Cheapbooks Greatest Hits AND a CONTEST!

The fourth volume of the Exhibit Cheapbooks entitled "Cheapbooks Greatest Hits" published by ASTC is now available!

If you're not already familiar with the Cheapbooks, they are collections of floor-tested, easily reproducible (and inexpensive!) exhibit ideas contributed by museum colleagues from around the world.  Starting with the original Cheapbook published in (gasp!) 1995, each ridiculously low-priced volume has contained approximately 30 exhibit ideas.

I've been so proud to have edited each of the four volumes of the Exhibit Cheapbooks for ASTC, and to share such great ideas with the rest of the museum field.

This latest volume contains 10 of the most popular exhibit ideas from each of the first three volumes and 12 brand new exhibit ideas for a total of 42 great exhibits that you can replicate (or modify) for your own museum!

ASTC has decided to release Cheapbooks Greatest Hits in electronic format (as a PDF) to keep the price low, stay eco-friendly, and to eliminate shipping costs.  Cheapbook ideas cover many topics and formats --- we've completely got STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Mathematics) covered!

You really can't find a bigger and better bargain for your exhibit development dollars than Cheapbooks Greatest Hits! So head over to ASTC's Publications Page to order your own copy right now!


BUT WAIT!  There's also a chance to win a FREE copy of Cheapbooks Greatest Hits in our CONTEST!

If you email me or leave a Comment below explaining why you'd like to win a copy of the latest Cheapbook before May 30th 2014,  I'll choose two lucky winners and send them each their own digital copy of Cheapbooks Greatest Hits!



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Resources for Citizen Scientists

Something is in the air.  The most recent versions of both Discover magazine and ASTC's Dimensions magazine feature stories and resources related to Citizen Science.

Simply put, Citizen Science provides an opportunity for people (usually non-scientists, but not always) to contribute data or data analysis or other forms of assistance to ongoing research projects.

I think it's enormously cool for kids, families, seniors (anyone, really) to get a better sense of science projects that hold a particular interest for them.

So here are three resources related to Citizen Science to grab onto:

1) Citizen Science Central  A central portal for information about projects to join, and news about, Citizen Science hosted by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

2) The latest issue of Dimensions has the theme "Science Within Reach" and is chock full of great stories and resources about Citizen Science.

3) Lastly, Discover magazine has launched a new "Citizen Science Salon" blog with links to Citizen Science projects featured in their magazine articles.

So, why not check out the above resources and see if you can find a Citizen Science project that you can help out with?



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Appreciating The People You Meet Along The Way

I started writing this post about the people I've met (and stayed connected to) in the museum biz --- many who I met first on the "conference circuit."

But I've shifted my thoughts slightly,  upon hearing of the untimely death of Alan Friedman.

Alan was one of those truly kind museum people who I've met along the way, both in working on projects with the New York Hall of Science, and in conversations along that (seemingly endless) museum conference and meeting circuit.

Alan was a deep thinker who genuinely cared about museums and museum visitors, and whose thoughtful writings will continue to benefit museum folks.

What I was going to say originally in this post, and perhaps even more forcefully now in the context of Alan's passing, is to take the time to let the people around you know how much you appreciate them.  It really does mean a lot.




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What's Your Dream Project?

One of my favorite questions, either for people I've interviewed for this blog, or for people I meet in "real life" is a variation of the "what would you do if you won the lottery" game.

Most non-museum people I ask that question of usually respond with a travel-related quest to some exotic locale.

But when I ask museum people, If money were no object, what would your dream museum project be? the answers are a lot more varied.  

Here are a few of my favorite responses from the ExhibiTricks "interview vault" (if you click on folks' names you'll also be directed to their interview...)

Beck Tench:  I'd give anyone who wanted one, a heart rate monitor to wear for a month. I'd build technology that would autostream the data to a website where they could see their heart rate in the context of everyone else participating.  I'd also build in the ability to geo-locate where people's heart rate rises and falls.  And we'd ping folks with questions about their mood and whether or not they feel they belong. We'd assign them random tasks like doing good deeds or taking small risks.  We'd ping them when rates spiked to find out what was happening.  I'd also buy a big laser projector and project a visualization of the heart rates of the participants across the sky on a cloudy night or on the side of a tall building.

I wore a heart rate monitor for a few days in a row once and was surprised to learn that mine lowers when I'm in a stressful confrontation. I also discovered a crush I didn't know I had!  I think the participants would learn a lot about themselves and the researchers would have more data than they knew what to do with (a personal mission of mine currently).



Jason Jay Stevens:   I'd like to cast a set of giant ceramic upright bells.

For centuries, the Chinese used hand bells to measure the volume of dry goods in the marketplace; there were strict regulations for the making of the bells and particular notes represented particular quantities. I love this overt correspondence between two seemingly disparate things: sound and quantity. So each of my giant bells would correspond to a particular standard volume ("one cubic meter," "one hundred bottles of beer," "boot space in a 1954 VW Beetle"). We can call the exhibit "The Well-Tempered Volume."

Is money really no object? The bells would be mounted on gimbal yokes of solid oak, installed beneath a great pavilion, surrounded by gardens organized in a taxonomic maze, and full of sonorous sculptures activated by wind and water.

Really really no object? I would like to make a second set of these bells and install it in the Antarctic. Wouldn't it be nice to know there is a set of giant upright bells on the bottom of the world?!



Erika Kiessner: I would love to do a science exhibition about a city, embedded in the city landscape. I imagine walk-up exhibits on street corners and points of interest that draw your attention to something in the vicinity and give a science-based explanation for it. From architecture to wind patterns, local flora to material properties, there are elements of a city that are easy to take for granted even if there are fascinating explanations for them.

For example, in Toronto one of the big downtown office buildings has a cantilevered portion that suspends 13 stories over the sidewalk. An exhibit there might draw an area on the ground with the statement “Standing here there are XX thousand pounds of concrete suspended above you!” Then an explanation about how the building is constructed to support the structure overhead.



Dan Spock:  I’ve got tons of them in reserve, but the most impractical one I’ve always wanted to do is a combination museum and resort hotel where you’d get to live, sleep and eat in the museum. It would have guest rooms, lounges, restaurants, a pool, a bar, a day spa, all of which are a part of game-like exhibits you can party in around the clock with other guests. The museum could be about anything, but maybe it would be about a journey of self-realization. Something about the choices you make in life and where they lead you, a place where you can experiment with alternative paths and identities you’d never dare take in real life. Know anybody who’d like to fund it?

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And what about YOUR dream project?  Let us know about it in the "Comments" section below!



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Exhibit Designer's Toolkit: SensoryPEN

I recently got to play around with a SensoryPEN, and wanted to share my impressions with ExhibiTricks readers.

SensoryPEN is a way to add audio to exhibit experiences and graphics.  Each SensoryPEN (pictured below) can hold up to 280 hours of audio content in a small lithium ion battery-charged unit. The units can be used indoors or outdoors and come with an earphone port and internal speakers.

Essentially you create a button, image,  or shape that you want to serve as the "trigger" for the SensoryPEN sound file(s).   Then, once a visitor touches the tip of the pen to that audio-enhanced image, the message and sounds play.

The thing I like best (beside the really reasonable cost of each SensoryPEN unit) is that your sound triggers can be printed on a range of materials from simple stickers to more permanent materials like high-pressure laminates, and that you can layer up to 12 audio clips per each sound trigger "code."

So why not head over to the website to find out more about SensoryPEN?  I definitely think its worth a look as a new resource to create more accessible and multi-sensory exhibits.

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Museum Design Inspiration: Olafur Eliasson's "Your exhibition guide"

Artist Olafur Eliasson has developed a free app  called "Your exhibition guide" to accompany the exhibition "The Infinite White Abyss" focusing on the complex subject of the white surface in the works of Wassily Kandinsky, Kasimir Malevich and Piet Mondrian.

If, like me, you are not steeped in art history, or expecting to be in Dusseldorf anytime soon, you could skip directly to downloading the app (on iOS or Android) or checking out the "Welcome" video by Olafur Eliasson (at the top of this post or here on YouTube.)

The app itself is a series of short "exercises" that gets you to think about experiencing an art exhibition (and art museums!) in different ways.  Eliasson asks you to consider such approaches as "non-art", "abstraction" and even experiencing your visit as an asteroid, among other possibilities.  Inside the app, under each video, are additional thoughts and references related to each of the experiential exercises.

The cool, and inspiring, thing to me about what Olafur Eliasson has done here is to create a toolbox for anyone, inside any art museum, to be rewarded for careful observation.  In fact, I'd go as far to say that these exercises could be used outside of art museums as well.



Don't miss out on any ExhibiTricks posts! It's easy to get updates via email or your favorite news reader. Just click the "Sign up for Free ExhibiTricks Blog Updates" link on the upper right side of the blog.

P.S. If you receive ExhibiTricks via email (or Facebook or LinkedIn) you will need to click HERE to go to the main ExhibiTricks page to make comments or view multimedia features (like videos!)