Keynote speakers for the Friday Symposium:
Session 1: Handheld Basics
Nancy Proctor published her first online exhibition in 1995, intending to revolutionise the contemporary art market. Undeterred by 14k modems, she and Titus Bicknell then co-founded TheGalleryChannel.com in 1998, with the aim of publishing virtual tours of obscure exhibitions alongside comprehensive global museum and gallery listings. Both Nancy and TheGalleryChannel were acquired by Antenna Audio, where she searched for the answer to mobile interpretation as head of New Product Development for nearly 8 years. She now works cross-platform again as Head of New Media at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, where she hopes to figure out what the question is.
Nik Honeysett is Head of Administration for the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, and is responsible for personnel and overseeing operational and technology groups. Prior to his current role, he managed the Getty's Web Group, responsible for all aspects of their main website and intranets. Since joining the BBC's Interactive Television Unit in 1988, he has spent much of his career developing or managing media and technical projects. Before moving to Los Angeles in 2000, he spend 12 years at Cognitive Applications, a UK-based consultancy building interactive kiosks, CD-ROMS, and websites for museums and galleries.
Session 2: Choosing the Platform
Makoto Manabe is Senior Scientist/Curator for Fossil Reptiles and Birds at the National Museum of Nature and Science, Tokyo. Makoto has worked on various audio guides for dinosaur exhibitions at a number of Japanese museums. He is interested not only in traditional audio guide devices, but also in the potential of iPods, mobile phones, the PlayStation, and the NintendoDS, as both tour devices and a means of creating other types of connections between users and the museum. For further background see the collection of papers put together by Makoto and others on "Digital Technology in Japanese Museums" for the Journal of Museum Education (Vol.32, No.1, 2007).
Peter Samis is Associate Curator of Interpretation at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA). In 1993, he served as art historian/content expert for the first CD-ROM on modern art; later he spearheaded the first implementation of multimedia PDAs in an art museum for SFMOMA’s 2002 Points of Departure exhibition. Programmes produced by SFMOMA's Interactive Educational Technologies (IET) team have received wide recognition, recently including three AAM Muse Awards in 2006 and a “Best of the Web” in the category Innovative and Experimental” for SFMOMA Artcasts at Museums and the Web 2007. Samis currently sits on the board of the New Media Consortium (www.nmc.org), serves as adjunct professor at the University of Lugano, and on the governing councils of two museum-focused open source initiatives: Pachyderm 2.0 (www.pachyderm.org) and steve (www.steve.museum), the art museum social tagging project.
Session 3: Getting it done
Chris Alexander has been the Manager of Interactive Technology at the San Jose Museum of Art, California, since 2006. He has a wide-ranging museum background, a Masters of Fine Arts Degree in Visual Art and is certified in Web Design from the University of California, Santa Cruz. Since starting his position, Chris has been actively creating content, both audio and video, in-house and exploring various methods of delivery including mobile phones, video iPods and "web 2.0" web portals. Most recently he has developed an iPod Touch tour at the SJMA which utilises the museum's wifi network to deliver an audio/video tour to 30 iPod Touch units through the Mobile Safari Web Browser. Chris has spoken at several conferences including Museums and the Web and the American Association of Museums. Visit the iPod Touch tour via iPod Touch or iPhone at www.sjma.mobi
During a 4 year collaboration with the Cité des Sciences et de l’Industrie in Paris, followed by 3 years at the Louvre Museum, Paris, Célia Meunier specialised in the development of technology formats for use in exhibitions. At the Louvre she worked on a R&D project called 'Museum Lab' that explored how new technologies might be employed to better understand works of art. She was part of the development team for the Louvre's recent audioguide system, and is currently working on a post-visit website. In the past she has designed multi-media devices for the Cité des sciences and prototypes such as a tool that uses GPS and compass to deliver geo-localized content to visitors. She took part in the 'Visite+' project that allows visitors to personalise their exhibition tour experience by selecting options such as language and age, recording their path and activities as they go through the exhibition, and later finding their selections on a personal website.monguide.louvre.fr/index.php
Session 4: Advanced Handhelds
- Allegra Burnette, MOMA, USA
Allegra Burnette is the Creative Director of Digital Media at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, overseeing design and production for all interpretive technologies, including the Museum's Web site (MoMA.org), kiosks and digital displays. Online projects include redesigning the Web site, creating audience-specific sites for teachers, teens, and kids, and overseeing an ongoing series of award-winning exhibition sites. The Digital Media team has worked to expand the accessibility of MoMA’s content through iTunes U, YouTube and elsewhere, as well as to extend the Museum’s free audio programme through multiple distribution channels. Offline projects include lobby display screens and the launch of MoMA.guide, a series of interactive kiosks. Prior to working at MoMA, Allegra created and ran a media department at museum exhibition design firm Ralph Appelbaum Associates. She has an MFA in museum exhibition planning and design from the University of the Arts, where she has taught graduate courses in museum media.
Jane Burton is Head of Content and Creative Director, Tate, London. She is responsible for developing and delivering the creative strategy for Tate’s video and film productions, and for digital interpretation at the four Tate galleries. Her current film productions include a series of documentaries about artists for UK television, the video podcast series TateShots, and animation-based programmes on art for children. Her most recent work on handheld tours includes the UK’s first tour for the iPod touch and iPhone, launched for the Gustav Klimt show at Tate Liverpool in May 2008, and a pilot multimedia tour for school groups that invites user generated content. She initially joined Tate in 1999, as Tate Modern’s Curator of Interpretation, where, in 2002, she introduced the first wireless multimedia tour to be used in a gallery. Before that, she worked as a journalist and art critic for national newspapers.
Comments (3)
Chris Alexander said
at 7:38 pm on Jul 29, 2008
Sorry, I got really particular and liked Nancy's use of Arial on the page so I formated it all as such! :0) Thanks for humoring me.
Nancy Proctor said
at 8:58 am on Jul 30, 2008
Don't worry, I'll be correcting commas and apostrophes with impunity as I'm similarly a formatting nerd!
Chris Alexander said
at 6:09 pm on Sep 1, 2008
Sorry,
I forgot to email about the AV set-up! It's pretty basic. I have a MacBook Pro and I will be using Keynote. The laptop has a DVI input, but I will also have a VGA Adapter.
Chris
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