Curate Your Own Adventure

Another day, another excursion. I think I have started a blog post like this before, but, it so perfectly summarizes how wonderfully excursion-filled this semester has been. Even coming down with quite a terrible flu did not ruin the day!

I will begin by saying this was my first visit to the Art Gallery of New South Wales. I don’t usually visit art galleries – the only exception being the NGV. Even when travelling I tend to prefer history museums. Personally, this has a lot to do with accessibility. I find that art labels are often quite convoluted and unnecessarily complex. Having no background in art or artistic concepts means I can struggle with trying to figure out what exactly I’m seeing. The irony is, as with Biennale, as soon as someone explains a piece to me in more casual terms, I can end up really loving the art! Anyway that was a bit of a rant, but, it does link with what I’m going to say next.

What made this visit enjoyable was the fact we had a guide, digital designer Andrew Yip, who showed us around the exhibition and explained the digital technology. The exhibition is split over two floors, the first floor focusing on life under the Tang dynasty and the second exploring concepts of religion and the underworld. Incorporated into this bottom level is a digital experience that Yip described as an immersive experience. Equipped with an iPad, visitors can explore one of the hundreds of Dunhuang caves in China.

It’s significant for two main reasons. Firstly Dunhuang was a thriving trade city at the end of the silk road. What is contained in these caves can shed much light on the trade of commodities and ideas. Secondly, the caves have been accessed by thousands of visitors and are in dire need of conservation. In my opinion, whilst we should never go with digitization as opposed to actual conservation efforts, it does provide the perfect way to record, keep, and share the wonder. It also means the caves can reach beyond their geographical location and actually influence individuals in other countries etc.

The room in which the digital experience takes place just looks like three black-painted walls with randomly drawn white lines everywhere. If you look hard enough, you can notice the infrared cameras dotted above the wall. What transforms this room into the cave is the iPad that connects to a whole lot of computer and infrared technology. Wherever you point the iPad in the room you can see the cave. The paintings on the wall and the 3D sculptures come to life, sometimes literally, and transport you from the AGNSW to China. What I thought was most effective about this experience was the level of control. If you wanted to zoom, see something different etc you could. This was lacking from the VR experience we saw a couple of weeks ago. I was also less claustrophobic in this space and definitely felt I could spend as long as I wanted exploring at my own pace.

This experience actually made me want to see the rest of the exhibition in more depth and learn more about this fascinating time period. Again, this is just personal opinion, but I felt as though the experience was integrated well into the overall exhibition and not just tacked on. The rest of the exhibition space had some wonderful objects included but I did not get a clear narrative or holistic idea. Yes, the objects were about religion and the underworld but there was no clear indication of how they all related. I had to keep in mind it was an art gallery and this is not necessarily the point.

Another shout out must go to the kid’s activities. The shadow puppet screen was amazing and creating silk road trade bags, heaps of fun.

If I had to say one thing I’d like to have seen in the exhibition, I would say that what made my experience amazing was having Yip guide us around the cave. If the iPad had some audio accompanying what visitors were seeing, this could be really effective as a more in-depth learning tool. I am, however, just being very picky. This kind of technology is still in its infancy and it will be great to see how it evolves and transforms over time!

~ International Museum Day! ~

It was wonderful to spend today with fellow museum-studiers at the Hyde Park Barracks! It was, above all, a very fun afternoon. We started the visit with a talk from a representative of Sydney Living Museums (SLM). Although we didn’t touch too much on how SLM engage audiences, we did learn about an interesting way to categorize visitors. The program SLM has found particularly effective is called Culture Segments and was developed by Morris, Hargreaves, and Mcintyre.

I took the quiz just then to see what segment I fit into and got: stimulation.

“Stimulation is the segment that is most attracted to unusual, spectacular and experiential cultural events. They like culture that introduces big ideas but they like to consume it socially with friends.”

After reading through the other potential categories, I’m pretty sure that’s where I fit! Bring on the big ideas. To learn more see here: http://mhminsight.com/static/pdfs/culture-segments/en.pdf.

After the chat we were let loose to run around the museum (not literally) and interact with whatever we could find! I have to admit that I’m an absolute tragic for dressing-up so I was excited to see a couple of dress-up boxes. The one thing that struck me most about Hyde Park Barracks was the numerous opportunities for interaction. A lot of the time this was digital interaction, however, there were objects such as shackles etc that you could touch and even try on.

A real highlight of the museum was the convict hammocks. Schools around New South Wales can opt to have convict sleepovers where students stay in the Barracks overnight and “sleep” in the hammocks. Sleep is in inverted commas because I am pretty sure there wouldn’t be much of it. It is still a great idea as students can fully immerse themselves in the heritage and experience it in a way that’s not normally on offer. Who hasn’t dreamed of spending a night in the museum. I would love to see how students have reacted to the sleepovers and what they believe were the positives and negatives.

Another interesting section of the museum was the second floor archaeological exhibition. The display of archaeological material was, to me, very effective. The exhibition took the classic archaeological grid pattern and used this as its base for display. I can’t quite explain why, but, it was visually appealing.

I would have loved more time to fully explore the Barracks. I am going to definitely return in the holidays and take the audio guide tour. Especially considering my work at Cockatoo Island, it will be fascinating to hear how convicts are portrayed at this site.

Today our museums and the digital subject introduced us to some interesting concepts. We started this morning with a wonderful lecture by Madeleine Borthwick, a designer who works for the company Kiss the Frog. They are a Netherlands-based company that has worked on some very interesting digital projects around the world. Check them out here.

I am particularly in awe of the work they have done at the National Maritime Museum in Amsterdam. I first visited this museum in 2013 and again in 2015. I do remember the technology implemented in the spaces to be quite advanced and interactive. There was one particular section of the Golden Age exhibition where you could place objects on a table to activate particular stories. It worked really well until someone came along and placed an object down before the previous story had ended. Pretty sure the tourists who came to the table after me temporarily broke the system.

After the lecture we headed to the Australian Museum to check out their new virtual reality (VR) show. It was great hearing from members of the digital team at the museum. What was very clear is that although digital endeavours can be problematic, they are worth pursuing. I think the marriage between museums and technology can yield some absolutely amazing results.

Take Rijsstudio by the Rijksmsueum (https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en). If you have no idea what this is or what it does I’ll completely oversimplify it by saying it offers a very unique opportunity to interact with the collection.

Back to the Australian Museum. I won’t talk about the museum as a whole because we had just under an hour to walk around and see the exhibitions. I didn’t spend enough time in one place to gain a real sense of it. What I will discuss is the VR David Attenborough film on the Great Barrier Reef (GBR).

I really had no idea what to expect with this film. You wear a pretty clunky goggle-like device and headphones. The movie itself was quite interesting focusing on the GBR  and the research that is occurring on Lizard Island. There were times when you could see the GBR wherever you turned. It was literally a 360 degree film which was absolutely immersive. The actual technology itself has a fair way to go but I think once it has been tweaked, it could lead to some amazing opportunities.

A tiny section of the film showed a 360 degree view of space. I cannot wait until planetariums around the world can offer this kind of VR experience. Especially thinking of the films I saw at the Kennedy Space Center in Orlando. It is the kind of museum that would greatly benefit from this technology!

I am definitely still getting used to this level of technology in a museum. I think as long as the digital enhances the tangible and offers another layer of interaction it will be successful. Nothing beats the real thing, but, I think people know this. I have never heard anyone say I would be happy for all museums to just be virtual and nothing more. That’s not going to happen. Instead, I think the digital will grow from what we already have and, hopefully, offer new and exciting experiences for visitors.

Cover photograph: J Bar at the English language Wikipedia [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)%5D

I love getting out of the classroom and experiencing the heritage and museums that Sydney has to offer! For our ‘engaging audiences’ class today we spent an hour at the Big Dig archaeology site and at Susannah Place Museum. For those, like me, still working out the geography of Sydney, both sites are located in The Rocks precinct. What struck me at both places was just how much The Rocks has transformed over time and what stories have been captured by the area’s heritage.

Our group started at the Big Dig. To be completely honest I had no idea this place existed. It’s called the Big Dig because a big dig happened here in 1994. So the name makes sense. Around 400 volunteers and 20 archaeologists excavated the area finding over 750, 000 artefacts. According to their website, these objects have “provided a rare insight into early urban life in Sydney”. So it’s basically a large excavation site that comes equipped with an education centre. It offers a large range of education programs catering to children as young as 5/6. It provides a great opportunity for students to see firsthand what archaeologists do, how they question the past, and how they interrogate the evidence. Most of the programs go one step further and allow students to become archaeologists and perform their own excavations.

After a little chat, we were taken out to examine the site and saw firsthand the foundations of the early housing. We had a quick course in how to read the site, what evidence to look for etc, and heard some great stories about The Rocks former inhabitants. It was fascinating to see how the stories were drawn from the archaeology. We then had the opportunity to handle some excavated objects.

After the Big Dig we walked across the road to Susannah Place. This museum, owned by Sydney Living Museum, consists of four preserved houses that have been conserved to showcase working class life. They are actually pretty incredible having housed families from 1840 until as late as 1990. Some of them have rooms decorated to reflect a particular period. For example, we saw an 1840s parlour and a 1940s bedroom. In the words of the curator who guided us around, the houses are meant to feed into the larger history of the area.

What was fantastic to hear at Susannah Place was how oral histories have been integrated into the tour. Because they were occupied until 1990 quite a few residents are still alive and willing to share their stories. I think this added just that little bit extra to the experience. This mix of tangible and intangible is what made both experiences today memorable (I know I say that a lot). Susannah Place had a slight edge in this regard because the stories had come from the women and men themselves and their memories will hopefully be preserved.

I found Susannah Place quite a powerful site. I can’t quite describe it, but the houses most definitely had a lot of character and you could imagine families actually being there and using the space. This kind of social history being preserved and presented is something that I am so grateful to see and have experienced today.

I wanted to briefly share the Biennale artwork on display at the Camperdown Cemetery. I had never heard of this cemetery before today so I was extremely surprised to see its historical significance. Founded in 1848 and closing in 1942, the cemetery was the main general cemetery of Sydney. It is estimated that around 18 000 people have been buried within its walls.

The Biennale artwork on show is by artist Bo Christian Larsson titled Fade Away, Fade Away, Fade Away. The headstones throughout the cemetery are being covered, one-by-one, in custom-made white sheet pockets. The purpose behind this installation is to cover the social status etc of those buried and for everyone to appear as equal.

Whilst I think this is an interesting installation I am glad that the headstones won’t be covered for long. I cannot wait to go back and explore the cemetery more. Headstones can reveal so much about the past. In a non-creepy way old cemeteries are actually amazing to visit if you ever have the time. Even the location of where someone is buried can say so much about their life and how they were regarded etc.

I started another blog quite a while ago and quickly grew bored with it. One post, however, was on this beautiful headstone found in the Old Burying Point in Salem, Massachusetts. Two children’s epigraphs are visible showing their dates of death as 1681 and 1682. The love that has gone into this headstone is why I find it particularly interesting and emotional.

I have lost track of how many hours I spent in this cemetery walking around and reading the headstones.

Anyway, I thought it was an interesting location for an art installation. Definitely one to see if you’ve ever wondered how the living and the dead can interact through contemporary art.