Online/Offline Exhibitions
Museums and galleries make an increasing use of interactive exhibits to engage their audience, and allow them to take part. With children specifically in mind (although it could be tailored to adults) I thought it might be interesting to connect the museums’ physical presence with their virtual presence, as a way of promoting their centre and engaging their audience during and after the visit.
I feel museums could get the experience of their exhibits through to prospective visitors much more effectively by communicating between online and offline entities. Encouraging previous visitors to go to the website to relive their experience at the museum would increase chances of a return visit, and given the tools they would promote it to their friends via social networks.
The best way to explain what I’m thinking is probably a list of how this could work:
- Puzzles within the museum could be played live against people on the website, with a webcam also streaming a video of the player in the gallery.
- Children on the website could control parts of the galleries, e.g. pumping bubbles in to the foyer or changing the music, and then see and hear their work via a webcam.
- In the museum children could adjust the design of the website, perhaps via a ‘lightbox’ they could arrange and place objects on - which would go up as the background image to the website when they pushed a button.
- Recorded reactions from the exhibits - video cameras could record childrens’ reactions. So if there was a surprising element to an exhibition, the camera would record the reactions when it got to that part.
- Sound levels could be recorded throughout the museum could measure the levels of excitement throughout the exhibitions and be mapped out live online (and on screens throughout the museum), showing which parts of the museum are the most lively at that particular time.
- Photo stations throughout the galleries would allow kids to upload shots of their day to their Facebook or Bebo profiles - and would also automatically go on to the museum’s profiles and website.
The museum could make real use of the online/offline interactions by creating projects the pupils could begin during their visit and continue online when they’re back at school. A possible execution of this could be for the pupils to be given electronic cards which they would punch in or swipe at each exhibit and their reactions would then be recorded or documented. Back at school they could map out their reactions as data and illustrate or explain what the exhibit did. They would then upload this to the museum’s website and map out their day. The data would then be collated to create an interactive map view of the museum and its exhibits that visitors to the website could view.
As well as providing marketing and promotion tools to the museum, the results would deliver invaluable information as to which types exhibits are most popular and how well the museum is working.