In October 2019 I observed a fascinating EDEN (European Distance and E-Learning Network) Webinar by lecturer Chiara Zuanni. Zuanni is an Assistant Professor in Digital Humanities at the Centre for Information Modelling – Austrian Centre for Digital Humanities at the University of Graz, with a PhD in Museology from the University of Manchester. Her research focuses on museums, digital media and data practices, and the creation of knowledge and its mediation. Zuanni’s most recent published work includes a piece titled “Why Exhibition Histories?” asks how past exhibits in museums can be digitally represented and preserved.
This webinar approached a timely topic with precision, although at times it felt like an introductory course rather than professional development for those already in the field.
Zuanni’s presentation focused on the digital tools and methods that can be used in museums and other heritage institutions to supplement and improve overall learning and education. She began by outlining the social and cultural values of a museum in a table that contradicted the original 101 course feeling. It was overwhelming and hard to absorb, especially when trying to listen at the same time.
Zuanni then went on to develop her thoughts on museum learning. She emphasized that museums were a place to experience and develop interests, yet exhibits were still being treated like window displays where patrons walk away having learned very little. Her example was a visitor survey where guests were asked to draw from memory certain exhibits. Many couldn’t recall accurate displays, or specific details.
Transitioning to her solutions for the problem of stale museum learning, Zuanni introduces the concept of participatory culture and how it plays into most of society. People want to interact with things, whether that be for information or entertainment. When doing so, visitors are more likely to absorb more and leave with a sense that their experience added something to the museum.
Zuanni’s main point in her lecture was that museums have to address visitor experience in order to properly address museum learning. She proposes that digital media is the new way of opening more doors for guests before they even arrive at the museum. A proper website with up to date information and relevant hot links will make the visitors pre-visit easier. Similarly, digital wayfinding will start patrons’ visits off smoothly.
Other examples of enhancing visitor engagement and learning included digital tools such as apps (ie. Brooklyn Museums’ Ask), communicating via social media to encourage conversations with the museum, and using online analytics to predict and react to how patrons use online tools.
Zuanni’s insights show how these modifications to visitor experiences appeal to wide groups, and that they can be more easily researched and understood for future modifications to programming and learning environments. Overall, she highlights a modern theory that the use of digital supplements will bring out new meanings of cultural heritage. This will, as a result, be more impactful on guests.
After observing this webinar, I believe that the addition of digital learning environments and visitor engagement tools will go beyond adding new meaning to exhibits and cultural heritage. These upgrades will allow museums to preserve their exhibits and visitor research for future endeavors.
By preserving exhibits researchers and others interested will be able to observe the information on display in its original dialogue. This may offer perspectives that can be contrasted with future exhibits or current events. Similarly, being able to preserve digital analytics on visitor interactions with the museum will allow museum staff to trace how the institution has changed over time. This will eventually, and hopefully, lead to careful predictions on where the museum should be headed in order to provide the most good for patrons.
Overall, Zuanni’s research, in my opinion, will lead museums into a new age where visitors feel as if they are part of the story being told. In a time when cultural heritage institutions struggle for attendance and funding, projects such as these will be a welcome boost to inspire active learning.
References
Cloonan, Michèle. “W(H)ITHER Preservation?” The Library Quarterly, vol. 71, no. 2, Apr. 2001, pp. 231–242., doi:10.1086/603262.
Dalbello, Marija. “Digital Cultural Heritage: Concepts, Projects, and Emerging Constructions of Heritage.” 2009.
Posner, Miriam. “What’s Next: The Radical, Unrealized Potential of Digital Humanities.” Miriam Posners Blog, 28 July 2015, http://miriamposner.com/blog/whats-next-the-radical-unrealized-potential-of-digital-humanities/.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is the largest
art museum in US and the third most visited art museum in the world. The main
building in Manhattan’s Upper East Side in one of the world’s largest art galleries.
As was posted on January 4, 2019 that 1,659,647 visitors were attracted to The
Met Fifth Avenue and The Met Cloisters from May 10, 2018 to October 8, 2018. Based
on the data from Wikipedia and MET official website, with such large number of
visitors from all over the world, I began to curious how the visit guide
provided by the museum service did well in considering different kinds of visitors.
According to what I learnt from Design Justice,
the tour guide designed by MET should aim to ensure a more equitable
distribution of the benefits and in this case, the museum tour guide should also
consider non-English speakers, people with disabled, etc.
I went to The Met Fifth Avenue on 27th, Sep. to directly observe as a visitor and my goal was to see whether different kinds of visitors were guided friendly and effectively in visiting the museum. It was a cloudy afternoon with crowded visitors, and I waited for 10 minutes in line to get my ticket.
1 Manual Guide
I saw several cicerones surrounded by a small
number of visitors. I joined them for free. Some visitors followed by cicerones
carried backpacks and not seemed like locals. The good thing for getting a
manual guide is that you could directly ask questions and get answers, especially
for history or art fanatics who are always filled with questions.
But this method is not that feasible for visitors who prefer to get through the museum quickly and are not fluently English speakers. Since you are guided by a certain route and listening to deep explanations of the exhibits really takes time. In this period, I found some of visitors would only follow a few minutes then left the group to visit by themselves.
2 Audio Guide Rent Onsite
These days the most commonly used tour guide in museum is audio guide. At the museum lobby visitors could easily find the words “Audio Guide”, and the return place was also obvious to find. During my observation period, I found no more than 50% visitors were using audio guide and I guess it was because the audio guide in MET was not free, or some were not first-time visitors or some just preferred to quickly visit the whole museum without deep explanations.
2.1 Whether considering non-English speakers.
Yes. The audio guide provided by MET contains 10 different languages, which is especially considerable for foreign visitors. When I visited the museum, I found a lot of Asian visitors renting audio guide and listening to the guide frequently. It’s much effective for them to get the explanations in their mother language.
2.2 Whether considering visitors with disabilities.
During my observation period, I did not find disabled visitors. But I found some information on the MET website that the museum offered assistive listening devices and real-time captioning for visitors with hearing loss.
2.3 Whether considering aged visitors.
I found an old woman who seemed uneasy to input numbers into the audio guide to get the explanations. And some visitors seemed tired to hold the guide near their ears to listen all the time and they needed to find a place to sit or change to another hand to hold the guide. I think the interaction method between visitors and audio guides is not that friendly especially for aged visitors. Manually inputting numbers could waste time. Besides, the guide is not that easy and convenient while the MET is large, and most visitors would stay more than 2 hours.
I guess it’s better to add automatic induction function to the audio guide and visitors don’t need to input numbers themselves but only to answer yes or no to listen the guide. In addition, always holding the guide near ear to listen is not convenient. Why not provide earphones to aged visitors together with audio guide? Or support the visitors using their own earphones.
2.4 Whether considering visitors who prefer
quickly visiting the whole museum.
I did find a visitor hanging the audio guide around her neck, but she didn’t use it during the whole process. And some only listened a few seconds then gave it up. I guess the contents provided in audio guide were too long and they only wanted to get a concise version. They came to the museum to get something new but not preferred to get that deep understanding towards a single exhibit. In that case, perhaps better to provide different versions for visitors to choose from. For instance, a quick 1-minute explanation together with a detailed 5-minute version.
3 The MET App
There is an App called The MET which also provides travel guides and even augmented reality function. The good thing is you could use it offline, while the bad thing is that you have to download it beforehand. How many visitors would take trouble to download an App to help them visit the museum? I guess better to develop a Web App for visitors who just want to visit temporarily.
During my observation period, I only saw a young woman using her iPhone to get the audio guide. Generally speaking, not a large number of visitors choose to get a guide on App. I believed one of the problems was not enough contents on App, compared to the audio guide you rent onsite.
Conclusion
In 2015, the MET did a thorough research on how to improve the audio guide and during the research they did find 40% visitors were foreigners and the importance of reducing the complexity of using audio guide. However, just like what Norman said, “The world is not neat and tidy and things not always work as planned.” All the tour guides provided by MET are roughly satisfied but still have space to improve. Perhaps reconsidering different visitors’ needs could help better the overall experience.
4 Norman, D. A. (1998). The Invisible Computer: Why
Good Products Can Fail, the Personal Computer is So Complex, and Information
Appliances are the Solution. MIT Press. Chapter 7: Being Analog http://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/being_analog.html.
5 Costanza-Chock, “Design Justice: Towards an
Intersectional Feminist Framework for Design Theory and Practice”
The event taken place at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum on Sep 16, 2019 mainly discussed the applications of Artificial Intelligence now and future and highlighted the role of museums as making people more self-aware. There were three talks in the event given by three different perspectives (a curator, a computer and a future teller) and a free Q & A session afterwards.
Curator: Andrea Lipps, an associate curator of Contemporary Design, Cooper Hewitt
The talk given by a curator from Cooper Hewitt first discussed the impact of AI on our lives right now. As is known to all that AI could be used in different kinds of fields like education, recreation, medical treatment, marketing automation, etc. AI could analyze large amounts of data in a short period of time and help make quick decisions. The benefits of AI are undoubted and visible. However, the curator also pointed out some questions that could not be ignored:
1.How can we ensure diversity, inclusion, safety and human rights are maintained with AI?
2.What role would AI play in our future?
3.How could museum use AI to represent new things?
There is no
right or wrong to these questions and we could interpret the questions from
different angles. The curator also provided some frameworks that we could use to
think about AI:
1.Is it active or passive? If it is active, do you have a choice? If it is passive, is it being disclosed?
2.Is it being linked to a real-world identity or just used as anonymous ID?
3.Which methods being used when connecting AI with museums?
It’s true that we could only predict the influence and applications of AI in the future but what we should pay attention to right now are our own values and priorities. Because the use of AI is designed by human beings and design is just the externalization of our own desire. “If we use, to achieve our purposes, a mechanical agency with whose operation we cannot efficiently interfere once we have started it… we had better be quite sure that the purpose put into the machine is the purpose which we really desire.” Said Norbert Weiner in 1960.
Computer: Harrison Pim, a Data Scientist
from Wellcome Trust
The data scientist who represented a computer talked about his work content, that he used machine learning in dealing with loads of images, texts and collections quickly but not analyzing users or visitors, since AI in current period was parasitic on data. He also pointed out that AI was not designed to replace human beings but as tools to be used by people. So, the main point is how to use the tools to better serve people’s needs. The talk given by “the computer” reminded me of what I read in What is Computer Ethics: we are in a conceptional vacuum and policy vacuum world and we need to reexamine the regulations in the past world, from how to define tech-based concepts to create a relatively neutral algorithm. It is impossible to create something absolutely neutral but by creating diversity, the “fundamental vulnerability” could somewhat be relieved.
Creator:
Karen Palmer, a storyteller from the future
The future teller first warned everyone that the technology would take over everything and individuals would find themselves lack privacy or security in the near future if we did nothing. We would be derived of the right of telling our own stories and the world was going to be consist of auto-self surveillance, weaponized technology and biased networks.
She used the example of criminal justice system
to confirm us that bias would be the biggest problem in AI applications. An
example used to support was the UK police using AI to inform custodial
decisions which could be discriminating against the poor. Most assumptions made
by AI right now were based on false theory while these assumptions are trend to
take over our lives. Thus, she concluded that democratizing AI should be what
we fight for in the near future.
What she highlighted was the necessary to turn the information age to an age of perception. “Those who tell the stories rule the world.” What museums should do is to make people more self-aware and create more opportunities to arouse citizens’ insights to social issues.
Q & A
session
Q: How to apply machine learning in the
field of design?
A: To begin with, the interactions between
users and products would be changed by new technologies but the role of
designers should not be overshadowed by AI. We could use AI to produce products
or test prototypes faster. In a word machine learning should serve us but we
should not be slaved by it.
Q: What would justice be like in the future
and what is the role of machine learning in it?
A: Neither machine learning or artificial intelligence could answer future justice problems. Those concepts should be determined by human beings but not computer technologies. What would happen in the future is the living space AI help to create and people could better understand culture issues in the museums.
Conclusion
Though we have to admit human’s dominant role in the applications of AI, there are other problems about surveillance, power and constraints that could not be ignored. “In an era of extractivism, the real value of that data is controlled and exploited by the very few at the top of the pyramid.” Said Crawford & Joler. The event did not predict how the regulations could be established but just pointed out museums’ future role in arousing people’s awareness, which I think lack enough support and overly optimistic to some extent. Anyway emphasizing museums’ social responsibility is quite necessary right now and all museum practitioners should be prepared for the transformation of exhibition modes.
My person is Suhair Khan, project manager at Google Arts & Culture. A click on the link will immediately pull up the world’s array of art collections, stories, and cultural sites onto your screen. You can check out the local Guggenheim Museum to see what exhibitions are happening or hop over to Vienna to see your favorite painting of ‘The Kiss.’ If you’re feeling adventurous, you can use one of Google’s VR tools to stroll down the murky paths of the Catacombs of San Gennaro in Naples and discover a new collection of mosaics. The beauty of this platform is everything is up to the viewer to decide where they want to go, what they would like to see, and how long they want to be there for. And the best part? This viewing experience is free and meant to be enjoyed in the comfort of one’s home (or in my case, a tiny coffee shop in Greenwich Village).
So
what is Google Art and Culture? Simply put, it is a platform launched in 2011
to “provide access to art and culture to everyone and everywhere” (Gajardo
& Lau, 2017).
Google Art and Culture has kept this mission true. So far, Suhair and her team
of engineers have partnered with over 1200 non-profit cultural institutions,
galleries, and artists across 70 countries to share, preserve, and present some
of the most beautiful artworks and curated stories online.
Suhair is no stranger to multicultural experiences. She grew up in Milan, London, and South Asia and have led projects in the UK, Australia, Indonesia, and Korea. Her mission is to have art and culture accessible to people who can’t travel and “make sure distance and culture doesn’t get in the way of resources and sharing” (Appleby, 2018). This is what technology has allowed us to do: break down the barriers and show art no longer needs to be confined to a physical space but can be made accessible anywhere online. Suhair is reconstructing the way people engage with art by making the experience easier and less intimidating. Instead of traveling to a particular place, the artwork is brought to the viewer. This reminds me of the ‘armchair traveler’ when early photographers would send souvenir photo albums to loved ones back home so they can feel like they were visiting these faraway places without leaving their seat. Technology has allowed us to revitalize the role of a digital ‘armchair traveler’ by making the experiences even more realistic and interactive.
So how can we relate Suhair’s work to the information field? First, Google Art and Culture is showing us a way we can present digitized information meaningfully by “creating networks of connections with context” (Appleby, 2018). We can see this with museum curators’ taking the role of digital storytellers as they now need to consider writing stories for audiences outside of the typical museum-goer realm. Second, we can take note of Google Art and Culture’s broad ways of searching for information. Categorizing artworks by color, popular topics, place, time, historical movement, etc., can inspire us to think outside of our usual groupings and be more ambitious in the pathways we create. Third, a look into Google’s features such as shared birthdays or their famous art selfie app that matches viewer’s face with an artwork provides more intimate and personal ways of engagement that IXD professionals can consider. Finally, the biggest takeaway is the multidisciplinary approach to sharing information. By collaborating with institutions and including tools that compare artworks from various cultures, the information no longer exists as a single narrative in support of one view but is transformed into a collection of narratives in support of cultures around the world. Thereby, viewers are able to get a well-rounded understanding of society and adopt a different cultural perspective.
Place: The Street Museum of Art
I decided to take a more unusual and unconventional route by picking The Street Museum of Art (SMoA) as my place of interest. I would say this is unusual than the rest because SMoA isn’t actually a physical museum, but it is an international, public art project that takes their exhibitions onto the streets and uses the city’s urban environment as their canvas. So far, the exhibitions have been held in New York, London, and Montreal. A look on SMoA’s website reveals their projects have transformed city streets into gallery walls where “admission is always free and the hours are limitless”(“The Street Museum of Art”, n.d.).
‘In Plain Sight’is an exhibition held in Williamsburg, Brooklyn and features the works of eleven artists “to encourage visitors to rediscovery this city through a street artist’s perspective…. And imagine the artists on their search for the ideal urban canvas” (“In Plain Sight,” n.d.). As mentioned, most of the artworks are hidden or have been cleverly positioned so the viewer would pay attention to sites that are usually ignored and thereby, ‘rediscover’ the urban city. This won’t apply to me as much as I have never been to Williamsburg before. With nothing but a digital Google map, I took the subway to Williamsburg on a sunny Friday afternoon to embark on my urban scavenger hunt.
While searching for these artworks, it made me think about some of the topics discussed in class, such as the concepts of permeability and permanence. What happens when these places don’t exist anymore, will the artworks still be archived? How will it be archived – through photographs snapped and shared? I was only able to find two out of eight artworks and gave up on the last three. It may have been partly my fault, as I chose to go with the exhibition from 2012. However, this exhibition made me also think about the art world- how does this experience differ from an exhibition at a museum or gallery setting? In my opinion, the biggest difference was that this urban museum experience became much more personalized. I wasn’t confined to a physical space, I didn’t feel intimidated, and I loved how customizable the guide was. I could listen to music, pause the exhibition and grab a bite to eat, or even complete it over a span of a few weeks. It was also nice to know that my exhibition journey is unique in the sense that there was no specific path given to see the artworks, while museum settings usually give viewers a direct path to follow.
Photo: Janet Liu 2019
This exhibition also varies greatly from the online ‘In Plain Sight’ on Google Art and Culture. Instead of having everything presented at once on a single platform, SMoA was completely opposite: I had to physically go out and search for all these places myself. Unlike the ‘armchair traveler’ experience that Google Art and Culture provides, SMoA builds upon the ‘in situ’ concept of experiencing the art at its original place. Even though most of the artworks are no longer on view, I would say art in situ becomes more of a valuable experience because I had to physically travel and search for the places. Not knowing what to expect, then being incredibly amazed to find the artwork became a much more memorable, emotional, and personal experience than it would have been seeing it as a digital exhibition.
Thing: Little Robot Friends
I chose the Little Robot Friends (LRF) for my thing. I was searching for fun gift ideas for my nephew when these little tiny adorable creatures caught my attention. Hours later, I found myself still watching their YouTube videos and I ended up almost buying a robot myself.
LRF are programmable, customizable robots that teach kids aged seven or higher how to code. For $49.99, you can purchase a DIY kit or already assembled kit, which also comes with its own coding software filled with open-source-code to program new robot behaviors.
“They can sense the amount of light in a room, they can hear with a small integrated microphone, they can detect your touch and they can also communicate with other Little Robot Friends using infrared light (like your TV remote). They have two RGB LED eyes and a 250mW speaker for expressing their current mood. The brain is an 8-bit 32K microcontroller that provides a lot of space for coding behaviours and storing memories.”
This project is similar to Google Art and Culture and SMoA because of the flexibility of customization for its users. For instance, you are welcome to alter LRF’s personality. I would say LRF is able to create an even more engaging experience than the rest because of the emotional connect. They are robots that are personalized, tangible, meant to be held in one’s hand that can elicit empathy with the robots, and empathy with coding.
“Each interaction with your Little Robot Friend is stored as a memory, and changes how it will behave over time. We are working hard to make this a profound experience, one that can surprise you and make you smile as you watch your Friend grow up.”
(“Little Robot Friends,” 2016)
This makes me think of our previous discussions of provenance, and the idea of treating archives as objects. If we are able to adopt this view and see archives as tangible, living objects such as the little robot friends, then perhaps we will be more mindful and remember that our interaction with the objects will also affect its context and memory.
References:
Appleby, E. (Producer). (2018, May
03). Episode 33: The Art of Connectivity: Suhair Khan from Google Arts & Culture.
[Audio podcast]. Retrieved from http://sotapodcast.com/episodes/33
My Place is New York City’s smallest museum, the Mmuseumm, housed in a decommissioned freight elevator shaft at 4 Cortlandt Alley. Free to the public.
The Mmuseumm is a “style of storytelling about the modern world. It is a contemporary natural history museum. It is a design museum about people. It is Object Journalism.” Founded by Alex Kalman, Benny and Joshua Safdie in 2012, the Mmuseumm frames itself as a contemporary Wunderkammern composed of artifacts, ephemeral objects, and evidence of human existence. Every shelf is a curated collection of objects accompanied with a red label noting provenance and a collection statement.
These objects are like records “disembedded from their creation and extracted into systems that allowed them to be used,” in this case viewed within a museum setting (Caswell, 2016, p.5). As information professionals we create networks of relationship between documents within collections and fonds. We assess the value of documents and attempt to predict its usefulness for an imagined future user. One of the exhibitions, Objects of Collapse, in collaboration with Patricia Laya (2018), features items purchased in Venezuela. When isolated, the knock-off Oreo cookies (Oieo Cookies) seem like an endearing rip-off. However, when placed on a shelf amongst fourteen other knockoff products, the visual evokes a darker narrative about counterfeits, economics, and social-political environments.
My fascination with the Mmuseumm model is their focus on curating “non-art objects,” questioning the value of artwork displayed in traditional institutions of authority. Is this form of radical cataloging? Mmuseumm turns the lens to banal objects that once placed amongst a collection become imbued with meaning and significance. The elevator shaft becomes a microcosm of the world as well as an actualized metaphor of an archive, instead of a database, users step into an elevator shaft and visually scrolls through the rows of documents.
My Person is Olia Lialina, a net artist, archivist, and co-author ofDigital Folklore (2009) a book about various facets of amateur digital culture from meme’s to DIY electronics.
I first came across Lialina through a video interview in Quartz about early amateur websites from the 90’s. Lialina uses the Internet as a medium while at the same time analyzing the relationship between users and the changing digital landscape. Having a background in fine arts, I’m drawn to Lialina’s practice that blends the line between art and digital archiving. Sometimes labeled as a “net-crusader,” she advocates for the importance of early Internet culture. This includes examples of personal web pages in the 90’s and DIY websites before the rise of subscription site creators like Squarespace and Wix. By preserving these “amateur” websites, Lialina creates context for how the relationship between the user and the World Wide Web has evolved.
She co-created One Terabyte of Kilobyte Age, a Tumblr feed that posts screenshots of GeoCities websites every 20 minutes. The screenshots are sourced from one terabyte of GeoCitie sites archived by The Archive Team in 2009 when Yahoo announced it was no longer hosting the web service. This Tumblr feed is an image bank and resource for users to access the early internet through digital surrogates of GeoCities. It should be noted that Yahoo acquired Tumblr in 2013, bringing into question how long will Tumblr continue to be hosted?
Digital Folklore is composed of essays exploring digital vernacular and the evolution of the “user.” Lialina and co-author Dragan Espenschied define Digital Folklore as:
“[E]ncompassing the customs, traditions and elements of visual, textual and audio culture that emerged from users’ engagement with personal computer applications during the last decade of the 20th and the first decade of the 21st century.”
(Lialina 2009)
We’ve discussed in our Information Foundation class, the powerful role archivists have in determining our social memory and assigning value to what is preserved and what is not. Yahoo’s decision to no longer host GeoCities, potentially driven by the lack of economic profit, reflects a devaluing of early Internet culture. Without archivists like the Archives Team, acknowledging the cultural value of this niche Internet world, we as a culture would have lost evidence of how the early World Wide Web was utilized. Through her work and application of these digital archives, Lialina demonstrates similar tenants of archival theory to create diverse and inclusive collections.
This work of art that will span one hundred years began with planting one thousand trees in a forest outside of Oslo, Norway in 2014. The forest “will supply paper for a special anthology of books to be printed in 100 years time. Between now and then, one writer every year will contribute a text, with the writings held in trust, unread and unpublished, until the year 2114” (Paterson). Patterson is known for creating works of art that utilize time as a material, creating tangible expressions of geological and deep time. Check out the The Fossil Necklace for another example.
An aspect of the information profession that intrigues me is the duality of information and time. Archivists try to determine methods of preserving documents for future users while simultaneously negotiating what documents a future user will want to access. This piece has created an archive of unknown contents where authors are writing manuscripts for an unknown audience. The manuscripts will be housed in the New Deichmanske Library, opening in 2020 in Bjorvika where “the authors’ names and titles of their works will be on display, but none of the manuscripts will be available for reading– until their publication in one century’s time” (Paterson). I keep thinking of Sue McKemmish’s quote, “records [are] always in a process of becoming” (Caswell 2016).
I wonder what guidelines or ethical “value” systems the Future Library Trust follows to nominate authors and how the charge reflects our information role to select, retain, record, archive, and promote. How will this project be passed along to the next generation of caregivers maintaining the forest and the stewards of this evolving library?
Olia, Lialina. Espenschied, Dragan. (2009). Preface: Do you believe in Users? Retrieved from https://digitalfolklore.org/
Quartz. (2019, July 18). The early internet is breaking – here’s how the World Wide Web from the 90s on will be saved. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LzyRcLJdlg
On March 3, 2019 I attended the Jewish Museum’s second Wikipedia Edit-a-thon co-presented with Art+Feminism. In celebration of Women’s History Month and the final day of the exhibition Martha Rosler: Irrespective, the event included a gallery walk-through with catalog designers Mika McGinty and Rebecca Sylvers, and assistant curator of the Jewish Museum, Shira Backer. The event was open to the public and aimed to offer an opportunity for people to learn how to edit and create Wikipedia articles in an effort to improve representation of cis and transgender women, feminism, and the arts on Wikipedia.
Martha Rosler: Irrespective
Martha Rosler: Irrespective was a survey of Martha Rosler’s work over her five decade-long career. Rosler’s work is dynamic and continually evolves and reacts to the social and political issues of today, yesterday, and tomorrow. Her work largely addresses matters related to war, gender roles, and urban gentrification, and throughout her commentaries runs a reflection on feminism that doesn’t shy away from the feminine. As a result, it would be hard to categorize Rosler’s work according to any one theme. People often describe Rosler’s work as “deeply political”, “feminist”, “intentional”, “outward”, and “intersectional”. Rosler fondly describes her own work as “hamfisted”.
The event kicked off with a walkthrough of the gallery led by Shira Backer, Mika McGinty and Rebecca Sylvers. The three designers gave unique insight into the processes of exhibit curation and art book formation – where they meet and where they diverge. They stressed that the book and the exhibition were not made to be one-to-one; they could emphasize different projects due to the constraints or capabilities of the two methods. In other words, the book was an opportunity to cover pieces not highlighted in the exhibition and vice-versa.
The exhibit tried to convey Rosler’s dynamism. There was a fully set dinner table with a voice-over of a woman discussing domesticity and the expectations of French women; a selection of five videos that examine the representation of women in pop culture and American imperialism; a large prosthetic leg swinging from the ceiling to a jaunty rendition of “God Bless America”.
It is interesting to consider the challenges in showcasing and preserving dynamic and ephemeral art like Rosler’s. Rosler continually changes and adds to her work, often including participatory elements to her pieces and installations. As a result, some questions the designers had to consider include: Is the first iteration the most important?; Is repetition valuable?; Does chronology take precedence? But no matter how hard someone tries to accurately preserve some creation, there is no absolute concept such as ‘permanence’. As Cloonan proposes, “the paradox of preservation is that it is impossible to keep things the same forever. To conserve, preserve, or restore is to alter” (Cloonan, 2001). For that matter, it seems to be Rosler’s intention to create ‘mortal’ work. Work that shifts, changes, and ultimately dies. It allows us to question preservation, even our own mortality.
The curators were evidently aware of their role as history-makers and story-tellers. They cautiously discussed Rosler’s work on her behalf, careful to distinguish between their own interpretations and Rosler’s intentions. In addition, the curators revealed that they frequently worked directly with Rosler. It is important to note that they worked with a contemporary artist who was able to be active in her own storytelling. However, regardless of their efforts, the curators ultimately could only tell a single story of Rosler – their own version – and not Rosler’s whole story.
Wikipedia Edit-a-thon
After the exhibition there was a Wikipedia training course led by Carlos Acevedo, Digital Asset Manager of the Jewish Museum, followed by an open-editing session. The goals of the edit-a-thon were for beginners to learn how to edit on Wikipedia, to improve citations of women artists, and to expand biographies of women artists on Wikipedia (Acevedo, 2019). No prior editing experience was necessary in order to participate in the event. The museum also provided a number of laptops for guests to use. For an event that aimed to increase editing accessibility and improve women’s presence on Wikipedia, providing laptops and promoting a “welcoming spirit” was significant.
The Wikipedia edit-training considered the power and responsibilities that editors have. For example, it was emphasized that articles should be written from a neutral point of view. This is arguably impossible. However, the effort to avoid overly opinionated articles and original thought in edits is a fair endeavor considering the point of a system like Wikipedia is to collect and share existing knowledge as accurately as possible.
Event Stats
25 people attended
2 complete articles created
36 articles edited
145 total edits made
Representation & Closing the Gender-Gap on Wikipedia
Gender bias on Wikipedia is not limited to the underrepresentation of women and nonbinary people on the site, but is also reflected in the fact that a vast majority of editors are cis-male. For that matter, the edit-a-thon was not only an effort to improve coverageof women on Wikipedia, but also an effort to help close the gap in contributions made by women. According to Art+Feminism, a Wikimedia survey showed that less than 10% of Wikipedia’s editors identify as cis or trans women. Moreover, editors who identify as women are far more likely than men to have their edits reverted (Acevedo, 2019). Therefore, encouraging women to participate in editing projects and creating more opportunities to do so are important efforts that may help improve coverage of cis and trans women on Wikipedia.
In Archives, Records, and Power: The Making of Modern Memory, Schwartz and Cook describe the power of archives to shape and direct historical scholarship and our collective memory. They beg archivists to consider the power they have to essentially write history, to privilege and to marginalize. These concepts of power and privilege are not specific to archivists. This power is shared by all who document, curate, store, and share information. The curators of Martha Rosler: Irrespective were aware of this power and therefore worked to acknowledge it. Correspondingly, the Wikipedia training course clearly considered the power held by editors and the source itself.
Just as history has been written in favor of the patriarchy at the expense of women, future of representation of women and other marginalized members of society lies in reclaiming power over the documentary record and the institutions that share information. By recognizing the inherent power in archives, museums, Wikipedia, and other memory-institutions, and using that power to tell and support each other’s stories, cis and trans women can hopefully close the gap in gender representation. As an open access and open source, Wikipedia may be the place to start – the power is literally in our hands.
This past Tuesday I attended a salon for a museum non-profit called The Current. The salon, which occurs at the founder’s loft quarterly, is meant ostensibly to close the gap between artist and collector by providing a relaxed social setting (shoes off!) against a backdrop of visual and interactive artworks in the museum’s small but growing collection.
The mission of The Current is steeped aggressively in opening access to their collection. For a not-insignificant amount of money, one purchases a membership to The Current, which provides access to a USB Drive that contains the museum’s entire collection, digitized. The member can then share the collection where ever they go. In the founder’s own home, for example, the salon displayed five selected works from artists in attendance via a projector.
Perhaps most important, however, is the intangible benefit of membership to The Current, which is a vote in each discussion surrounding the direction of the museum. Members vote on which works to bring into the collection, as well as details surrounding future events and salons. On this night, the museum announced proudly that they planned to move into a permanent brick and mortar space in the neighborhood, a move that I assume was burnished by a members vote.
It was this emphasis on a sort of direct democracy (along with wine and cheese) that drew me into attending this salon.
Screenshot of the event page
In a welcome toast, the Director made sure to note all of the technologists among its members. I’d spoken with an architect for the City of New York as well as an art collector at the salon by this point. Hearing an emphasis on technologists signaled to me where the money was coming from. This makes sense. The founder of The Current, William Nathan, got his start with Buzzfeed where he coded native advertising and analytical tools for cat video editors. He then founded an interior design startup before landing on The Current, becoming its primary financial provider.
With this context, The Current feels more like a startup than a proper museum. The crowd, which leaned young, affluent, and materially-interested, reflected a strong tech background. I met a guy who’d just gotten his first job out of undergrad coding for a major bank. Another young man who’d purchased a membership that night celebrated his new status by chest-bumping his friend and taking selfies during an artist talk about the video messaging platform Chat Roulette.
There is an element in The Current‘s messaging that implies that this museum exists to disrupt the existing museum infrastructure. On the museum’s landing page in large text laid over a VR piece in the collection, the website informs visitors, “The Current is a non-profit museum with radically participatory patronage.”
The art on display reflected this instinct. There was a piece made for VR in which the user goes through wormholes, for some reason. Another projected piece featured a loop of the artist waxing lyrical on the existential crises of being too connected on social media. Yet another piece was the artist, itself—that is, the artist was a virtual avatar projected on a brick wall. The person who wrote the code to create and project the avatar was not on site. One artist that I found interesting was an Iranian woman who saved, digitally scanned, and 3D-printed cultural artifacts that were targeted for destruction by ISIS.
A 3D-printed bust
But for the most part I walked through the event wondering, why?
As an information professional with a background in tech in public libraries, I was interested to see how a museum, another cultural institution, was utilizing new technologies. In my previous position as a library assistant in the TechCentral department at the Cleveland Public Library, we had access to a number of VR machines and 3D Printers, which we would roll out to the public for open community events, not unlike the salon. As staff, we were tasked to provide context for these new machines for a public that was unfamiliar with the technologies.
After three years of working in TechCentral with these fabrication technologies, our staff still had not landed on a framework around which we would showcase the tech. We would more or less roll out the machines for the public to use, and explain how the tech worked. Beyond that there was no active learning. They were effectively toys.
The writer interacting with art
I encountered a similar attitude among the artists and collectors at the salon. Beyond establishing that, yes, this new tech is cool and interesting, I couldn’t quite find a reason for it all. The same questions remained. How can VR function in the context of art in a museum, or in the context of informing the public at a library? What is a practical reason for a public library to demonstrate VR? The most clear explanation came from the Iranian woman preserving cultural artifacts. It’s a shame she was an outlier.
In a cultural institution, I like having context for learning and for art. I lose interest when something is put on display without so much of an explanation. My experience at the salon was not unlike my time in TechCentral. There’s all this new technology, but to what end? As an information professional, I think about this—why does a cultural institution house new tech if it’s funders or patrons can’t contextualize them?
My career goal is to find a way to contextualize new tech in a way that makes sense for my patron population. If the creators can’t do that, then who can?
