Protest Art – The Conservation Perspective

Our favourite non-artist Banksy (i.e. his real identity is unknown) has been busy again with his satirical art, this time painting in his distinctive stencil style a Les Mis themed image on a wall near the French Embassy in London criticising the use of teargas in the ‘Jungle’ refugee camp in Calais. Whilst widely reported (see this article in the Guardian and this one in the Metro) the story and images in the Daily Mail report interested me most as a conservator.

Banksy’s images are always vulnerable to being graffitied, overpainted or destroyed as they are invariably:

a)       Protest art

b)       Painted on unprepared and often temporary surfaces

Sometimes that destruction is inadvertent - As described in this Sydney Morning Herald article, Melbourne’s city street cleaners did a fine job painting over one, and this in a city renowned for its street art!

More often it is an active process by the authorities being satirised to remove it. In the London instance the artwork came with a QR code which linked to a tear gas attack in the Calais refugee camp on 5^th January, one which presumably the French Government were not over-keen to have publicised, hence their quiet word to their British counterparts to cover it up ASAP. 

The irony is that the British authorities claimed they were rushing to cover it up to preserve it, the same argument the French authorities had taken with murals Banksy had painted in the refugee camp itself. Which is where the Daily Mail images are interesting, because it is clear both from the article and the images that the first way they attempted to preserve it was by ripping it to shreds with a crowbar, not a method which comes readily to mind in my toolkit of preservation processes.

The next question then is from a conservation point of view - what part of the artwork should be conserved? To my mind the crowbar damage is now part of its story, namely how the artwork was responded to, but the view could be put that this is damage that needs repairing.

Luckily I can report that this and other Protest Art issues will be the subject of a major dialogue at the forthcoming IIC Congress in LA in September 2016 entitled “Umbrellas, Gas Masks, and Post-it-Notes: Considering the historic and conservation challenges of objects created for social protest”. The dialogue will be in the form of a discussion between those who create the art and their intent for it, and those who promote it, collect it and protect it. As the blurb for the dialogue states:

“Historic events of the past years have highlighted art as a creative means of social expression to current events as well as an impactful tool used during social protests. Whether to express solidarity, such as Je Suis Charlie, or to promote political freedom for the activists in Hong Kong, disobedient art has found its presence in the world of artistic expression. The impact of disobedient art on cultural perspectives has been tremendous and the historical significance of using art to inspire and promote these events is gaining in popularity.”

There will be lots to discuss. Make it to LA if you can.

Harnessing technology to add to the museum visitor experience

Despite being quiet on the issue for a few months, I remain fascinated by where technological developments will aid the museum visitor, as in my previous blogs (see links at end of blog).

I am in no doubt that we are drawing closer to each visitor's own smartphone being able to provide:

• location specific content at whatever level and in whatever language the visitor chooses.
• dynamic way-finding that guides the visitor wherever they want to go, suggesting objects of interest tailored to the visitor's viewing patterns along the route.
• rich data to the museum on visitor patterns, and dwell times.

At the moment despite a great deal of noise in this area over the last five years, visitors to museums are still relying on good old labels and storyboards, along with that stalwart supplier of extra information, the audio guide, albeit vastly advanced from the old cassette tape days.

We can visit MONA and see what the world looks like in a label-less museum, and we can test a great array of apps, and NFC technologies (RFIDs and QR codes being the dominant). And though I have yet to experience it, the Cleveland Museum of Art's Gallery One project does seem to be hitting the mark in providing a value-add to visitors  - check out the New York Times article 'Technology that serves to enhance not distract' for a good summary.

We can ruminate on how Google Glass is going to change our world. The latest edition of the UK Museum Association's on line journal looks at the potential for Google Glass to 'recognise' artworks and provide additional text on the wearer's screen along with audio feedback. To learn more on this, check out GuidiGo.com who have partnered with Google's 'Glass at Work' program to develop mobile guides  for museums. However Google Glass is currently far too expensive in terms of hardware and content development cost to be a serious tool in museum interpretation.

If you want to spend a day on line at a webinar, tune into the New Media Consortium's Virtual Symposium on the future of museums on 23rd July.  It will be looking at advances in both BYOD (bring your own device) and location based services.

My take on all this? The process is taking far longer than we all thought for these technologies to move into mainstream use, as they all currently have limitations. A fundamental reason is that the user cannot see much added value, so until the content gets substantially richer and the experience of viewing the artwork or object that much greater, visitors are going to quickly switch off.  And this richer content requires a heap more work from curators, at a time when curators remain a somewhat  threatened species within museums and certainly not well resourced to produce this extra overlay of information.

In the year when the number of active mobile phones is due to overtake the planet's population, we need to be ready to work out how the visitor experience can be maximised in an all pervasive mobile world.

Previous relevant blog posts:

• QR codes and visual recognition
• QR codes - the discussion continues
• Mobiles and museums - the next stage
• The real via the virtual - Google Art expands
• Mobile connectivity and museums
• New technologies in the museum sector
• Providing rich media content
• QR codes, RFIDs and Goggles
• Museums mobiles and apps

QR codes and visual recognition

It is an indicator of the speed of technological development that six months on from my previous blog on QR codes there is substantial movement in both the specific QR space and the broader alternatives such as image recognition.

A number of great links around. First up, Nancy Proctor is fast cementing her position as the leading commentator on this space from her role as Head of Mobile Strategy and Initiatives at the Smithsonian. She is a key player at Museums and the Web (which she co-organises), and the US MuseumComputer Network and was the key note speaker this year at MuseumNext conference which draws all the European museum bods in this area. That key note is well worth downloading here, focusing on the need for museum technologists to continue to focus on the outputs of new technologies rather than the technologies themselves.  Some technologies will succeed and some will fail, and the biggest issue for museums will be how to choose where to invest hard won funds. Check out also an enlightening interview with Nancy at Nancy Proctor on Mobile in Museums (and Revolutionary Change).

On which note it is clear that QR codes are here to stay more firmly than they were a year ago. Follow the chat on the Linked In Museums In TheDigital Age Group Members to see how many museums world wide are using them. My view is that despite the ugliness of QR codes they are increasing recognised as an entry point for object information and are easy to read, whereas image recognition technologies, despite being less in your face (with the consequential  disadvantage of course that you do not know they are present) are still struggling with recognising anything apart from complex two dimensional artworks, i.e. they do not easily recognise simple images, photographs and many three dimensional objects.

Where this current round of technologies continues to track towards is a confluence of the benefits of the various solutions which ultimately will provide:

• access to information via visitor's own device ( or via a device that can be lent by the museum)

• a level of information that transcends the current offering of wall labels, video screens and audio tours. It will be able to be personalised, and allow the visitor to learn what they like at the level of information they choose

• active engagement via social media allowing the visitor to engage with other visitors and share comments

• dynamic wayfinding that provides an active guided navigation experience around the museum and also draws attention to objects the visitor may be interested in on the route followed

• location awareness allowing the visitors own device to work out what the visitor is looking at without prompting or actively locating

Probably the nearest example of this can be seen in the forthcoming Gallery 1 project at the Cleveland Museum of Art - details of the paper to be given on it at the November annual MCN Conference are at the MCN site.  But I am sure I shall be blogging in less than six months with a further technology update.

Julian Bickersteth

Managing Director

internationalconservationservices

QR Codes – the discussion continues

I have blogged a few times recently on trails being undertaken with QR codes, see QR codes, RFIDs and Goggles,  Providing Rich Media Content, including a view that they are of limited value New Technologies in the Museum Sector.

That said it is early days, and there are a host of trials going on to help get at broader picture. Shelley Bernstein, Chief of Technology at the Brooklyn Museum, who is always worth reading as the Brooklyn has been a innovator from way back, writes in the Brooklyn Museum blog  that their latest findings from QR take-up has been indecisive, and one could read disappointing. All visitors are provided with entrance tags on the back of which is a QR code and an explanation of what visitors might find by scanning QR codes on objects into the Museum. Only 1.77% of visitors responded by scanning the code, and of those that did scan the code only an average 3.37% of those users (.059% of total visitors) scanned the codes that were placed on objects ( admittedly only placed on 30 objects out of the 3000 on display).

So my take on QR codes at present is as follows:

On the positive side, they provide at present the fastest way to a URL and the ability to share flexible information from a smartphone, but:

• they need to be at least 30 x 30mm
• they should always include details about how to download a QR code reader beside them
• they should always identify which URL they send users too
• museums should be prepared for a slow start and gradual uptake of interest

On the negative side;

• you need a smartphone to read them, and although the growth in such is phenomenal ( 90% take-up by 2015 predicted), a significant proportion of visitors still don’t have them and are therefore disenfranchised by this method of content delivery
• they are a hassle to use in terms of first of all downloading the QR reader and then aligning the QR code on the phone camera, scanning the image and waiting for the upload

For my money, it is the dual technologies of visual recognition and location awareness that we should be watching most closely in terms of their capacity to deliver content. They both appear to be developing far faster than QR code technology, of which more soon.

Julian Bickersteth
Managing Director
internationalconservationservices

New technologies in the museum sector

A notable aspect of the recent Museums Australia conference in Perth was the extent of interest in new technologies. From the impact of the NBN to social media engagement, from virtual palaeontology to iPhone apps, there was hardly a parallel session which did not have a new technology paper. This is a significant change from the same conference only a couple of years ago, and judging by the numbers in each session, there is a real demand for knowledge in this area. Perhaps this is partly due to a fact that Michael Harvey, Head of Exhibitions at the Australian Museum, commented on in his paper, that from his experience museum visitors tend to be early adopters of technology and to use social media above the average of the general population.

I gave a paper in one of these sessions on the opportunities for Smartphones in museums co-authored with Seb Chan. This particularly reported on the latest thinking on Smartphone communication technologies, from QR codes, NFC (Near Field Communication), and Google Goggles to wifi (see my blog for more details). But we started by picking up on the recent New Media Consortium's Horizon Project which examined emerging technologies for their potential impact on and use in education and interpretation within the museum environment (2011 Museum edition).

It’s worth repeating some of their key findings which include:

• Increasingly, visitors and staff expect a seamless experience across devices. More and more, patrons want the experience of interacting with museum content using the device of their choice, wherever and whenever they choose to do so.
• Collection-related rich media are becoming increasingly valuable assets in digital interpretation. Museums are beginning to see the value in developing formal strategies for capturing high-quality media documentation at every opportunity. Museums are embracing the opportunities provided by rich media to enhance multimodal learning both online and in the galleries. Video, audio, and animations are no longer seen as afterthoughts in interpretation but increasingly as necessary components of an interpretive plan.
• Digitization and cataloguing projects continue to require a significant share of museum resources. Visitors expect to be able to readily access accurate and interesting information and high-quality media. This requires museums to plan strategically for the digitization and cataloguing of collections.
• Improving our ability to measure impact using new digital technologies is a critical need. Museums are good at traditional program evaluation, but determining the impact of new technologies on knowledge, attitudes, skills is more challenging.

One of the issues that I constantly hit in major museums, as I talk to them about new technologies, is their reservation about investing in a technology that may soon be superseded. One that I have had my own reservations about are QR (Quick Response) codes. So I was not surprised to read that recent research in New York has confirmed their limitations. In summary it was found that although there was general awareness of the codes, and an understanding of how to make use of them, very few people actually expressed an interest in doing so, mostly because they felt they could access the information/links more easily (and more cheaply) in other ways. Seb has blogged most interestingly on the issue.

Whatever the technology it must always be seen as an enabler, only as good as the content behind it, and the stories being told through it. So it’s good to read in a recent blog by Bruce Wyman, formerly Director of Technology at the Denver Art Museum, that evaluation has shown visitors are getting more from their experiences using technology aid in museums and learning more about artworks than if they did not have access to such. That must always be the driver.

Julian Bickersteth
Managing Director
internationalconservationservices

Providing rich media content

I blogged a couple of weeks ago about the challenges of providing ‘rich media ‘ to visitors, and after a whirlwind assessment of sites in Australia, the US and UK in the last fortnight can report on three technologies being used for this.


I talked about the QR code system being used at the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney in that previous blog. QR code (abbreviated from Quick Response code) is a type of matrix bar code with fast readability and comparatively large storage capacity. Apps for scanning QR codes can be found on nearly all smartphones, allowing you to scan the image of the QR code to display text or open a web page in the phone's browser. The browser supports URI redirection, which allows QR codes to send metadata to existing applications on the device. At the Powerhouse the labels ( which are on every exhibit) for the Love Lace exhibition present like this:

Check Out Seb Chan’s blog on the initial interesting results at the exhibition.

At the Museum of London, Nokia has installed RFID tags on a number of exhibits to allow access to rich media. Accessing is similar to that at the Powerhouse as follows:

Turning up at the Museum last week, it was difficult to find out much information on the system. The core problem with it is that very few phones are currently fitted with the necessary NFC ( Near Field Communication) technology to be able to read the tags, so they remain frustratingly inaccessible to the vast majority of visitors. I was unable to access it and did not see anyone in my time at the Museum doing so.


This position may change as new phones appear with NFC functionality included, but it is already clear the new iPhone 5 due for release within the next couple of months will not have NFC.

Finally to the Getty to see Google Goggles in action. This is a downloadable image recognition app created by Google and currently mostly in use for prominent buildings and wine label recognition.

Google’s Santa Monica office approached the Getty to install the application for their collections, a process which once approved appears to have gone very smoothly stitching together the data on each artwork from the Getty’s content management system with the necessary image. Once you get over the self conscious issue of photographing an artwork in front of a guard ( and expecting to be reprimanded), it works really well. When the artwork is recognised (which happens in about a second) a series of options are available from more text to read, links to relevant sites, and, to my mind the most useful, audio commentary on the artwork from a variety of sources, e.g. curators and conservators. The only downside at present is that the visual recognition technology struggles with the softer images of watercolours and anything 3 dimensional.


What do I make of all these technologies?

1) The day of the humble label as the primary means of communicating information is in my view numbered. Whilst there will always be a role for them, being able to stand back from a painting or object and accessing information in the palm of your hand rather than squinting at a wall label is a massive advantage. And this is not just about the technology. The National Gallery of London did an exercise last year where they put a simple one line label on each painting to identify it and then provided each visitor with a little booklet in which was all further information. They had a great response as not only did everyone stand back from the artworks so viewing was easier, but also they could access the information under their own control.

2) Accessing information on a hand held device is therefore going to be the way to go, but the critical issue is again not the technology but what the information provided is going to look like. Once we are beyond labels, there is going to be an expectation that we can access more than that which a standard label provided, and that is going to need much more input from curators. The Getty Goggles exercise has proved it can be done – the rich media provided is excellent.
3) What in my view this is NOT about is providing distraction from the artwork or object being viewed, i.e. lengthy videos or lots of images of comparable material are for accessing after the visit not during it. Again the content model the Getty is providing is a good one on this


Check out some useful further comment at http://www.themobilists.com/2011/08/30/qr-codes-in-museums

And watch this space as I have no doubt there is going to be a great deal of action here in the near future as these technologies play an increasingly significant role.

QR codes, RFIDs and Goggles

Responding to the challenge of how to impart 'rich media' to visitors is gaining pace. This is all about how we can provide more than just text on a label and perhaps some video on an adjacent screen. I'm doing a quick circuit round the world to check out the latest (amongst other things. such as attending the IIC Council meeting in London).

But first up, as so often is the case in the museum technology world, our own Powerhouse Museum is trail blazing. Their newly opened 'Love Lace' exhibition is using QR codes to provide further information on each of the 120 objects in the show. You need: 1) a smartphone and 2) to download the appropriate app, and then 3) to scan the bar code on each label to access this further information. There is not a lot more information you get, but it is proving the point that this is a valid way to deliver rich media. Check out Seb Chan's blog post to read about the initial take up. And whilst you are at it, do visit the exhibition. It is a stunning collection of objects, the unifying theme being some reference to lace or the patterns thereof. It's even got a big article in the latest edition of the Qantas inflight magazine.

Two other technologies I shall be looking at. The first is the use of NFC (Near Field Communication) functionality on some Nokia phones, which is being used to deliver rich media at the Museum of London. Nokia has funded this rollout at the Museum to help promote NFC, and I shall be most interested to see what take up is like.

The second is the Google Goggles technology that the Getty Museum is using (see my blog post), which utilises visual recognition technology to connect via your smartphone to an array of rich media.

Interesting times and I shall report back shortly.  Got to run - my flight is being called!

Julian Bickersteth
Managing Director
internationalconservationservices