Sometimes It Really Is About The Box ...

 

I'm inherently resistant to museum experiences that seem to put much more emphasis on "the box" than the stuff inside the box.  I cringe when I encounter a bad exhibit experience that seems like a five dollar idea stuffed inside a five thousand dollar container.

Similarly, it often seems that the resources poured into "starchitect" fees for many new museums would be much better spent on staffing, more creative exhibits --- or better yet, buildings with traffic flows that actually work and don't seem like crazy experiments in social engineering or dystopian sci-fi movie sets.

Despite my bias against pretty, empty experiences in cultural institutions, I went to an opening last week and found an instance where the emphasis on the high-level design aesthetics of the environments actually makes sense.

Those environments are part of Design Lab at the New York Hall of Science (NYSci) a collaboration between an amazing content team at NYSci and the talented designers at Situ Studio that totally transformed a core section of the original 1964 World's Fair building that formed the original part of the New York Hall of Science.

The design-based activities happening inside the five distinct areas or zones within Design Lab (and the adjoining Maker's Space) are, on one level, deceptively simple: building structures with long dowel rods and rubber bands, or creating parts of a "Happy City" using cardboard, tape, batteries, and LEDs.  But if Situ and NYSci had only deployed these activities by themselves (with simple fences or functional barriers around them) I don't think the experiences would have "worked" as well.

The combination of Situ's carefully-crafted "boxes" and the (on the surface at least) "less flashy" design activities combines to create an incredibly strong presence and makes the design-based activities inside much more attractive to visitors. (And from a practical matter, more attractive to funders as well.  I can't imagine the funders behind Design Lab ponying up the cash for simpler, utilitarian spaces.)

All of this makes me want to re-think my impressions of different "Maker's Spaces" I've encountered (like The Tinkering Studio or MAKESHOP® ).   How much of an impact are the "non-functional" environmental design considerations actually having on visitor experiences in these most ultilitarian and user-focused of museum activity spaces?

Could rough-and-ready Hacker/Maker Spaces and even Maker Faires benefit from additional, and intentional, interior/environmental design? Would it make the experiences and activities more satisfying for visitors in a way? 

It's a bit paradoxical (to me, at least) that activities that easily lend themselves to happening on workbenches in crowded shops, or portable tables under tents in parks (or parking lots) might actually become more effective or memorable when placed inside bespoke environmental surrounds.

But I think that's part of what makes Design Lab work.  If you find yourself around NYC, make sure to take the 7 train to Queens and check it out!

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Stop-Motion Animation Tools and Cheapbook CONTEST Winners!

At the recent Association of Children's Museums conference in Phoenix, Joe Vena, from the Children's Museum of the Arts in NYC, gave a great workshop about "Art and Technology in Creative Learning" with a focus on stop-motion animation.

Two of the tools (one hardware, one software) Joe used in the workshop were great low cost ways to play with tech --- and they were new to me, so I'd thought I'd share them with ExhibiTricks readers.

The hardware tool is a relatively inexpensive USB camera to plug into computers to capture imagery called the IPEVO Point 2 View (P2V) Camera.  It's really easy to use and robust enough to hold up to being the primary tool for kids' workshops.

The software tool is iStopMotion by Boinx Software.  The software seems fairly intuitive to use, and a nice feature of iStopMotion is the "live preview" with a semi-transparent onion skinning effect that lets you see what your next step would look like before capturing the frame.

So check out the IPEVO and Boinx websites to grab some tools to get started with your own stop-motion animation projects!


Cheapbooks Greatest Hits CONTEST RESULTS

I recently highlighted the newly released Cheapbooks Greatest Hits in an ExhibiTricks post and held a contest in which two lucky folks would win a free digital copy of this fourth volume of the Exhibit Cheapbooks.

Honestly, after reading the heart-felt stories of existing and emerging museums trying their best to stretch their exhibit dollars, I've decided to award prizes to TEN lucky winners instead of two!   I'll be sending out emails to everyone who entered to let them know whether they won or not.  Thanks again to everyone for entering, and for your interest in the Cheapbooks.

Even if you didn't enter (or win!) the contest, you should order your own copy of Cheapbooks Greatest Hits by heading over to the ASTC website.

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.

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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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