In this week's thesis meeting Scott and I pretty much just went over the notes from my mid-term crit and discussed my next steps.
Comments from critique:
How do I connect the content of the piece with the content of the explorations?
3D printing and replicas. Be sure I understand the benefits and drawbacks.
What is the artist perspective? Meet with CCA faculty as planned but stay focused on what I'm doing.
Do I want to stick with Cézanne's apples or choose different work depending on the exploration?
How does this happen in the real world?
Showing posts with label museums. Show all posts
Showing posts with label museums. Show all posts
3/01/2014
1/27/2014
Thesis meetings: 1/21/14
The new semester is here (gulp) along with a narrowing and slight shift in my thesis direction.
In the most concise explanation, I am exploring visual art beyond the visual.
Basically, I mean that I am looking at the meaning of accessibility in art museums and using tactile and multi-sensory experiments to amplify and expose non-visual information. I want to create probes that explore tangible elements such as scale, weight, materiality, and less tangible elements such as process, and context.
Here are the notes from my first meeting with adviser Scott Minneman.
I could make the case that a lot of visual art is "inaccessible."
Art on a wall of a museum, perhaps, is just a statement. Contextualization and interpretation is very limited.
What about audio tours and docents? Those are great! But they take planning and/or extra money; docents aren't always available and both audio tour and docent tour usually cost extra. With most audio tours, there is little room for interpretation.
Your original thesis topic was to improve the museum experience for visitors who are blind. What happened?
What I learned from my conversations and museum experiences with people who are blind is still guiding my direction. However, I realized that I wanted to look at "accessibility" in a broader sense. Rather than make a tool for one user group, I want to make a tool that will increase accessibility for anyone who uses it. Museum visitors who are blind are still an important user group for me, but are no longer the only user group.
Are multi-sensory art exhibits too extreme/unrealistic/impractical?
Well, museum are already weird and extreme. For example, historical pieces that were never meant to be seen in white walled rooms are seen in white walled rooms. Museums could be thought of as a particular historical "accident."
In the words of Thomas Thwaites from The Toaster Project*, "there’s not much point in imagining futures that are the same as the present. For one, it’s not very interesting, but it’s also not very useful, and can be dangerous" (176).
So there.
When a piece is sold, the owner gets to touch it as much as s/he wants.
But in public institutions, obviously this can't be done.
What do artists think? What stories, if any, do they want told?
Also, what do curators and historians thing? What do they want told? A multi-sensory exhibit also opens the door for a multi-story exhibit. It will vary from person to person, but I need to get some data points in terms of what artists and historians think about multiple object perspectives.
To do
Come up with new luminaries
Read scholarship around multi-sensory exhibits
Contact curators and artists to learn about sacred cows
Look at the Gardener museum in Boston
Read up on current language of Universal Design
Watch Understanding Art: Hidden Lives of Masterpieces
To answer
What are my guiding principles?
How do I qualify successful experiments?
Who am I in service of?
Whose story am I telling and will it be historically accurate?
How do curators deal with unanswered questions?
* Based on Thwaites's MFA design thesis project, very, very, very inspired and inspiring.
In the most concise explanation, I am exploring visual art beyond the visual.
Basically, I mean that I am looking at the meaning of accessibility in art museums and using tactile and multi-sensory experiments to amplify and expose non-visual information. I want to create probes that explore tangible elements such as scale, weight, materiality, and less tangible elements such as process, and context.
Here are the notes from my first meeting with adviser Scott Minneman.
I could make the case that a lot of visual art is "inaccessible."
Art on a wall of a museum, perhaps, is just a statement. Contextualization and interpretation is very limited.
What about audio tours and docents? Those are great! But they take planning and/or extra money; docents aren't always available and both audio tour and docent tour usually cost extra. With most audio tours, there is little room for interpretation.
Your original thesis topic was to improve the museum experience for visitors who are blind. What happened?
What I learned from my conversations and museum experiences with people who are blind is still guiding my direction. However, I realized that I wanted to look at "accessibility" in a broader sense. Rather than make a tool for one user group, I want to make a tool that will increase accessibility for anyone who uses it. Museum visitors who are blind are still an important user group for me, but are no longer the only user group.
Are multi-sensory art exhibits too extreme/unrealistic/impractical?
Well, museum are already weird and extreme. For example, historical pieces that were never meant to be seen in white walled rooms are seen in white walled rooms. Museums could be thought of as a particular historical "accident."
In the words of Thomas Thwaites from The Toaster Project*, "there’s not much point in imagining futures that are the same as the present. For one, it’s not very interesting, but it’s also not very useful, and can be dangerous" (176).
So there.
When a piece is sold, the owner gets to touch it as much as s/he wants.
But in public institutions, obviously this can't be done.
What do artists think? What stories, if any, do they want told?
Also, what do curators and historians thing? What do they want told? A multi-sensory exhibit also opens the door for a multi-story exhibit. It will vary from person to person, but I need to get some data points in terms of what artists and historians think about multiple object perspectives.
To do
Come up with new luminaries
Read scholarship around multi-sensory exhibits
Contact curators and artists to learn about sacred cows
Look at the Gardener museum in Boston
Read up on current language of Universal Design
Watch Understanding Art: Hidden Lives of Masterpieces
To answer
What are my guiding principles?
How do I qualify successful experiments?
Who am I in service of?
Whose story am I telling and will it be historically accurate?
How do curators deal with unanswered questions?
* Based on Thwaites's MFA design thesis project, very, very, very inspired and inspiring.
10/21/2013
Thesis: manifesto-ish
It's about time I update this with my thesis work so far. I won't lie, I've had some hiccups. Or, perhaps, I have some hiccups.
The Hardest Part: A I have had difficulty in wrenching my head out of the theory and the research to just do. There are so many rabbit holes to peer into -- which I do not think is all bad. The Hardest Part: B I am having trouble connecting with people who are blind. I have been reaching out to groups left and right, but understandably so, it's been difficult. I imagine that many people who are blind receive numerous calls or emails from students wanting to involve them in a project, and I am sure this is tiresome to say the least. I hope, however, that my project is one that truly makes people think about human perception, the meaning of experience, story, and culture. Plus, I think that involvement will be interesting and fun for participants, hell, it might even make a real difference. I have started to make some progress through Lighthouse for the Blind in SF and possibly with a student group, so fingers crossed.
Post midterm review I have taken the critiques to heart and I am trying to write a manifesto of sorts which I hope will keep me focussed. Here is the working document.
When sighted visitors go to a museum they have many options in terms of how they shape their experience (fast, slow, deep, shallow, permanent collection, special show). Blind museum visitors, however, have far fewer options. Most museums offer special accessibility tours once a month, but these tours often fill up weeks in advance and are scheduled during the work day. My hypothesis is that these top down experiences, while valuable, do not meet the needs of most blind visitors. I am exploring ways improve the museum experience for blind or low vision visitors by pushing on the content and creating multi-faceted object stories that go beyond what is expected in order to create rich experiences through our non-visual senses.
I am doing this because I think museums are unique and special and because I think they should be designed for everyone who is interested. (And on a tangent, I think they are in danger of becoming more known for their Thursday evening parties than for their collections if they are not willing to change and embrace technology). The theories of universal design tell us that when you improve a design for the edge users, the experience will improve for all users. When I first learned about universal design I was struck by the story of the OXO brand. I know, I know, the OXO example is tired and overused, but it resonates with me. I have rheumatoid arthritis, and I can assure you that there are many “simple” actions that are nearly impossible for me to perform. I constantly make adaptations to accommodate limited mobility in my wrists and for the most part things are manageable. But regardless of how many times I have heard the OXO story in my years as a design student, I love it. It is pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty good that design can be used to make such a difference in our lives. I have experience adapting products to fit my own unique needs, and I enjoy learning about the myriad of ways that other people adapt products or situations to fit their unique needs. We are so accustomed to products and experiences that are not designed to meet our needs that we go through the modification without any thought to design as a practice.
My specific interest in museum visitors who are blind was sparked by a slender, gem of a book I found in one of the libraries at the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum. The book, Finding the way by ear, hand and foot, was written by the Danish Design Center and describes the development process of creating better tools and surroundings for persons who are blind or partially sighted. As the book's back flap says, “tools developed for a particular user group become better tools, not just for those users, but for everybody.” From there, Katie Shelly and I started to think about what the experience would be for blind visitors at the Cooper-Hewitt when it opens in October 2014. We started by doing a competitive survey of the museum experiences for blind people at a number of different museums in New York City....
to be continued.
I end this post with a really nice screenshot of Antarctica via Google Street View.
The Hardest Part: A I have had difficulty in wrenching my head out of the theory and the research to just do. There are so many rabbit holes to peer into -- which I do not think is all bad. The Hardest Part: B I am having trouble connecting with people who are blind. I have been reaching out to groups left and right, but understandably so, it's been difficult. I imagine that many people who are blind receive numerous calls or emails from students wanting to involve them in a project, and I am sure this is tiresome to say the least. I hope, however, that my project is one that truly makes people think about human perception, the meaning of experience, story, and culture. Plus, I think that involvement will be interesting and fun for participants, hell, it might even make a real difference. I have started to make some progress through Lighthouse for the Blind in SF and possibly with a student group, so fingers crossed.
Post midterm review I have taken the critiques to heart and I am trying to write a manifesto of sorts which I hope will keep me focussed. Here is the working document.
When sighted visitors go to a museum they have many options in terms of how they shape their experience (fast, slow, deep, shallow, permanent collection, special show). Blind museum visitors, however, have far fewer options. Most museums offer special accessibility tours once a month, but these tours often fill up weeks in advance and are scheduled during the work day. My hypothesis is that these top down experiences, while valuable, do not meet the needs of most blind visitors. I am exploring ways improve the museum experience for blind or low vision visitors by pushing on the content and creating multi-faceted object stories that go beyond what is expected in order to create rich experiences through our non-visual senses.
I am doing this because I think museums are unique and special and because I think they should be designed for everyone who is interested. (And on a tangent, I think they are in danger of becoming more known for their Thursday evening parties than for their collections if they are not willing to change and embrace technology). The theories of universal design tell us that when you improve a design for the edge users, the experience will improve for all users. When I first learned about universal design I was struck by the story of the OXO brand. I know, I know, the OXO example is tired and overused, but it resonates with me. I have rheumatoid arthritis, and I can assure you that there are many “simple” actions that are nearly impossible for me to perform. I constantly make adaptations to accommodate limited mobility in my wrists and for the most part things are manageable. But regardless of how many times I have heard the OXO story in my years as a design student, I love it. It is pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty good that design can be used to make such a difference in our lives. I have experience adapting products to fit my own unique needs, and I enjoy learning about the myriad of ways that other people adapt products or situations to fit their unique needs. We are so accustomed to products and experiences that are not designed to meet our needs that we go through the modification without any thought to design as a practice.
My specific interest in museum visitors who are blind was sparked by a slender, gem of a book I found in one of the libraries at the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum. The book, Finding the way by ear, hand and foot, was written by the Danish Design Center and describes the development process of creating better tools and surroundings for persons who are blind or partially sighted. As the book's back flap says, “tools developed for a particular user group become better tools, not just for those users, but for everybody.” From there, Katie Shelly and I started to think about what the experience would be for blind visitors at the Cooper-Hewitt when it opens in October 2014. We started by doing a competitive survey of the museum experiences for blind people at a number of different museums in New York City....
to be continued.
I end this post with a really nice screenshot of Antarctica via Google Street View.
9/22/2013
Thesis beginnings
Thesis R&D is in full swing. After some research in museum accessibility over the summer at the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in NYC, I've decided to focus my thesis investigations on the the museum experience for blind and low vision visitors.
There are still a lot of things I need to get my brain around...
Am I more interested in improving museum experiences, or improving an experience for a blind or low vision person?
Well, neither strictly.
I think what I'm most interested in (at least today) is in how people see things differently and how one sense can be translated to another.
People who are blind because they experience the world in a different way. Museums because they are where all this stuff is collected and where people have dedicated and focussed moments.
There are a few of tools out there, like Touch Graphic's Talking Tactile Exhibit Panels that narrate an object according to where you are touching it. Pretty awesome. But, the content is all tell and no show.
Since I am still in the testing the waters phase, I think I'll spend some time exploring unexpected ways that visuals can be expressed. What does a painting feel like? What does a painting sound like? How can we translate visual art in an way that creates rich experiences for experience all of the senses?
There are still a lot of things I need to get my brain around...
Am I more interested in improving museum experiences, or improving an experience for a blind or low vision person?
Well, neither strictly.
I think what I'm most interested in (at least today) is in how people see things differently and how one sense can be translated to another.
People who are blind because they experience the world in a different way. Museums because they are where all this stuff is collected and where people have dedicated and focussed moments.
There are a few of tools out there, like Touch Graphic's Talking Tactile Exhibit Panels that narrate an object according to where you are touching it. Pretty awesome. But, the content is all tell and no show.
Since I am still in the testing the waters phase, I think I'll spend some time exploring unexpected ways that visuals can be expressed. What does a painting feel like? What does a painting sound like? How can we translate visual art in an way that creates rich experiences for experience all of the senses?
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