exhibition. Along with charting some new trends that look towards similar developments in the entertainment sector, The Stinger Report also attends the latest video gaming traveling exhibit and the place that arcade plays in its presentation.

Main REPORT:

The Museum Association in the United Kingdom (representing the four countries of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland), with over 800 attendees gathered at a Southern holiday seaside venue (Bournemouth) and held their annual conference and exhibition. The event offered the greatest gatherings of minds looking to their future and the ability for the sector to embrace new technology ensuring they control its effects on a sector under great pressure to move further towards ‘Edutainment’!

The event attracted auspicious conference presentation from leading lights in the sector – one of those presented was Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport for the Government. Linked to much of the investment in 2012 Olympics development, but also the move towards the ‘entertainment-culture’ – the Minister gave an impassioned presentation, pointing the ‘Knowledge Economy’, where the United Kingdom’s museums and libraries offered a valuable resource, especially in a culture that looks more to genealogy and tracing linage. New family history centers and visitor experience centers a path in this direction – but opening the door towards the ‘entertainment’ element walking into the sector; this need to embrace new thinking as budgets are effected by budgetary concerns.

The need to move from 19th-century perceptions of curators and personal collections for the museum industry, galvanized by a need for greater attendance and the decreasing available budgets was in evidence at MA'06.

The need to control the audience that attends the venue and ensure smooth facilitation brought the professionalism and reliability of the big sports and live event corporations to the museum sector. Tickets.com, owned by the major sports ticket company, brought their RFID style ticketing technology to the show. Other exhibitors and conference presentations looked towards mobile phones.

One such presentation was given at a session organized by The SEA, an innovative research and development groups working with OOKL on a concept project with government funding called ‘MyArtSpace’. Using Orange 3G phones, visitors capture images of various artifacts from around the venue that are linked to a customizable audio and video presentation - creating a mixed-reality learning platform for school parties.

Currently the application has been on test, in operation at the UK D-Day Museum in Portsmouth. The student element of creation and compilation offers a unique method of use of a mobile phone, with the ability for the collected data to create a detailed ‘Teacher-log’ of pupil activities that can also be used by the venue to judge the popularity of various exhibits, all helping define the new level of visitor experience – still at an early stage of research. Some observations during the presentation pointed to the difficulties of using flash camera phones in museum environments. The technology on demonstration was surprisingly similar to the technology experiment being run by Walt Disney with their 3G phone camera attraction (Stinger #500) in the theme park sector – an example of future crossovers.

The development of high levels of interactive exhibits for visitor attractions and museum / science centers was an element of the exhibition space, with leading developer EDM showing their current work, including a comprehensive Six Degrees of Freedom motion simulator for one university museum. Another element trend from the exhibition was the ‘virtual exhibit’. One such system demonstrated by Arti-Fact, who using their extensive 3D modeling and virtual architecture skills used the latest 3D scanning technology demonstrated by UK developer Virtalis – able to scan artifacts and then place exact 3D representations in e-Museum locations (offering realistic representations of a virtual museum environment).

It is calculated that most museums only exhibit at one time 15 per cent of their collection – the e-Museum application could circulate previously unseen exhibits. Other developers included HyperFocal and the developer Innovate – Centre for Creative Industries; all working on 3D Digital Imagining for e-Museum. One aspect of this development however was the issue of ownership of the 3D models created, especially as some of the companies proposing the development of this technology were also considering the use of 3D Prototyping hardware to create facsimiles of certain scanned exhibits; Arti-Fact one of the few developers looking at their legal positioning with the representation of valuable exhibits.

Where these 3D representations of exhibits and virtual exhibition space could be labeled as augmented reality, Israeli company YDreams showed the most widely distributed application of AR technology. Previous mentioned in coverage in the Stinger the company’s ‘Virtual Sightseeing’ offered a modern take on the site-seeing coin-operated binoculars. The system offers full screen presentation and by turning the viewer capturing the surrounding area. But this technology was specially developed to place overlays on top of the image offering a tourist guide, with the addition of structure visualization if looking at ruins and a verbal guide for disabled users. The first prototype systems were being fielded at a number of European venues as the future of guest presentation able to be used indoors and out.

Another trend on display at the event was ‘personalization’ of the experience to achieve a higher repeat attendance. The use of technology from Digivey that creates Survey Suite kiosk’s to garner visitor reactions and preferences.

What Could this all Mean:
The clash between what we currently perceive as a museum and the possible transition to a visitor attraction centre was made clear at this year’s event. The attack upon the control of the ‘Museums-space’ charted by Museum Association president in his departing statement. The contentious subject that was heating the midnight bar conversations was the English council that had forced a museum to sell a valuable treasure to address a shortfall in budgetary coffers. That a Museum and curator team could be brushed aside showed the real control of regional museum resources, many museum employees actually employed by the council rather than the museum.

The move towards utilizing the Museum-space for other practices ranging from special exhibits seen as the first chapter in the ‘Edutainment’ revolution that will force an amusement and leisure venue culture into regional – and event mainstream museum and visitor attraction sites, and force the more traditional gallery and exhibit style practice into the rear of many facilities. The curators of the museum sector hoping that what they call the ‘Sizzle of History’ is enough to keep them in control.

The pressures placed upon the future of the museum and visitor attraction sector will be played out in 2007 with the Museum Association event venturing to the North of the United Kingdom and a show date in Scotland’s capital Glasgow – This time will the Leisure Entertainment Sector be invited?

Breaking Stinger News – While the museum association pondered their future, and mulled the development of the next generation of traveling exhibits, London saw the return of one of the most popular interactive traveling packages since the Titanic and Jurassic Park exhibits.

The 'Game On' exhibit opened in London’s Science Museum in October after a successful tour of American cities (see Stinger #428). The Barbican traveling exhibition had received the royal treatment in applying some of the $1.6million sponsorship from games giant Nintendo into the Science Museum.

The package was presented in a very similar (if smaller) presentation / layout as to it first appearance at the Barbican in 2002. The screening area and much of the future observations replaced by more game consoles and a new lecture session to accompany the event; the museum also prided itself in adding a level of technological inquiry into the material presented to the guests.

Some 120 stations offer a selection of classic and contemporary consumer games to play, while amusement is represented by a smattering of classic arcade cabinets. The attending Stinger correspondent at the event launch asked the question why no contemporary arcade machines were included in the exhibition? One curator revealed that attempts to gain exhibits had fallen on deaf ears when approaching association representatives - a very sad state of affairs!

The Game On exhibit received industrious media coverage internationally – The Stinger Report one of many attending the first opening of the new exhibit had a chance to see how this compared to the new vision of specialist exhibits – the free entry Science Museum (supported by Lottery Commission funding) changing a separate £8 fee to visit this packaged exhibit; the venue having played host to Pixar, James Bond and Star Wars packages in the past.

The package on show is one of three new interactive game based exhibitions for the edutainment sector – this including the Virtual Arcade Exhibit announced to be in development last month.