We’ve recently been involved in in a proposal for a brand new museum, putting together ideas for a large number of different interactives which address a number of gallery needs and look at a wide range of content.

We always hit the same problem with these projects: that the ambition of the work far outstrips the available budgets. And one of the reasons for this is that we seem to re-invent the wheel for each new interactive.

I can’t talk about the museum in question for obvious reasons, so let’s invent one for a thought experiment. Let’s call it The Ian Museum.

It opens next year and has four main galleries - Piano Heroes, Tea,  Why Football is Dull - and Ian: the Man, the Myth. So that’s a wide range of topics that will typically require a wide range of interactives.

In the traditional model we look at each of the galleries, identify the gaps that could be filled with digital content and then try to come up a wide variety of interesting routes through that content. Let’s have some games, some digital microscopes, a huge electronic encylopedia, a virtual film studio, a massive interactive timeline, a live ‘Video Nation’ style board, a large image of me… the list can go on and on.

Here’s the thing. Why should we re-invent digital content delivery from gallery to gallery? We don’t re-invent the signage or images, beyond gallery or thematic styling, so why do it when bits and bytes are involved.  ‘Hey, we used English in the last Gallery, that’s old hat - let’s write these signs backwards!’

Maybe a better way forward is to create a more standard set of interactives for a museum, the ‘bread and butter’ digital access points to more content. And maybe we shouldn’t give users access to vast swathes of content, maybe we should concentrate on smaller areas and really do them justice in terms of storytelling, design and on-screen/on-wall/on-PDA/on-whatever interaction. Maybe less is more.

Let’s be clear here. I am not advocating a reduction in digital content in museums. For one thing, I’d be doing myself out of a job. There is still room for ‘big ticket’ items in each gallery (that Big Experience thing I’m always going on about) but if we can streamline a large chunk of digital delivery and exploit the efficiencies inherent in this approach then there is more budget left in the pot for the ‘wow! factor’ installations we all love and want.

With that in mind, here’s my Less Is More Manifesto (drum roll…)

We should spend more time doing a smaller number of things really, really well

We should not provide endless amounts of information that the general public don’t want.

Let’s not provide high production value study areas for students and academics. Give them the content they need but deliver it in a more straightforward (i.e. cheaper) manner.

The average museum visitor (and yes I know there probably isn’t one but I never said my manifesto was perfect)  does not expect to come out of a gallery suddenly raised to the level of subject expert, so there’s no need to bombard them with too much information.

The onus is on museums and companies like Cogapp to provide simple and compelling digital experiences that concentrate on the key information, the most relevant stories.

Digital storytelling is a fabulous and flexible way to impart information and just because it can show a million pictures, doesn’t mean it has to.

Finding common ways to distribute information around a gallery or museum frees up budget and time for The Big Experiences. And every gallery needs some of those!

Finally, free 3G iPhones for all museum developers would be nice. But I might be out of luck with that one.

Of course this approach doesn’t work for every gallery and there is always a place for digital collections (at which Cogapp are notable practioners cough cough) but perhaps if we can find some simple but engaging ways of delivering smaller amounts of premium content, which can be duplicated and distributed around a gallery/museum (with due reference to gallery styling etc.) we can free up limited budgets for fewer, but perhaps more successful, big installations. It won’t work all the time, but it might work for some of it.

Right. I need a cup of tea. Now which museum would tell me about that..?

To celebrate its 90-year history, BMW has recently opened a Museum in Munich, showcasing 125 exhibits of BMW at its finest. One that certainly caught my eye was the fascinating kinetic sculpture made up of 714 metal spheres. Suspended from the ceiling by string, the spheres dance in a hypnotic fashion to create stunningly satisfying waves and curves. The mechatronic structure is a perfect example of abstract art, which is successful at engaging with its audience. Watch the video carefully for the finale, as the structure arranges itself into a silhouette of a classic BMW:

My attention was also drawn to other creative structures in public spaces such as BA’s Troika installation in Heathrow’s Terminal 5. Taking inspiration from train station departure boards in the 70s and 80s, the sculpture comprises of 4638 flip-dots, which interchange between black and silver to create beautiful ripples. A great concept, which relieves the stresses of an airport, well that combined with the therapy of the retail kind! View the interactive:

Not only are these installations a creative use of technology; they capture the audience’s attention and complement the environments in which they are installed.

A few weeks ago the Victoria & Albert Museum opened the doors to its new Jewellery Gallery. The impressive William and Judith Bollinger Jewellery Gallery boasts 3500 jewels from the V&As collection, focussed principally on the last 800 years of European jewellery. The opening night attracted around 1500 people. Not surpising when you see some of the amazing objects out on display (behind heavily fortified glass of course).

The opening night was also a big moment for Cogapp, as we had designed and built three interactive kiosks to allow visitors to search the large collection and find out more about the objects. The ‘Search the Jewellery Gallery’ kiosks let visitors find specific jewels, or explore the collection by applying interchangeable filters such as ‘Material’ or ‘Location’ to pull together custom user-specified groups of objects.

The software also features a deeply zoomable interface that allows the very close inspection of each object’s detail. Given the small scale of some of the pieces, and the fact they must be placed behind glass, this function plays an important part in allowing visitors to really inspect and examine the exquisite detail many of the jewels feature.

We made a video of the interactive in action, as the screenshots can’t quite convey everything. Do follow the link and take a look….

On the way back from Museums and the Web in Montreal, Ben and myself stopped off in Manhattan, to visit MoMA. This was under the guise of doing work (seeing the finished MoMA.guide installation in the flesh) but in reality was an excuse to go to the Design and the Elastic Mind exhibition. MoMA’s site goes some way to capturing just how many cool things were crammed into the space, you are left physically exhausted with the sheer amount of information and ideas bombarding you. Highlights included:

Philip Worthington: Shadow Monsters

Julius Popp: bit.fall

Noam Toran: Accessories for Lonely Men

Jonathon Harris, Sep Kamvar: I Want You To Want Me

Graffiti Research Lab: L.A.S.E.R Tag

Last week I attended a half-day workshop on using RFID readers with Arduino boards, organised by Tinker. The workshop was part of a two day focus on ‘do it yourself media’ created by the Takeaway Festival, and hosted at the Science Museum’s Dana Centre.

After an introductory talk, we divided into small groups, and had four hours to create a project. I was all set to create an RFID theremin, but it turned out that the MIFARE boards we were using didn’t provide signal strength information (unlike those used in the active RFID projects I mentioned in my last post).

Instead, our group settled on the plan of creating a sound recording system: users would place different RFID-tagged objects on the reader, and if it was the first time it had seen it, it would record a sound clip through the computer’s microphone. The second time you presented the object, it would play back the sound (with a bit of serendipitous echoing feedback, to create that big stadium feel). So, by constantly swapping objects, you can create your own sound effects library and make up songs as you go along. A bit like a cobbled-together version of Zoundz.

Technically, we achieved this by a very simple bit of Arduino code, coupled with a Processing script (with the Ess library) to handle recording and playback. If you’d like a copy of the source code, get in touch.

Once the 4 hours were up, it was time to present to the other groups, and to see what everyone else had done. There were lots of inventive projects, such as:

• ‘oyster spy‘
  you’d swipe your oyster card to see a pretty animation, but then the moment you turned the corner, you’d be presented with a photo of yourself that you had unwittingly triggered
• ‘body explorer‘
  this group turned the card and reader idea on its head, by concealing cards in their clothes, and having you scan them using the reader to reveal photos of various parts of their body
• ‘distorted photo booth‘
  poke your head through the hole, then swipe cards to transform your image using hall-of-mirror style effects
  ‘cheating computer‘
  roll an (RFID-tagged) dice and play against the computer, which strangely seems to win every time…

Finally, we all went down to the bar area to present our projects to a wider audience, and to watch a great performance by Sputniko and her wiimote-enabled armpit monster. All in all, it was a great day - with lots of interesting tech and lots of interesting people.

Also see:

• Takeaway Festival site
• Example code and datasheets from Tinker
• Photos on flickr

This weekend I took my family to Portsmouth and up to the top of the Spinnaker Tower. On the first viewing level, some 100 metres above the harbour, is probably the simplest and most effective interactive exhibit in the UK. It’s a hole in the floor, covered in glass - and you walk on it. That’s it.

It is straightforward. You can’t get much more straightforward than a hole in the floor.

It is easy to understand. The only instructions are ‘please take off your shoes’.

There is no unnecessary information. It would have been tempting to place a touchscreen nearby but that would have ruined the simplicity of the experience.

It is absolutely thrilling. Your brain tells you the glass must be safe. Every other part of you screams ‘get off it now!’

It is interactive at a fundamental level. You don’t change it, it changes you (see the screaming above).

Visitors use and enjoy it their own way. My toddler ran happily over it, blissfully unaware of the massive drop below him; a young boy lay on it, drawing the view below; teenagers dared each other to stand on it and jump up and down; and adults tried very hard not to be too chicken about the whole thing.

The view from the tower is astounding. There is a nifty interactive map on the second viewing level and there are all sorts of readouts and videos as you wait to ascend. But the thing everyone talks about is the hole in the floor. It is simple and brilliant.

It takes full advantage of the single most thrilling aspect of the Tower - that you are a very very long way up.

It gives users a unique and dramatic experience that cannot be replicated anywhere else. And that must be a good thing.

On Monday, Joe and I attended the Museum Association’s event, Senses Working Overtime: Optimising interactive exhibits, which was held at the Churchill Museum in London.

It was a great day; we both met and talked to lots of interesting people. And of the many issues that came out of the various lectures and discussions my top two were:
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It almost feels too effervescent to call an ‘installation’. Urban Echo, an ongoing project by Christopher Baker, Laura Baker and J. Anthony Allen, lightly graces the wall of a building in Copenhagen, fleetingly reflecting the thoughts of those passing by before they fragment and fizz skyward.

A playful example of Interactive Architecture (an emerging area blogged with great zeal by Ruairi Glynn here), it’s simple yet infectious. People are encouraged to answer questions or send messages from their mobile phones, and these then float into the projection, bouncing cleverly off windows as they drift up like bubbles.

It’s an incredibly expressive examination of our relationship with public spaces. We interact with buildings each day - seeing, passing, touching, entering, exiting - both as individuals and as communities. Creating a space where relationships can be visualised, where a silent building can ask “what are you hearing?”, and we can answer, is a warmly provocative way of exploring what architecture means to us, and what we mean to architecture.

A well-executed, beautiful and engaging use of technology. If only more such things might interrupt our routine walks around our cities.

The nice people that made the reactable have released the engine behind the table under the GPL.

As a multitouch interface used by musical artists including the legendary Bob Moog and Björk on her Volta world tour (Live Videos on Youtube Later with Jools Holland and at the Coachella Festival 2007 ) this user input technique gives real hands on approach to computer interaction.

The multitouch experience is genuinely play like and most importantly, very user friendly.

Behind the scenes computer vision blob detection algorithms facilitate multiple object detection and tracking, controlled through the ‘Tron’ like interface of the music table.

Away from the music table the engine itself recognises amoeba type objects called fiducial markers and can track their x+y coords, as well as the rotation around the z axis.

The reacTIVision app spews out this information using the TUIO protocol, which means that anything that uses OpenSound control can tap into it. It can also send messages as MIDI.

And they’ve got example code for use in most of the major ’software you use to display nice stuff’, including Flash and Quartz Composer.

So far Cogapp experiments with multitouch systems like reactable have proved a fun way to interact with technology, adapting the complexity behind the scenes to produce an engaging and intuitive natural user interface.