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Here's my results for Thanksgiving
W-L-T record: 2-1
Season record: 49-41
A half-point from 3-0. Damn you Texans! Anyway, here's the weekend picks for the week:
Oakland Raiders (+8 1/2) over Cincinnati Bengals
The Raiders have been blown away two weeks in a row, which is why the point spread is so high. But I'm betting on them at least losing close.
Pittsburgh Steelers (-1 1/2) over Cleveland Browns
The Steeler were starting an injured backup last week against the Baltimore Ravens and still were within a field goal. This week, starting Charlie Batch (who is a highly underrated backup QB) instead of Byron Leftwich they should find it easier against the lowly Browns.
Denver Broncos (-10 1/2) over Kansas City Chiefs
I've been feasting of big dog bets lately. But have you seen Peyton Manning lately? He should shred the Chiefs.
Atlanta Falcons (Even) over Tampa Bay Buccaneers
I've been insisting I still like the Falcons, just haven't liked the point spreads they've faced. Finally a low spread: I'll take 'em, even if the Bucs are a highly competitive team.
Seattle Seahawks (-3) over Miami Dolphins
Miami isn't a good home team and they're reeling, while the Seahawks are looking tough.
New Orleans Saints (+2 1/2) over San Francisco 49ers
I'm not sold on Colin Kaepernick at all. Maybe eventually, but not this season. Sure, he looked good against the Bears, but I don't expect him to perform well in a duel against Drew Brees.
Green Bay Packers (+2 1/2) over New York Giants
Giving Aaron Rodgers and the Packers points against the struggling Giants and Eli Manning heavily underestimates the talents of Green Bay.
All bets are placed at Station Casinos:
http://www.stationcasinos.com
To check Las Vegas odds, The Konformist recommends VegasInsider.com:
http://www.vegasinsider.com
30 Kasım 2012 Cuma
17 Ways We Made our Exhibition Participatory
To contact us Click HERE
This post focuses on one aspect of the exhibition: its participatory and interactive elements. We experimented with many different forms of visitor participation throughout the building, trying to balance social and individual, text-based and artistic, cerebral and silly. With one exception, no single activity cost more than $30 to produce/maintain. We developed and prototyped everything in-house with staff and interns. Pull up an armchair for a tour of our participatory hits, misses, and related discoveries. (Note: you can view these photos of the exhibition on Flickr here.)
Content Development
While most of the participatory components to the exhibition are products that are visitor-facing, there were a few ways we made our development process participatory in terms of collecting and curating content:
On the first floor of the museum, just as you walk in, you encounter a small gallery that we have transformed into a participatory, creative space. This gallery has always been tough for exhibitions--it serves as a pass-through to the classroom, and during evening events, people pour through it on their way to and from classroom activities. We decided that instead of fighting this use, we should embrace it and reposition the gallery as an informal, welcoming space for active engagement with content. We also felt that it was useful to "front load" participation so that people understand right off the bat that they can engage actively at the MAH. So many museum exhibitions relegate the participatory bits in at the end. We wanted to welcome people in a participatory way, so that hopefully, they would carry that same energy and enthusiasm for active engagement upstairs.
The content of the Love Lounge focuses on individuals from Santa Cruz County, historic and current, and the crazy things they have done for love. Some are conceptual (i.e. interracial marriage, keeping a family together while homeless) and others are more immediate (i.e. making a special gift). The content was developed in a participatory way but is presented traditionally via artifacts, text, photos, and audio.
There are three participatory components for visitors to the Love Lounge:
Sound Stairs
As you walk up the stairs to the second floor of the exhibition, where the main gallery is, your footsteps trigger voices from the community saying "I love dance," "I love anthropology," "I love cats," etc. This installation is the only one that cost more than $30--about $2,000 for the parts. We see it as a long-term investment for the museum. We stole the idea from the Pittsburgh Children's Museum and worked with a fabulous local volunteer engineer to make it happen. We invite visitors to record themselves at the front desk with the staff member, and every month, we dump new voices into the staircase. We plan for this to be a permanent installation with content specific to the given exhibition at any time. This sound installation is delightful and adds surprise to the museum. I'm not sure whether people come back to hear their voices on it, but they certainly enjoy triggering them, listening, and recording themselves.
Second Floor and the Main Gallery
The main gallery for the exhibition primarily focuses on a blend of traditional exhibition content exploring romantic and platonic love. There is a mix of artwork, historical artifacts, community stories, and labels about the psychology of love. There are also four participatory experiences spread throughout the gallery:
The third floor of the museum takes love to a more spiritual and conceptual level. The sole gallery holds extraordinary paintings by Joan Brown, mostly reflecting her deep love of cats. Outside the gallery, there are personal stories from community members about connections to animals, and a lobby area that we have rebranded as a Creativity Lounge. There are three participatory activities on the third floor:
So What?
What's the cumulative effect of all these participatory experiences? Do they really help people connect with the content at hand? And if their development means less room (mental or physical) for contemplation of artworks and historic artifacts, is it worth it?
Of course, I'm biased. I feel strongly that we need to provide multiple entry points to exhibitions. We need labels AND audio AND post-its AND collage-making AND games AND meditation. I am proud to see visitors increasing their dwell time, sharing their delight and enjoyment of the space, having meaningful conversations in the galleries, and generally expressing that the museum is becoming a useful place for them to explore topics near and dear to the heart (literally).
What's the downside? In this case, the tradeoff was in design. Because we were taking this "and" approach for the first time, we didn't quite have the skills to figure out how we should organize everything to be participatory AND look gorgeous. We realized we needed a more complex hierarchical design approach to incorporate all the new elements sensibly and attractively. The multi-disciplinary content and the inclusion of community voices were just as challenging from a design perspective as the participatory components. The whole process exposed our weaknesses in a good way. We know what we need learn about and improve on over time.
For now, I'm glad to hear visitor comments like this one, from a 16-year-old girl:
Going to MAH and seeing the LOVE exhibition on First Friday was a wonderful experience. It made me think in ways that I haven't before about the relation of art--as expressive culture--to democracy. It was fascinating to see people--across social differences--responding to representations of love in the paintings, images, objects and narratives that were part of the installation. It was exhilarating to see them inspired to create their own meanings in response: lovers whispering together in alcoves, people of all ages writing and drawing on walls and post-its, children painting, everyone sitting rapt before screens.After a year of tinkering, the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History is now showing an exhibition, All You Need is Love, that embodies our new direction as an institution. It is multi-disciplinary, incorporates diverse voices from our community, and provides interactive and participatory opportunities for visitor involvement. The exhibition is far from perfect, but it's a big step towards reflecting the "thriving, central gathering place" of our strategic vision.
--Helene Moglen, professor of literature, UCSC
This post focuses on one aspect of the exhibition: its participatory and interactive elements. We experimented with many different forms of visitor participation throughout the building, trying to balance social and individual, text-based and artistic, cerebral and silly. With one exception, no single activity cost more than $30 to produce/maintain. We developed and prototyped everything in-house with staff and interns. Pull up an armchair for a tour of our participatory hits, misses, and related discoveries. (Note: you can view these photos of the exhibition on Flickr here.)
Content Development
While most of the participatory components to the exhibition are products that are visitor-facing, there were a few ways we made our development process participatory in terms of collecting and curating content:
- We partnered with two local newspapers--the Good Times and the Sentinel--to run contests looking for people with stories of crazy things they'd done for love and love rituals with family and friends. The best of the results were published on the papers online and included in the exhibition complete with first person labels, photographs, and artifacts.
- We collaborated with two local organizations--the Rebele Homeless Family Shelter and Dominican Oaks retirement community--to conduct oral histories and produce a small audio and photo-based exhibit on maintaining love in tough situations. Here's a photo of one of the retired couples who came with their family to celebrate her 80th birthday in the exhibition.
- We invited museum members and a few community members/organizations to create small exhibition components about unique love experiences with family, friends, teammates, romantic partners, and pets.
- We invited a private art school to fill a very public wall with paintings made by students in response to the question, "How would you depict love?" This is the most visible community component in the exhibition--a huge wall of 60 paintings hung salon-style, including a giant Marilyn Monroe, several superheroes, cats, goth girls--whatever said "love" to a range of kids. The inclusion and prominence of amateur art in the museum makes a complicated statement that is worth a whole other blog post.
- We prototyped the most complicated interactives (the Love Styles quiz and Hearts to Hearts game) with visitors in the months leading up to opening. Because our visitation is highest during our monthly First Friday events, we used those as opportunities for testing. We called the prototypes "activities," got lots of participants, and people loved giving their feedback and seeing the prototypes evolve over a couple months. We've continued to do this for future exhibitions.
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| I LOVE... entryway. |
The content of the Love Lounge focuses on individuals from Santa Cruz County, historic and current, and the crazy things they have done for love. Some are conceptual (i.e. interracial marriage, keeping a family together while homeless) and others are more immediate (i.e. making a special gift). The content was developed in a participatory way but is presented traditionally via artifacts, text, photos, and audio.
There are three participatory components for visitors to the Love Lounge:
- An entrance doorway with spray-painted I LOVE ________ that people can complete with chalk. People love this and it's easy to manage with a sponge. The content is fairly surface-level, but it creates a nice feel when you walk in.
- A wall on which people can write answers to the question: "What's the craziest thing you've done for love?" with sharpies. This is the smash hit of the room and the most risky thing in the whole exhibition. What kind of crazy museum gives people sharpies and lets them write on a wall? As it turns out, the wall is fairly manageable and generates fabulous stories. The biggest problem is the sharpies running out; visitors pound them into the walls, and they have to be replaced every two weeks. We also have problems with kids scrawling on the bottom (you can see the height below which the wall becomes a toddler playground) and occasionally, people writing inappropriate things. We haven't had too much swearing, but there are rare moments of violence. "Murder" is not something you want to see on this kind of wall. We manage the wall by repainting it when it gets full (about every 3 weeks, and yes, we photograph it first) and spot-repainting anything offensive the day it is noticed. The content truly is amazing. Every time we repaint, I'm sad to see many of the stories go--but then I'm always overwhelmed with the quality of what replaces them.
- A typewriter on which people can write love letters. They can pin them to the wall or take them home. This is the sleeper surprise of the room--few people do it, but those who do get completely hooked. It's not unusual to find a teenager at the typewriter for an hour or a family learning how to use it together.
Sound Stairs
As you walk up the stairs to the second floor of the exhibition, where the main gallery is, your footsteps trigger voices from the community saying "I love dance," "I love anthropology," "I love cats," etc. This installation is the only one that cost more than $30--about $2,000 for the parts. We see it as a long-term investment for the museum. We stole the idea from the Pittsburgh Children's Museum and worked with a fabulous local volunteer engineer to make it happen. We invite visitors to record themselves at the front desk with the staff member, and every month, we dump new voices into the staircase. We plan for this to be a permanent installation with content specific to the given exhibition at any time. This sound installation is delightful and adds surprise to the museum. I'm not sure whether people come back to hear their voices on it, but they certainly enjoy triggering them, listening, and recording themselves.
Second Floor and the Main Gallery
The main gallery for the exhibition primarily focuses on a blend of traditional exhibition content exploring romantic and platonic love. There is a mix of artwork, historical artifacts, community stories, and labels about the psychology of love. There are also four participatory experiences spread throughout the gallery:
 |
| The abacus and sticker setup for the Love Styles test. |
- "After the Breakup, I..." wall. This is a simple post-it-based talkback wall where people share their breakup stories. Powerful, poignant, and entertaining. We used this technique to develop the prompt. Requires occasional culling for violent or overly sexual content, but mostly, it's PG-13 and on-topic.
- Love Styles personality test. This is our most elegant interactive in the exhibition, and it is always occupied by absorbed visitors. It is a personality test (based on real science) in which you can determine your own love style by answering a series of questions, teen magazine-style. We spent a long time prototyping this one. We didn't want people to have to add up points or do anything too onerous to participate. So, we created simple handmade abacuses that people use to track their responses to sets of questions. At the end of the quiz, you look at the beads to figure out what style is dominant. You then put a sticker under the name of your dominant style. The stickers accumulate to show a simple statistical distribution of love styles in the visitor community. Every once in a while, a post-it from the breakup interactive will make its way over here as a form of commentary on the activity.
- Hearts to Hearts card game. This social game, based on the popular Apples to Apples, is a mixed bag. The idea is to select adjectives from a deck that best describe the feeling of common relationship experiences--Thanksgiving dinner, office holiday parties, sharing rooms with siblings. When you get a group together at the table, it's incredibly fun and successful at prompting people to share personal stories related to the topics at hand. But it's hard to explain to visitors who haven't played Apples to Apples, and if there is not a gallery host to facilitate, this one often sits unplayed.
- DIY Wedding Chapel. This one was not created by us. Artists Beth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle decided to create an immersive, surreal wedding chapel in which to show video clips from their series of weddings to the earth. They wanted to invite visitors to engage in spontaneous wedding ceremonies in the chapel, and so we brainstormed together until we decided on a blackboard with fill-in-the-blank wedding vows. (Rejected ideas included a paper towel dispenser for vows.) While very few people actually write and recite vows in the chapel, the ones that do are passionate and heartfelt, even when goofy. This is definitely a case where people's participation is higher given the overall participatory vibe of the gallery. In a traditional museum, I suspect people would see the blackboard as "part of the art" and not touch.
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| A DIY wedding! |
- Love Map. In the history gallery, there is a map of Santa Cruz County with paper, pins, and red yarn for writing a memory about a love experience in the county and connecting it to the place where it happened. This was launched as a facilitated activity during a "Love Fest" event in April and stayed. It is a bit of an ugly stepchild interactive--since it wasn't planned with the rest of the exhibition, we tend to forget to maintain and regulate the content. It can get messy, but the layered effect is somewhat appealing despite the reduced coherence.
- Love matching game. Also created for the Love Fest, this little game is perched on a wall on the way from the second to the third floor. It is a simple poster showcasing photos from the museum archives of couples in love, old valentines, etc., along with cards with clues to match to the photos on the posterboard. We have found these staircase landing activities to be surprisingly appealing. Here are some girls crowded around it on their way through the museum.
The third floor of the museum takes love to a more spiritual and conceptual level. The sole gallery holds extraordinary paintings by Joan Brown, mostly reflecting her deep love of cats. Outside the gallery, there are personal stories from community members about connections to animals, and a lobby area that we have rebranded as a Creativity Lounge. There are three participatory activities on the third floor:
 |
| Cat temple meditation. |
- Animal stories. At the end of a wall featuring five animal photos and related first-person stories, there is an entreaty for participation. If you have a pet story to add to the wall outside the gallery, you can email it to our curator of history/collections manager, Marla. Only two people have done this. People like looking at and reading the pet stories on display, but the idea of going home, finding a photo, writing something up, and sending it in? Not so much.
- Me collages. The Creativity Lounge is entirely taken over by this simple activity, in which visitors are invited to make collages that represent "the things you love most" from recycled magazines. There is a beautiful, simple set of clotheslines on which visitors can hang their completed collages. This activity is a bit of a conundrum. From an experience perspective, it's terrific. Visitors of all ages spend a long time working on their collages. They talk with each other while creating, both bonding and bridging as they cut and glue. There are many people who clearly have aha moments about the pleasure of simple art activities. And yet, while the collages look lovely on the wall, the content produced by them is weak. Almost no one looks at the finished collages except as a design element. We have a basket of completed ones (too many to hang!) with a sign that says, "Take home a hand-made collage." No one does. They pile up.
- Meditation cushions. This is a different kind of interaction. In the gallery with the Joan Brown paintings, there is a "cat temple" that Joan built and painted. It is strange and beautiful and we wanted people to have a different way to experience it. We put out some simple cushions on the floor--the kind you'd put on patio chairs--in a semi-circle around the temple. There's a simple label inviting you to sit and meditate on the work. I'm always surprised and delighted when I see people doing so, sitting quietly on red cushions, while just outside the gallery the scissors and magazine bits are flying at the collage activity. It's nice to remember that there really is room for all different kinds of participation in a museum.
So What?
What's the cumulative effect of all these participatory experiences? Do they really help people connect with the content at hand? And if their development means less room (mental or physical) for contemplation of artworks and historic artifacts, is it worth it?
Of course, I'm biased. I feel strongly that we need to provide multiple entry points to exhibitions. We need labels AND audio AND post-its AND collage-making AND games AND meditation. I am proud to see visitors increasing their dwell time, sharing their delight and enjoyment of the space, having meaningful conversations in the galleries, and generally expressing that the museum is becoming a useful place for them to explore topics near and dear to the heart (literally).
What's the downside? In this case, the tradeoff was in design. Because we were taking this "and" approach for the first time, we didn't quite have the skills to figure out how we should organize everything to be participatory AND look gorgeous. We realized we needed a more complex hierarchical design approach to incorporate all the new elements sensibly and attractively. The multi-disciplinary content and the inclusion of community voices were just as challenging from a design perspective as the participatory components. The whole process exposed our weaknesses in a good way. We know what we need learn about and improve on over time.
For now, I'm glad to hear visitor comments like this one, from a 16-year-old girl:
even though we have seen famous exhibits from picasso to monet-this is the first exhibit that makes me want to do artAmen to that.
Ze Frank Takes Over (My) Museum
To contact us Click HERE
I get excited about a lot of things in my work at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History. But every once in awhile, something extraordinary comes up, something that isn't emergent or evolving or encouraging but something that explodes into your life like a comet knocking on your door.
That's how I felt when artist Ze Frank got in touch to talk about a potential museum exhibition to explore a physical site/substantiation for his current online video project, A Show (see minute 2:20, above). And to cut to the end of the story first, yes, we are creating a project together, yes, you can participate, and yes to whatever other questions this brings up in your head.
Ze Frank is a participatory artist who creates digital projects that are explicitly about creating and enhancing authentic interpersonal connections. He is an authoritative artist of the social web with a slew of accolades and a suite of diverse projects under his belt. This 2010 TED talk is a good introduction if you haven't experienced his work before.
Ze is a skilled performer, but more importantly, he's a thoughtful ringleader for a series of intricate games, missions, and provocations that invite participants to bridge social barriers in surprising ways. He invites participants to write songs for each other about dealing with rejection. To recreate childhood photographs. To celebrate political differences. To dress up their vacuum cleaners.
Ze's work can feel silly or strange. It's often intended for an audience that I only barely understand through the ways they respond and interact with the work. In other words: I have a lot to learn from him. This winter, as part of a museumwide exhibition called Work in Progress, Ze and the virtual army of participants in A Show will take over a gallery of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History. We will be displaying products created by the online community, creating a process for ongoing online and onsite collaboration, and providing a gathering space for people connected to each other through Ze's digital universe. And on a conceptual level, we'll be exploring questions of how online and onsite participation interrelate and what their babies look like.
This project excites me for a number of reasons:
Most importantly, I'm curious: what would you like to see us explore with this exhibition?
I get excited about a lot of things in my work at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History. But every once in awhile, something extraordinary comes up, something that isn't emergent or evolving or encouraging but something that explodes into your life like a comet knocking on your door.
That's how I felt when artist Ze Frank got in touch to talk about a potential museum exhibition to explore a physical site/substantiation for his current online video project, A Show (see minute 2:20, above). And to cut to the end of the story first, yes, we are creating a project together, yes, you can participate, and yes to whatever other questions this brings up in your head.
Ze Frank is a participatory artist who creates digital projects that are explicitly about creating and enhancing authentic interpersonal connections. He is an authoritative artist of the social web with a slew of accolades and a suite of diverse projects under his belt. This 2010 TED talk is a good introduction if you haven't experienced his work before.
Ze is a skilled performer, but more importantly, he's a thoughtful ringleader for a series of intricate games, missions, and provocations that invite participants to bridge social barriers in surprising ways. He invites participants to write songs for each other about dealing with rejection. To recreate childhood photographs. To celebrate political differences. To dress up their vacuum cleaners.
Ze's work can feel silly or strange. It's often intended for an audience that I only barely understand through the ways they respond and interact with the work. In other words: I have a lot to learn from him. This winter, as part of a museumwide exhibition called Work in Progress, Ze and the virtual army of participants in A Show will take over a gallery of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History. We will be displaying products created by the online community, creating a process for ongoing online and onsite collaboration, and providing a gathering space for people connected to each other through Ze's digital universe. And on a conceptual level, we'll be exploring questions of how online and onsite participation interrelate and what their babies look like.
This project excites me for a number of reasons:
- Our values are aligned. Ze genuinely cares about his participants, and he is driven to design interactions that inspire real moments of intimacy. His projects are rigorous, sincere, and generous. As someone with a keen interest in designing exhibits that engage strangers meaningfully with each other around objects, I'm thrilled to work with a pioneer on this in a different context.
- Ze's work has always gone beyond the digital. Photography, video, audio, text, origami, mail art... These projects don't only "work" on a screen. We won't just be "printing out" the experience. It will be exciting to play with a gallery space because the work is multi-dimensional physically as well as conceptually.
- The scale and scope of participation in A Show is extraordinary. Most of the participatory projects I've been involved with are rooted in a community that is geographically-defined. Ze's community is worldwide people who self-select to engage with strangers online. This isn't a group I know a lot about, and we're all curious about how they will intersect with our local audience and with each other.
- It offers unique opportunities for learning more about participation. How will this partnership influence the way we think about other participatory experiences in our institution? How will it change the way we see online and onsite interactions? What constraints and surprises will emerge? I'd love to find a grad student or two who are interested in creating some interesting research around this project, and of course, I'll be blogging about it.
Most importantly, I'm curious: what would you like to see us explore with this exhibition?
How We Doubled Attendance in a Year: One More Post about How Events Changed Our Attendance
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I promise--after this post, I'll stop writing about this. But we've just compiled all our attendance data for the past year at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History (our fiscal year ends on June 30), and several people have written to me asking for the numbers behind our turnaround. I'm in no way suggesting this is the best or only way to get more people involved in an institution--it's just the way that we did it.
Here is the growth in our attendance, busiest day, and membership from last year to this year. These rose by 115%, 240%, and 30% respectively. The busiest day in both 2011 and 2012 is our longtime community program, Free First Friday.
Now, here's our attendance breakdown for the year that just ended. Of the 37,361 visitors who attended, 63% came for a community program/event.
And finally, and perhaps most interestingly, here's a comparison of Jan-June 2011 vs Jan-June 2012. I'd like to show you the data for the full fiscal year, but we only have this daily data beginning in the winter of 2011. You can see here that 86% of our growth in attendance from 2011 to 2012 is due to community programs.
All of this growth happened with a reduced budget and staff. It happened because we:
In the coming year, we plan to keep this up, and to:
Here is the growth in our attendance, busiest day, and membership from last year to this year. These rose by 115%, 240%, and 30% respectively. The busiest day in both 2011 and 2012 is our longtime community program, Free First Friday.
Now, here's our attendance breakdown for the year that just ended. Of the 37,361 visitors who attended, 63% came for a community program/event.
And finally, and perhaps most interestingly, here's a comparison of Jan-June 2011 vs Jan-June 2012. I'd like to show you the data for the full fiscal year, but we only have this daily data beginning in the winter of 2011. You can see here that 86% of our growth in attendance from 2011 to 2012 is due to community programs.
All of this growth happened with a reduced budget and staff. It happened because we:
- partnered with local artists and community organizations whose passion and generosity made it possible for us to create incredible events. Over 800 people volunteered their talents to support our programs, with the majority collaborating on our monthly themed 3rd Friday events. These include community arts groups, social service agencies, environmental groups, social clubs, and many inspiring individuals whom we can't thank enough. These collaborators brought their own audiences along with their abilities, which introduced a lot of new people to the museum.
- actively sought out community needs to respond to. We tried with every event to meet a clearly-expressed demand or interest in the community. People wanted a fire festival, so we did a fire festival. People love crafting, so we created Radical Craft Night. Sometimes the interests were overt, and sometimes they were something we sensed in the wind. But we tried never to create an event without partners or audiences who were invested in what we were making.
- focused on specific audiences and consistent time slots. We created programming specifically targeted to families with young kids and adults looking for casual, intriguing, affordable cultural experiences on Friday nights and Saturdays. Now Friday nights at the museum have become something people can count on, and they keep growing.
- were shamelessly resourceful. Our program budgets are typically under $100. A big festival with 50 collaborators and 1,000 visitors might rate a $250 budget. We get materials donated from our members, we put up our own flyers around town, and we have a great working relationship with the city dump. Now that we're in a better financial position, we do plan to increase budgets a bit, but we want to spend any additional money supporting our artist collaborators, not on extra materials.
In the coming year, we plan to keep this up, and to:
- diversify our programming by offering more intimate events alongside the big festivals. We have increased to being open late every Friday, but we will continue to only have big events (500+ visitors) on the 1st and 3rd Fridays. The other Fridays will be for more singular workshops, talks, and performances. The same is true for Saturdays, where we will continue to have a monthly formal family art workshop but add in drop-in programming on the other weekends.
- find ways to financially support our program collaborators. We realize that asking people to volunteer their talents is not always respectful of their time or skills. At the same time, our programs' success is based on the cross-pollination of professional and amateur collaborators, all of whom bring different needs and expectations to the table. We're working on providing paying opportunities for collaborators that are equitable and flexible enough to accomodate the diversity of our partnerships.
- design new programs with a focus on history. Many of our events in the past year have fallen more heavily on the art side of the ledger, and as a museum of art AND history, we want to make sure we're reflecting the breadth of Santa Cruz culture. We've been toying with a participatory future-casting program and or a storytelling series to start moving in this direction.
- develop a system for tracking and rewarding repeat participation. Right now, all we do is count people. We know anecdotally that people tend to attend two events and then become a member on their third visit, but we don't REALLY know what's inducing people to come, come back, join, and renew. We're looking for low-cost ways to do this given our small size and community-driven character. More on that soon.
What's the String that Ties One Experience at Your Institution with the Next?
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Reader, I was wrong.
In 2008, I wrote a post arguing that museums should focus on the pre-visit, not the post-visit, if they want to capture and retain visitors. I said:
What's missing for these visitors who attend, enjoy, and don't (or sporadically) return? They are missing a string.
Let me explain. For a long time, I've thought of museum visits or cultural encounters as pearls on a string. Each experience is a pearl. They are not necessarily linear or identical to each other. But if you want to deepen the commitment between visitor and institution over time, you need a string that visitors can hang their pearls on, a thread that holds the growing relationship together. No string, and you've just got a bunch of visits rolling under the furniture.
Yes, pre-visit marketing, announcements, and welcomes are essential to get that first pearl in a visitor's hand. But we all know that it's easier to keep a current user/visitor/patron than to acquire a new one. How do you build your relationship with that person who has gotten their first pearl? How do you give them the string?
Last week, as the kickoff for the Loyalty Lab project, the experience design firm Adaptive Path facilitated a workshop at my museum for staff and visitors in which we created a "map" of the visitor experience at a museum event. Our goal was to wholly understand how visitors experience our events before, during, and after the visit.
One of the surprises was a series of observations from casual visitors--people who attend an event or two per year, who are not members, and who tend to come because of word of mouth or an invitation from a friend. They all reported having a great time at the museum... and immediately letting go of it afterwards. There was no followup. They had not been asked to join an email list or take a newsletter or join the museum. They had not taken photos in our photo booth and gotten an email about them later. They were not part of our Facebook community sharing photos and stories from the event. They came, they made a pearl, and then they dropped in their pocket with the rest of their day.
We realized from this discussion that we have a huge missed opportunity when people are leaving the museum. On their way in, they are excited, curious, ready to engage. They are not ready to hear about membership or take a newsletter about what's coming up next time. They bolt right past those tables to the "good stuff." But at the end, they've had a great time, and they want a takeaway from the experience. They WANT to join the email list. If we're smart, we should be developing a takeaway that both memorializes the visit and leads them to another. In other words, we should be giving them a string for their new pearl.
As a concrete example, consider the library. The pearls are the books you read. But the string is the library card. I've always thought of the library card as the first thing you get at the library, but it actually comes at the end of the first visit, when you have loaded up with books and you want to take them home. The card is a passport to continue your experience with the books and with the library. You want the card because it's your ticket to proceed. But it also becomes the connector that ties one experience to the next.
At our institution, we have several string candidates. Visitors make a lot of stuff here, and we're talking about ways they might be able to exhibit or share it with others in a way that encourages their return to see how their stuff has evolved. We're considering expanding our photo booth survey machine. We're talking about punch cards that serve as cultural passports with a range of museum-related missions or lead you to "earn" a membership. Or, there's just the simple starting point--a newsletter, a membership brochure, a friendly volunteer inviting you back. We're talking about shifting from having "greeters" to having "goodbyers" who thank you for coming and invite you to a next specific event.
What's the string in your organization? How do you invite people back, and how do you help them collect and aggregate their experiences with you in a meaningful way?
Reader, I was wrong.In 2008, I wrote a post arguing that museums should focus on the pre-visit, not the post-visit, if they want to capture and retain visitors. I said:
In many ways, the ability to successfully set a powerful and useful expectation for museum experiences is MORE valuable than the ability to extend said experience. When you set an expectation, you frame an experience. Once visitors have already banged on the exhibits and watched the giant nostril show, the experience belongs totally to them. The chances of reaching and holding onto them back at home are small. They’ve formed their impressions of the on-site experience, and their chance of returning, becoming members, etc. is heavily based on those impressions. You can send them all the pleasant follow-up emails you like, but such notes are unlikely to be the motivating factor that brings them back through your doors.While I still believe that framing the experience with marketing and at the beginning of a visit is important, a workshop last week taught me that the end of the visit is potentially very, very important when it comes to encouraging deeper involvement with the museum. I now realize that people can have a great experience and have NO CLUE what other opportunities (return visit, membership, in-depth programs) are available to them. I don't care how many platforms you're active in--if they are not connected to each other, people will not aggregate the experiences.
What's missing for these visitors who attend, enjoy, and don't (or sporadically) return? They are missing a string.
Let me explain. For a long time, I've thought of museum visits or cultural encounters as pearls on a string. Each experience is a pearl. They are not necessarily linear or identical to each other. But if you want to deepen the commitment between visitor and institution over time, you need a string that visitors can hang their pearls on, a thread that holds the growing relationship together. No string, and you've just got a bunch of visits rolling under the furniture.
Yes, pre-visit marketing, announcements, and welcomes are essential to get that first pearl in a visitor's hand. But we all know that it's easier to keep a current user/visitor/patron than to acquire a new one. How do you build your relationship with that person who has gotten their first pearl? How do you give them the string?
Last week, as the kickoff for the Loyalty Lab project, the experience design firm Adaptive Path facilitated a workshop at my museum for staff and visitors in which we created a "map" of the visitor experience at a museum event. Our goal was to wholly understand how visitors experience our events before, during, and after the visit.
One of the surprises was a series of observations from casual visitors--people who attend an event or two per year, who are not members, and who tend to come because of word of mouth or an invitation from a friend. They all reported having a great time at the museum... and immediately letting go of it afterwards. There was no followup. They had not been asked to join an email list or take a newsletter or join the museum. They had not taken photos in our photo booth and gotten an email about them later. They were not part of our Facebook community sharing photos and stories from the event. They came, they made a pearl, and then they dropped in their pocket with the rest of their day.
We realized from this discussion that we have a huge missed opportunity when people are leaving the museum. On their way in, they are excited, curious, ready to engage. They are not ready to hear about membership or take a newsletter about what's coming up next time. They bolt right past those tables to the "good stuff." But at the end, they've had a great time, and they want a takeaway from the experience. They WANT to join the email list. If we're smart, we should be developing a takeaway that both memorializes the visit and leads them to another. In other words, we should be giving them a string for their new pearl.
As a concrete example, consider the library. The pearls are the books you read. But the string is the library card. I've always thought of the library card as the first thing you get at the library, but it actually comes at the end of the first visit, when you have loaded up with books and you want to take them home. The card is a passport to continue your experience with the books and with the library. You want the card because it's your ticket to proceed. But it also becomes the connector that ties one experience to the next.
At our institution, we have several string candidates. Visitors make a lot of stuff here, and we're talking about ways they might be able to exhibit or share it with others in a way that encourages their return to see how their stuff has evolved. We're considering expanding our photo booth survey machine. We're talking about punch cards that serve as cultural passports with a range of museum-related missions or lead you to "earn" a membership. Or, there's just the simple starting point--a newsletter, a membership brochure, a friendly volunteer inviting you back. We're talking about shifting from having "greeters" to having "goodbyers" who thank you for coming and invite you to a next specific event.
What's the string in your organization? How do you invite people back, and how do you help them collect and aggregate their experiences with you in a meaningful way?
29 Kasım 2012 Perşembe
Ancient Greece 2.0: Arts Participation before the Industrial Age
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When we talk about making museums or performing arts organizations more participatory and dynamic, those changes are often seen as threatening to the traditional arts experience. Audience commentary, comfortable spaces for eating and talking, opportunities for amateurs to contribute to professional work: these are often considered intrusions into formal, classical settings for enjoyment of arts.
But what if the "traditional" arts experiences is a myth? What if historic arts experiences were actually a lot more participatory? This week, I read a fabulous essay that made me feel a new kinship with the past in the quest to advocate for active audience engagement.
In In and Out of the Dark [pdf], Colby College professor Lynne Conner argues convincingly that the current refinement of the Western fine arts experience is an aberrant blip in a long history of participatory audience engagement. From the Ancient Greeks through the 1800s, audiences were rowdy, engaged people. They had the freedom--and in some cases, the obligation--to make their own meaning and share their interpretations of art with each other in structured and informal ways. They voted on the best plays in the days of Sophocles, stormed the symphony halls when confronted with artistic dischord, and talked and wrote about what they saw and what they thought. If arts managers fear bloggers today, imagine how they would have felt back in the good old days when the audience was yelling and throwing things at the stage.
Conner posits that it was only in the last hundred years that the passive audience was "constructed" via a confluence of cultural, economic, and technological changes. From Conner's perspective, this construction has led us to a bifurcated cultural landscape, in which people seek out active audience experiences outside of the fine arts structure because the passive audience experience is not as satisfying or enjoyable as the alternatives. Conner argues that open mics, poetry slams, even professional sports events, are thriving because they offer audiences diverse opportunities to co-author meaning as participants, not just consumers.
What exactly constructed the passive arts audience? The big cultural shift came in the increasing distinction between highbrow and lowbrow art, which Conner describes as "the result of a deliberate effort to create a cultural hierarchy in America." The arts were sacralized and professionalized in their funding and presentation. Museums no longer showed human horns alongside historic documents; theaters made differentiations among types of live entertainment. Arts institutions began publishing instructive placards and documents to train audiences to behave more formally and to treat artists and artworks with silent respect. Proper audiences were like docile children, seen and not heard.
Conner is a theater person, and the technical changes she documents in theater that accelerated the quieting of audiences are fascinating to me as a novice in that world. Seats which once were moveable became fixed. Advances in electrical lighting allowed theaters to put actors in light and audiences in darkness. What was once a democratic forum became increasingly defined by the dividing line of the stage. As Conner puts it:
P.S. Lynne Conner has a book coming out next year called We the Audience. I can't wait. And thank you to Lauren Shultz, who introduced me to this article in a recent Museum 2.0 comment thread.
When we talk about making museums or performing arts organizations more participatory and dynamic, those changes are often seen as threatening to the traditional arts experience. Audience commentary, comfortable spaces for eating and talking, opportunities for amateurs to contribute to professional work: these are often considered intrusions into formal, classical settings for enjoyment of arts.But what if the "traditional" arts experiences is a myth? What if historic arts experiences were actually a lot more participatory? This week, I read a fabulous essay that made me feel a new kinship with the past in the quest to advocate for active audience engagement.
In In and Out of the Dark [pdf], Colby College professor Lynne Conner argues convincingly that the current refinement of the Western fine arts experience is an aberrant blip in a long history of participatory audience engagement. From the Ancient Greeks through the 1800s, audiences were rowdy, engaged people. They had the freedom--and in some cases, the obligation--to make their own meaning and share their interpretations of art with each other in structured and informal ways. They voted on the best plays in the days of Sophocles, stormed the symphony halls when confronted with artistic dischord, and talked and wrote about what they saw and what they thought. If arts managers fear bloggers today, imagine how they would have felt back in the good old days when the audience was yelling and throwing things at the stage.
Conner posits that it was only in the last hundred years that the passive audience was "constructed" via a confluence of cultural, economic, and technological changes. From Conner's perspective, this construction has led us to a bifurcated cultural landscape, in which people seek out active audience experiences outside of the fine arts structure because the passive audience experience is not as satisfying or enjoyable as the alternatives. Conner argues that open mics, poetry slams, even professional sports events, are thriving because they offer audiences diverse opportunities to co-author meaning as participants, not just consumers.
What exactly constructed the passive arts audience? The big cultural shift came in the increasing distinction between highbrow and lowbrow art, which Conner describes as "the result of a deliberate effort to create a cultural hierarchy in America." The arts were sacralized and professionalized in their funding and presentation. Museums no longer showed human horns alongside historic documents; theaters made differentiations among types of live entertainment. Arts institutions began publishing instructive placards and documents to train audiences to behave more formally and to treat artists and artworks with silent respect. Proper audiences were like docile children, seen and not heard.
Conner is a theater person, and the technical changes she documents in theater that accelerated the quieting of audiences are fascinating to me as a novice in that world. Seats which once were moveable became fixed. Advances in electrical lighting allowed theaters to put actors in light and audiences in darkness. What was once a democratic forum became increasingly defined by the dividing line of the stage. As Conner puts it:
Eventually the combination of environmental forces (i.e., the dark auditorium and mandated etiquette) and the growing gap between the societal position of the artist and the arts patron effectively quieted the audience. By the early twentieth century people of all social classes were expected to treat arts events as private experiences. They were to sit still, to refrain from talking, and to keep their opinions to themselves. In the process opportunities for public discourse about the arts and the attendant opportunity for formulating and exchanging sets of opinions about the arts event itself were, for the most part, lost.This perspective--that audiences were "silenced" during the past 100 years--creates a new kind of arsenal for those who support democratization and increased audience participation in the arts. We are honoring the deep history of serious arts engagement by pursuing participatory approaches. You could even argue that the "activist" conservatism of the past hundred years has done disturbing damage to the sharing, experiencing, and support of art in the U.S. In a time of intense socio-economic division, the concept of cultural hierarchy smacks of elitism. Arts organizations are seen as part of the 1% instead of forums to bring together 100%. Perhaps it's time to turn back the clock a little further when we talk about the good old days.
P.S. Lynne Conner has a book coming out next year called We the Audience. I can't wait. And thank you to Lauren Shultz, who introduced me to this article in a recent Museum 2.0 comment thread.
Populism, Commercialism, and Jeffrey Deitch: The Shifting Debate about LA MOCA
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Last week, my mom called. "That contemporary art museum is on the front of the LA Times again," she said. "It's more about that curator who was fired. I can't believe that an art museum can be front page news in LA for days."
LA MOCA has indeed been front page news, especially in the art world. I'm not usually that interested in museum politics, but this soap opera is too big to ignore, especially as the conversation has shifted over the last few weeks to something I care a lot about: populism.
Here's what happened:
But it's also frustrating because I see a lot of conflation of different issues in the discussion of whether MOCA is going in the right direction. I'm pissed off that this debate is giving populism a bad name.
There are three distinct aspects to Jeffrey Deitch's approach that I believe need to be treated separately:
Visitors are people. They are not numbers. They are not dollars. They are not deliveries. They are people who have experiences with art in art museums. I'm dismayed that the same critics who decry Deitch's disregard for artists and curators treat the public as an unimportant commodity in museums. Why do these critics care so much about the influence of money and so little about the influence of audiences? Why do they focus on what bait is presented to lure visitors in and not on what opportunities are made to engage them?
I feel very strongly that a "defining museum of contemporary art" in one of the biggest cities in America should attract more than 150,000 visitors annually. It should probably attract more than 400,000 visitors annually. The numbers are signposts that demonstrate the extent to which diverse people in a community engage with the objects, stories, experiences, and learning that comes with a museum visit. And if contemporary art experiences are really going to be a significant part of daily life in a big city, the museum has to have a presence worth talking about, arguing about, and visiting. Consider the MCA Denver, which has become a national media darling for director Adam Lerner's eagerness to take on an ambitious goal of engaging a whole community with contemporary art.
What galls me most about this MOCA debate is the insinuation that there's a causal relationship between populism and quality. Attendance has a causal relationship with public awareness, access, and appeal, not with content type or artistic rigor. No one says that the Met is intellectually sloppy because millions of people visit each year. No one says a tiny regional museum is extraordinary or intellectually strong because only 5,000 people attend. There is no causal relationship there. Unfortunately, some museums, especially university museums, seem to believe in this causal relationship and trumpet the extent to which no one sees their shows as a sign of purity. This is the worst kind of elitism in museums. Whatever his missteps, Eli Broad is a strong voice in this regard. He describes increasing access to art as a "moral" issue for museums. I agree.
MOCA's mission talks about "engag[ing] artists and audiences through an ambitious program of exhibitions, collections, education, and publication." They may not be doing it in the right way. They may be overly influenced by a rich philanthropist with a very demanding personality. They may not have the right fundraising strategy. They may not have the right director. But hopefully they--and all art museums--will push forward in engaging artists AND audiences.
What do you think?
Last week, my mom called. "That contemporary art museum is on the front of the LA Times again," she said. "It's more about that curator who was fired. I can't believe that an art museum can be front page news in LA for days."LA MOCA has indeed been front page news, especially in the art world. I'm not usually that interested in museum politics, but this soap opera is too big to ignore, especially as the conversation has shifted over the last few weeks to something I care a lot about: populism.
Here's what happened:
- In 2010, amidst severe financial woes and declining audiences, the Museum of Contemporary Art in LA (MOCA), hired Jeffrey Deitch, a NYC gallery owner, to be their new director. He was mandated to turn the ship around financially and to expand the reach of the museum in the community. His success has been mixed on these accounts; attendance more than doubled in the past two years, and the budget has been righted at a much lower level than previously attained, but the financial health of the organization is in doubt and very, very dependent on mega-trustee Eli Broad.
- At the end of June of this year, Paul Schimmel, the MOCA's longstanding, well-respected chief curator, was fired. Strangely, Paul Schimmel was fired by the board, with the message delivered by Eli Broad, instead of by Deitch. The first wave of critique focused on the very valid question of why Schimmel was fired in this manner.
- The discussion then shifted to the overall direction of the museum. Schimmel's departure was seen as the final confirmation of Deitch and Broad's populist, celebrity-driven approach to exhibitions, and that concerned many critics, artists, and museum directors in the art world. Schimmel's departure was followed by the resignation of the four high-profile artists on the MOCA board and a huge amount of debate in the press, including prominent people calling for Deitch to resign.
But it's also frustrating because I see a lot of conflation of different issues in the discussion of whether MOCA is going in the right direction. I'm pissed off that this debate is giving populism a bad name.
There are three distinct aspects to Jeffrey Deitch's approach that I believe need to be treated separately:
- Commercialism. Deitch comes from the gallery world. Since he was hired, there have been concerns that Deitch would take MOCA in a direction that focuses on the darlings of the international art market based on dollar signs instead of artistic quality. Deitch has done this to some extent, and he has also pursued commercialism in another way: by engaging celebrities from the worlds of film and fashion as guest curators and artists. I agree that it is disturbing for a museum whose mission is "to be the defining museum of contemporary art" to invite amateur movie stars to curate exhibitions. Two of the artists who resigned from MOCA board expressed their concern in these terms, saying: "It's about the role of museums in a culture where visual art is marginalized except for the buzz around secondary market sales, it's about the not so subtle recalibration of the meaning of “philanthropy,” and it's about the morphing of the so-called “art world” into the only speculative bubble still left floating (for the next 20 minutes)."
- Museum management. Is it appropriate for a museum director of a large, iconic institution to serve as its chief curator? Is it appropriate for a life-time non-voting museum trustee to fire an employee? Is it useful to have a director who can bring in crowds but can't raise necessary funds? Is it good value to pay a museum director $650,000 per year? These are reasonable questions.
- Populism. Deitch--and to an even greater degree, Eli Broad--have expressed clearly that they want to expand the audience at MOCA. Attendance has increased in the past two years from 150,000 to 400,000 annually. The question is whether this attendance gain is partnered by a loss for the institution--a loss of artistic or intellectual rigor, a loss of pursuit of excellence. Critics have rightly noted that admissions barely make a dent in an art museum's operation, so these additional people aren't adding much revenue to the museum. The implication, as in this complicated editorial by Boston ICA director Jill Medvedow, is that Deitch's combination of youth culture-dominated exhibitions, performances, stars and celebrities have "delivered audience" at a cost to education, scholarship, and long-term value.
Visitors are people. They are not numbers. They are not dollars. They are not deliveries. They are people who have experiences with art in art museums. I'm dismayed that the same critics who decry Deitch's disregard for artists and curators treat the public as an unimportant commodity in museums. Why do these critics care so much about the influence of money and so little about the influence of audiences? Why do they focus on what bait is presented to lure visitors in and not on what opportunities are made to engage them?
I feel very strongly that a "defining museum of contemporary art" in one of the biggest cities in America should attract more than 150,000 visitors annually. It should probably attract more than 400,000 visitors annually. The numbers are signposts that demonstrate the extent to which diverse people in a community engage with the objects, stories, experiences, and learning that comes with a museum visit. And if contemporary art experiences are really going to be a significant part of daily life in a big city, the museum has to have a presence worth talking about, arguing about, and visiting. Consider the MCA Denver, which has become a national media darling for director Adam Lerner's eagerness to take on an ambitious goal of engaging a whole community with contemporary art.
What galls me most about this MOCA debate is the insinuation that there's a causal relationship between populism and quality. Attendance has a causal relationship with public awareness, access, and appeal, not with content type or artistic rigor. No one says that the Met is intellectually sloppy because millions of people visit each year. No one says a tiny regional museum is extraordinary or intellectually strong because only 5,000 people attend. There is no causal relationship there. Unfortunately, some museums, especially university museums, seem to believe in this causal relationship and trumpet the extent to which no one sees their shows as a sign of purity. This is the worst kind of elitism in museums. Whatever his missteps, Eli Broad is a strong voice in this regard. He describes increasing access to art as a "moral" issue for museums. I agree.
MOCA's mission talks about "engag[ing] artists and audiences through an ambitious program of exhibitions, collections, education, and publication." They may not be doing it in the right way. They may be overly influenced by a rich philanthropist with a very demanding personality. They may not have the right fundraising strategy. They may not have the right director. But hopefully they--and all art museums--will push forward in engaging artists AND audiences.
What do you think?
What's the String that Ties One Experience at Your Institution with the Next?
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Reader, I was wrong.
In 2008, I wrote a post arguing that museums should focus on the pre-visit, not the post-visit, if they want to capture and retain visitors. I said:
What's missing for these visitors who attend, enjoy, and don't (or sporadically) return? They are missing a string.
Let me explain. For a long time, I've thought of museum visits or cultural encounters as pearls on a string. Each experience is a pearl. They are not necessarily linear or identical to each other. But if you want to deepen the commitment between visitor and institution over time, you need a string that visitors can hang their pearls on, a thread that holds the growing relationship together. No string, and you've just got a bunch of visits rolling under the furniture.
Yes, pre-visit marketing, announcements, and welcomes are essential to get that first pearl in a visitor's hand. But we all know that it's easier to keep a current user/visitor/patron than to acquire a new one. How do you build your relationship with that person who has gotten their first pearl? How do you give them the string?
Last week, as the kickoff for the Loyalty Lab project, the experience design firm Adaptive Path facilitated a workshop at my museum for staff and visitors in which we created a "map" of the visitor experience at a museum event. Our goal was to wholly understand how visitors experience our events before, during, and after the visit.
One of the surprises was a series of observations from casual visitors--people who attend an event or two per year, who are not members, and who tend to come because of word of mouth or an invitation from a friend. They all reported having a great time at the museum... and immediately letting go of it afterwards. There was no followup. They had not been asked to join an email list or take a newsletter or join the museum. They had not taken photos in our photo booth and gotten an email about them later. They were not part of our Facebook community sharing photos and stories from the event. They came, they made a pearl, and then they dropped in their pocket with the rest of their day.
We realized from this discussion that we have a huge missed opportunity when people are leaving the museum. On their way in, they are excited, curious, ready to engage. They are not ready to hear about membership or take a newsletter about what's coming up next time. They bolt right past those tables to the "good stuff." But at the end, they've had a great time, and they want a takeaway from the experience. They WANT to join the email list. If we're smart, we should be developing a takeaway that both memorializes the visit and leads them to another. In other words, we should be giving them a string for their new pearl.
As a concrete example, consider the library. The pearls are the books you read. But the string is the library card. I've always thought of the library card as the first thing you get at the library, but it actually comes at the end of the first visit, when you have loaded up with books and you want to take them home. The card is a passport to continue your experience with the books and with the library. You want the card because it's your ticket to proceed. But it also becomes the connector that ties one experience to the next.
At our institution, we have several string candidates. Visitors make a lot of stuff here, and we're talking about ways they might be able to exhibit or share it with others in a way that encourages their return to see how their stuff has evolved. We're considering expanding our photo booth survey machine. We're talking about punch cards that serve as cultural passports with a range of museum-related missions or lead you to "earn" a membership. Or, there's just the simple starting point--a newsletter, a membership brochure, a friendly volunteer inviting you back. We're talking about shifting from having "greeters" to having "goodbyers" who thank you for coming and invite you to a next specific event.
What's the string in your organization? How do you invite people back, and how do you help them collect and aggregate their experiences with you in a meaningful way?
Reader, I was wrong.In 2008, I wrote a post arguing that museums should focus on the pre-visit, not the post-visit, if they want to capture and retain visitors. I said:
In many ways, the ability to successfully set a powerful and useful expectation for museum experiences is MORE valuable than the ability to extend said experience. When you set an expectation, you frame an experience. Once visitors have already banged on the exhibits and watched the giant nostril show, the experience belongs totally to them. The chances of reaching and holding onto them back at home are small. They’ve formed their impressions of the on-site experience, and their chance of returning, becoming members, etc. is heavily based on those impressions. You can send them all the pleasant follow-up emails you like, but such notes are unlikely to be the motivating factor that brings them back through your doors.While I still believe that framing the experience with marketing and at the beginning of a visit is important, a workshop last week taught me that the end of the visit is potentially very, very important when it comes to encouraging deeper involvement with the museum. I now realize that people can have a great experience and have NO CLUE what other opportunities (return visit, membership, in-depth programs) are available to them. I don't care how many platforms you're active in--if they are not connected to each other, people will not aggregate the experiences.
What's missing for these visitors who attend, enjoy, and don't (or sporadically) return? They are missing a string.
Let me explain. For a long time, I've thought of museum visits or cultural encounters as pearls on a string. Each experience is a pearl. They are not necessarily linear or identical to each other. But if you want to deepen the commitment between visitor and institution over time, you need a string that visitors can hang their pearls on, a thread that holds the growing relationship together. No string, and you've just got a bunch of visits rolling under the furniture.
Yes, pre-visit marketing, announcements, and welcomes are essential to get that first pearl in a visitor's hand. But we all know that it's easier to keep a current user/visitor/patron than to acquire a new one. How do you build your relationship with that person who has gotten their first pearl? How do you give them the string?
Last week, as the kickoff for the Loyalty Lab project, the experience design firm Adaptive Path facilitated a workshop at my museum for staff and visitors in which we created a "map" of the visitor experience at a museum event. Our goal was to wholly understand how visitors experience our events before, during, and after the visit.
One of the surprises was a series of observations from casual visitors--people who attend an event or two per year, who are not members, and who tend to come because of word of mouth or an invitation from a friend. They all reported having a great time at the museum... and immediately letting go of it afterwards. There was no followup. They had not been asked to join an email list or take a newsletter or join the museum. They had not taken photos in our photo booth and gotten an email about them later. They were not part of our Facebook community sharing photos and stories from the event. They came, they made a pearl, and then they dropped in their pocket with the rest of their day.
We realized from this discussion that we have a huge missed opportunity when people are leaving the museum. On their way in, they are excited, curious, ready to engage. They are not ready to hear about membership or take a newsletter about what's coming up next time. They bolt right past those tables to the "good stuff." But at the end, they've had a great time, and they want a takeaway from the experience. They WANT to join the email list. If we're smart, we should be developing a takeaway that both memorializes the visit and leads them to another. In other words, we should be giving them a string for their new pearl.
As a concrete example, consider the library. The pearls are the books you read. But the string is the library card. I've always thought of the library card as the first thing you get at the library, but it actually comes at the end of the first visit, when you have loaded up with books and you want to take them home. The card is a passport to continue your experience with the books and with the library. You want the card because it's your ticket to proceed. But it also becomes the connector that ties one experience to the next.
At our institution, we have several string candidates. Visitors make a lot of stuff here, and we're talking about ways they might be able to exhibit or share it with others in a way that encourages their return to see how their stuff has evolved. We're considering expanding our photo booth survey machine. We're talking about punch cards that serve as cultural passports with a range of museum-related missions or lead you to "earn" a membership. Or, there's just the simple starting point--a newsletter, a membership brochure, a friendly volunteer inviting you back. We're talking about shifting from having "greeters" to having "goodbyers" who thank you for coming and invite you to a next specific event.
What's the string in your organization? How do you invite people back, and how do you help them collect and aggregate their experiences with you in a meaningful way?
What a Difference a Prompt Makes... Simple Analysis of a Participatory Exhibit Element
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I am fascinated by the incredible differences in what people contribute based on format and phrasing of the invitation to participate. This week at my museum, as we are wrapping up our current set of exhibitions on collecting, I noticed a simple, subtle example of this that I thought might interest you.
Our current exhibition is about why people collect things. We are featuring several diverse collectors from our area--from a couple who collects priceless American flags to a woman who collects dryer lint.
One of the collections on display is a set of "found lists" collected by a local farmer, Danny Lazzarini. We decided to show a selection of Danny's lists in a hallway surrounded by a participatory element where we invite visitors to contribute to new lists on evocative themes ("Things we forget," "The best feelings in the world," etc.) that we selected during prototyping. This activity has been incredibly popular, and about every three weeks we replace one of the lists with a fresh copy so there is always space for some new contributors.
Last week, we made a mistake. The show was two weeks away from closing, and we needed to replace a "The best feelings in the world" list, but we had accidentally prepped a "Things we forget" list. To add another wrinkle, the volunteer had accidentally written "Things I forget" instead of "Things we forget" as the prompt on the new list.
We decided to go with it, and for the final two weeks of the show, we have both a "Things we forget" and a "Things I forget" list on the wall. Here's a closeup of each:
While the lists look the same on the surface (and bear in mind that the one on the left has been on display for 3 weeks longer than the one on the right), the content is subtly different. Both these lists are interesting, but the "we" list invites spectators into the experience a bit more than the "I" list. The prompt "Things we forget" tends to invite more communal or broad responses, i.e. "everything," "to be grateful," "that Bob Dylan is from Hibbing, MN" whereas "Things I forget" yields more personal responses, i.e. "zip up my pants," "my glasses," "who I picked for Birthday Club!"
A reference to dental hygiene shows up on both lists, but on "Things we forget," the response is "brush the teefres" whereas on "Things I forget," the response is "brush my teeth."
This is not earth-shattering, and there is definitely overlap on the two lists. But it's a good reminder that:
So think about your prompts, happy Thanksgiving, and keep those teefres clean.
Our current exhibition is about why people collect things. We are featuring several diverse collectors from our area--from a couple who collects priceless American flags to a woman who collects dryer lint.
One of the collections on display is a set of "found lists" collected by a local farmer, Danny Lazzarini. We decided to show a selection of Danny's lists in a hallway surrounded by a participatory element where we invite visitors to contribute to new lists on evocative themes ("Things we forget," "The best feelings in the world," etc.) that we selected during prototyping. This activity has been incredibly popular, and about every three weeks we replace one of the lists with a fresh copy so there is always space for some new contributors.
Last week, we made a mistake. The show was two weeks away from closing, and we needed to replace a "The best feelings in the world" list, but we had accidentally prepped a "Things we forget" list. To add another wrinkle, the volunteer had accidentally written "Things I forget" instead of "Things we forget" as the prompt on the new list.
We decided to go with it, and for the final two weeks of the show, we have both a "Things we forget" and a "Things I forget" list on the wall. Here's a closeup of each:
While the lists look the same on the surface (and bear in mind that the one on the left has been on display for 3 weeks longer than the one on the right), the content is subtly different. Both these lists are interesting, but the "we" list invites spectators into the experience a bit more than the "I" list. The prompt "Things we forget" tends to invite more communal or broad responses, i.e. "everything," "to be grateful," "that Bob Dylan is from Hibbing, MN" whereas "Things I forget" yields more personal responses, i.e. "zip up my pants," "my glasses," "who I picked for Birthday Club!"
A reference to dental hygiene shows up on both lists, but on "Things we forget," the response is "brush the teefres" whereas on "Things I forget," the response is "brush my teeth."
This is not earth-shattering, and there is definitely overlap on the two lists. But it's a good reminder that:
- different prompts DO yield different actions on the part of visitors
- careful writing and design decisions on the programmer's side DO impact on the overall result
- sometimes, exhibit research is as simple as taking a couple photographs
So think about your prompts, happy Thanksgiving, and keep those teefres clean.
Selling a Product vs. Building a Movement
To contact us Click HERE
Do you consider yourself an "activist" for your organization, avocation, or art form? I've been increasingly turning to that word as a descriptor for the mixture of advocacy, passion, and action that I try to bring to my work. For me, it's a more comfortable term than something like "evangelist," which just feels like boosterism. I feel like I'm on a mission, and I know a lot of colleagues feel the same way.
I've always thought of this activist stance as a behind-the-scenes thing, something that might be useful in talking with professionals in the field, but not necessarily with visitors. Sure, I admire cultural organizations that have a strong mission to change education or diversify access or transform the role of art in everyday life, but I'm an insider. It seems wonky and possibly confusing to talk strategy with visitors. It's a distraction from their experience at our venue. Visitors care about us because we provide enjoyable, enriching, creative opportunities for them. Who's really going to read the fine print to find out why?
The election season, as well as a recent research study on museum membership, has change my perspective on this. A national election is the ultimate participatory project. Everyone of a certain age is in on it, and for the most part, the folks putting on the show want everyone to be engaged. There are multiple potential levels of involvement available. Advocacy groups of all stripes fall over themselves to give you opportunities to get involved, fight the good fight, fund the need, defeat the bill.
When you are part of a cause you believe in, you get incredibly invested. When you hit a personal goal that helps a larger effort, you feel like a real contributor. As Jane McGonigal has written, "the chance to be part of something bigger" than yourself is one of the four things that make people feel happy and fulfilled. With the exception of work and sports fandom, opportunities to be part of something bigger is in short supply. Election season stirs it up and makes us all remember how energizing it can be.
This is especially true for young adults today ("millenials"), who exhibit many of the same attributes of the World War II "greatest" generation--increased civic engagement, optimism, sense of communal purpose and responsibility, and conformity to group norms. Consider this recent study about the perceived benefits of membership in an aquariuam, referred to as a "visitor serving organization" in the chart below. As Colleen Dilenscheider reported, young people were MUCH more "cause-oriented" in their reasons for membership than their older counterparts:
This research and the post-election buzz is making me think differently about how we invite people to be involved with our organizations. Why AREN'T we asking visitors to join the fight for arts education? Why WOULDN'T a science museum engage members in the crusade to draw clear lines between science and pseudoscience? Why not build a grassroots movement to define the most effective ways we can make our communities stronger?
I realize as I write this list that we do invite certain people to participate in these conversations, but not our onsite audience. I talk a lot about the "why" behind our work at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History when I'm with donors, at conferences, or presenting at Rotary Clubs. I know that these folks care a lot about building strong communities and that it's intriguing and exciting to discuss how that might be driven by a cultural institution. These conversations are the basis for institutional partnerships and much of our funding. But they don't happen on enough levels with enough people to be accessible for broad involvement and shared activist energy.
For some reason, when it comes to talking and engaging with the people who are already in the door, we clam up about core messages and focus on selling them tickets to the next event or exhibition. This has two negative effects:
Do you consider yourself an "activist" for your organization, avocation, or art form? I've been increasingly turning to that word as a descriptor for the mixture of advocacy, passion, and action that I try to bring to my work. For me, it's a more comfortable term than something like "evangelist," which just feels like boosterism. I feel like I'm on a mission, and I know a lot of colleagues feel the same way.I've always thought of this activist stance as a behind-the-scenes thing, something that might be useful in talking with professionals in the field, but not necessarily with visitors. Sure, I admire cultural organizations that have a strong mission to change education or diversify access or transform the role of art in everyday life, but I'm an insider. It seems wonky and possibly confusing to talk strategy with visitors. It's a distraction from their experience at our venue. Visitors care about us because we provide enjoyable, enriching, creative opportunities for them. Who's really going to read the fine print to find out why?
The election season, as well as a recent research study on museum membership, has change my perspective on this. A national election is the ultimate participatory project. Everyone of a certain age is in on it, and for the most part, the folks putting on the show want everyone to be engaged. There are multiple potential levels of involvement available. Advocacy groups of all stripes fall over themselves to give you opportunities to get involved, fight the good fight, fund the need, defeat the bill.
When you are part of a cause you believe in, you get incredibly invested. When you hit a personal goal that helps a larger effort, you feel like a real contributor. As Jane McGonigal has written, "the chance to be part of something bigger" than yourself is one of the four things that make people feel happy and fulfilled. With the exception of work and sports fandom, opportunities to be part of something bigger is in short supply. Election season stirs it up and makes us all remember how energizing it can be.
This is especially true for young adults today ("millenials"), who exhibit many of the same attributes of the World War II "greatest" generation--increased civic engagement, optimism, sense of communal purpose and responsibility, and conformity to group norms. Consider this recent study about the perceived benefits of membership in an aquariuam, referred to as a "visitor serving organization" in the chart below. As Colleen Dilenscheider reported, young people were MUCH more "cause-oriented" in their reasons for membership than their older counterparts:
This research and the post-election buzz is making me think differently about how we invite people to be involved with our organizations. Why AREN'T we asking visitors to join the fight for arts education? Why WOULDN'T a science museum engage members in the crusade to draw clear lines between science and pseudoscience? Why not build a grassroots movement to define the most effective ways we can make our communities stronger?
I realize as I write this list that we do invite certain people to participate in these conversations, but not our onsite audience. I talk a lot about the "why" behind our work at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History when I'm with donors, at conferences, or presenting at Rotary Clubs. I know that these folks care a lot about building strong communities and that it's intriguing and exciting to discuss how that might be driven by a cultural institution. These conversations are the basis for institutional partnerships and much of our funding. But they don't happen on enough levels with enough people to be accessible for broad involvement and shared activist energy.
For some reason, when it comes to talking and engaging with the people who are already in the door, we clam up about core messages and focus on selling them tickets to the next event or exhibition. This has two negative effects:
- It blocks our most engaged participants from getting involved in the most important work of the organization. If what we really are working on is building social capital, why are we hiding that? Why not give visitors ways to advocate and act to help advance our goals? Why not restructure our marketing and community engagement efforts to more closely model successful campaigns and activist movements?
- It creates a disconnect between the "why" and the "what" that may weaken institutional progress. Imagine a theater company where the leadership talks publicly about diversity and access but there is little evidence of it on site. Is the organization really doing what they talk about, or is it just lip service? If we create "reasons" for the work we do that are different in different contexts, we're losing energy and diluting our ability to get the most important work done.
28 Kasım 2012 Çarşamba
The Fastbacks do UK Subs!
To contact us Click HERE
In 1993 former Fastbacks' drummer Duff McKEgan's then-current band (Guns N' Roses) did a UK Subs obscurity ("Down on the Farm") on their covers album ("The Spaghetti Incident"). So to prove who knew their UK punk better, The Fastbacks (more HERE) absolutely ripped-through a deep album track and two B-sides ("Rat Race", "I Live in a Car"and "Telephone Numbers") on this 1995 split with Australia's The Meices.
So, MRML readers,
How do you think the Fastbacks fare as a UK Subs cover band??
Let us know in the COMMENTS section!
Support the band
Amazon
iTunes
SubPop
Homepage (sorta)
In 1993 former Fastbacks' drummer Duff McKEgan's then-current band (Guns N' Roses) did a UK Subs obscurity ("Down on the Farm") on their covers album ("The Spaghetti Incident"). So to prove who knew their UK punk better, The Fastbacks (more HERE) absolutely ripped-through a deep album track and two B-sides ("Rat Race", "I Live in a Car"and "Telephone Numbers") on this 1995 split with Australia's The Meices.
So, MRML readers,
How do you think the Fastbacks fare as a UK Subs cover band??
Let us know in the COMMENTS section!
Support the bandAmazon
iTunes
SubPop
Homepage (sorta)
"What Kind of Person Waits in Line for Nine Hours to Vote?"
To contact us Click HERE
Those ubiquitous Downfall remixes have often been a source of amusement for me. I suppose you could argue that the videos trivialize Hitler or turn a well-made film into a punchline. But the truth is that many of the pieces work so well as examples of post-modernist mash-up culture that juxtapose history, art and, well, whatever's in the news this month. Strangely, this one marking the end of Mitt Romney's vaulting ambition (sooner or later even my Republican friends may admit that we all dodged a bullet there) is strangely touching, rather than funny. But that's just my take, feel free to let me know what you think...
Those ubiquitous Downfall remixes have often been a source of amusement for me. I suppose you could argue that the videos trivialize Hitler or turn a well-made film into a punchline. But the truth is that many of the pieces work so well as examples of post-modernist mash-up culture that juxtapose history, art and, well, whatever's in the news this month. Strangely, this one marking the end of Mitt Romney's vaulting ambition (sooner or later even my Republican friends may admit that we all dodged a bullet there) is strangely touching, rather than funny. But that's just my take, feel free to let me know what you think...
Weird Al's "Bob" as 38 Fake Film Titles!
To contact us Click HERE
I was once young enough to think that Weird Al Yankovic was going to be a one-hit wonder (thinking back as far as "Eat It"), so apparently I wasn't a prescient youth. The Weird one has endured, prospered and inspired a wide range of people, like Oliver Smith who used Yankovic's Bob-Dylan-apin' palindrome-fest, "Bob", as a basis to make a short film that pretends to be the beginning of 38 fake films. (via)
In case you missed the even more Dylan-specific original video, here's that too:
Have a weird day!
I was once young enough to think that Weird Al Yankovic was going to be a one-hit wonder (thinking back as far as "Eat It"), so apparently I wasn't a prescient youth. The Weird one has endured, prospered and inspired a wide range of people, like Oliver Smith who used Yankovic's Bob-Dylan-apin' palindrome-fest, "Bob", as a basis to make a short film that pretends to be the beginning of 38 fake films. (via)
In case you missed the even more Dylan-specific original video, here's that too:
Have a weird day!
The Fastbacks: Alone in a Furniture Warehouse...10" (1996)
To contact us Click HERE
Alone In A Furniture Warehouse Scaring You Away Like A Hotel Mattress is a 10" EP (and CD) that was released by Spain's Munster Records in the last couple of years of the Fastbacks (more HERE) career. I've only recently begun to appreciate how the band stayed solid right to the end, and this 10" is fine proof of their perserverance.
Tracklist
1 No Information 2:43
2 The Ladders 2:03
3 The Buried Treasure Was Crap 1:43
4 All In Order 3:01
5 Wait It Out 2:20
6 Sign Of The Times 3:12
7 Eyes Of A Child 3:12
8 Alone In A Furniture Warehouse 3:15
What do you think of the late-period Fastbacks releases, like this one,? Let us know in the COMMENTS section!
Support the band
Amazon
iTunes
SubPop
Homepage (sorta)
Alone In A Furniture Warehouse Scaring You Away Like A Hotel Mattress is a 10" EP (and CD) that was released by Spain's Munster Records in the last couple of years of the Fastbacks (more HERE) career. I've only recently begun to appreciate how the band stayed solid right to the end, and this 10" is fine proof of their perserverance.
Tracklist
1 No Information 2:43
2 The Ladders 2:03
3 The Buried Treasure Was Crap 1:43
4 All In Order 3:01
5 Wait It Out 2:20
6 Sign Of The Times 3:12
7 Eyes Of A Child 3:12
8 Alone In A Furniture Warehouse 3:15
What do you think of the late-period Fastbacks releases, like this one,? Let us know in the COMMENTS section!
Support the bandAmazon
iTunes
SubPop
Homepage (sorta)
Channel 3: Land of the Free 7" (2012)
To contact us Click HERE
Few predicted 2012 would see SoCal punk come back into view but between OFF!, Redd Kross and now Channel 3, that's exactly what's happening! It almost seems like these grown men have realized that something they pioneered when they were kids was not so fleeting as it once seemed. So, now, rather then just leave their legacies lie fallow, they've each decided to bring the thing back to life. The striking work we're hearing from these not-young men demonstrates that their music wasn't just an ash heap of adolescent angst but a gritty feature of America's cultural landscape, like the Badlands but with more shouting and trebly guitar!
As for Channel 3 (much more HERE), though they might not have signed to as a high-profile label as Vice or Matador (those in the know do revere their new label, Hostage Records) they have taken this late-date to put out one of the best works of their career. While Land of the Free is technically a single, due to the two songs on the vinyl, the download card that comes with the record fleshes it out into a seven-song EP.
And what an extend play it is! Those who need speed, will thrill to the band's ripping paean to the bottle, "This Calls for a Drink" and the ferociously mournful "A Life Remembered" (released previously as a B-side). Those who revere the band's mastery of the mid-tempo, guitar-powered sing-along will be no less satisfied here. Tracks like "Another Day" and "In the Meantime" recall the band's more tempered phase, circa 1984 classic, "Indian Summer", while "Land of the Free" carpet bombs the current political landscape with Clash-level precision and "Make It Home" slows things down just enough to power-up the big chorus. Even with the twenty minute duration of this trip, there's room for a detour, in the form of the band's charming cover of Sonny Bono's "Little Things" featuring the return of Maria Montoya-Kaye who first sang with the band on their debut albums 30 years ago! Land of the Free finds Channel 3 considering all the twists and turns they've made on their ramshackle voyage and deciding they've only just begun.
Alright MRML readers, whadaya make of the new CH 3 EP? Let us know in the COMMENTS section!
Support the Band!
Homepage
iTunes
Amazon
Facebook
Mike's Blog
MySpace
Few predicted 2012 would see SoCal punk come back into view but between OFF!, Redd Kross and now Channel 3, that's exactly what's happening! It almost seems like these grown men have realized that something they pioneered when they were kids was not so fleeting as it once seemed. So, now, rather then just leave their legacies lie fallow, they've each decided to bring the thing back to life. The striking work we're hearing from these not-young men demonstrates that their music wasn't just an ash heap of adolescent angst but a gritty feature of America's cultural landscape, like the Badlands but with more shouting and trebly guitar!
As for Channel 3 (much more HERE), though they might not have signed to as a high-profile label as Vice or Matador (those in the know do revere their new label, Hostage Records) they have taken this late-date to put out one of the best works of their career. While Land of the Free is technically a single, due to the two songs on the vinyl, the download card that comes with the record fleshes it out into a seven-song EP.
And what an extend play it is! Those who need speed, will thrill to the band's ripping paean to the bottle, "This Calls for a Drink" and the ferociously mournful "A Life Remembered" (released previously as a B-side). Those who revere the band's mastery of the mid-tempo, guitar-powered sing-along will be no less satisfied here. Tracks like "Another Day" and "In the Meantime" recall the band's more tempered phase, circa 1984 classic, "Indian Summer", while "Land of the Free" carpet bombs the current political landscape with Clash-level precision and "Make It Home" slows things down just enough to power-up the big chorus. Even with the twenty minute duration of this trip, there's room for a detour, in the form of the band's charming cover of Sonny Bono's "Little Things" featuring the return of Maria Montoya-Kaye who first sang with the band on their debut albums 30 years ago! Land of the Free finds Channel 3 considering all the twists and turns they've made on their ramshackle voyage and deciding they've only just begun.
Alright MRML readers, whadaya make of the new CH 3 EP? Let us know in the COMMENTS section!
Support the Band!Homepage
iTunes
Amazon
Mike's Blog
MySpace
27 Kasım 2012 Salı
Review: Wii U isn’t perfect, but worth the price
To contact us Click HERE
M4d Ski11z
November 19th, 2012
http://blog.chron.com/houstongamer/2012/11/review-wii-u-isnt-perfect-but-worth-the-price/
Wii U
Made by: Nintendo
Price: $299 for 8gb model with Gamepad controller; $349 for 32gb premium model with Gamepad controller and “Nintendo Land” game
Available: Now
Available at: Major retailers but supplies are very limited if you didn’t preorder the unit.
There’s no doubt in my mind that the Nintendo Wii U will be one of the biggest (and most sought-after) gifts this holiday season. There’s no doubt that finding a Wii U won’t be hard. With stores sold out of the console, the real question is how much will the device cost you?
Nintendo enjoyed a huge consumer demand for their newest console, the Wii. The Wii, which included the popular WiiSports, sold millions of units, most of it from word of mouth. Mothers and older citizens loved it. Children loved it. Nongamers enjoyed the Wii. Hardcore gamers, however, often were skeptical of the Wii’s success. It wasn’t made for the hardcore players – it was made – and pushed – by people who weren’t traditional gamers. Hardcore gamers wanted HD graphics, action mixed with violence and awesome performance in video games.
Nintendo, faced with criticism and sagging sales, decided to revamp the Wii. They decided to offer HD graphics, increased performance and hardcore games to win back veteran gamers – and have achieved their goal with the Wii U.
The Wii U not only offers great graphics (up to 1080P, via HDMI) and the ability to play Wii games on the console (and use Wii accessories, such as the Wii Remote), but it offers a new way to play games. The controller, called the Gamepad, offers the ability to play Wii U games on the Gamepad’s screen. On a few games, you can use the Gamepad as a second display, showing a map on it while your main television screen shows the actual game.
Not a fan of what’s on television? You can use the Gamepad to watch Netflix, Hulu Plus and YouTube (at press time, these features were not available to try out), surf the Web and visit amazon.com and buy more Wii U games. You can also program the Gamepad as a universal remote. You can control your television inputs with the Gamepad, volume and change channels. It had no problem finding my television maker (Vizio).
As slick as the Gamepad is, action games with dual displays (this can be disabled) – the same action on both displays – can be very distracting. When I played “Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor’s Edge,” I played the game on the Gamepad as it was shown on the television screen. However, duplicate displays are only good if you are watching another TV station. It can be very distracting and your eye will hate switching between your television and the Gamepad. While I played “Ninja Gaiden,” the action was so intense my mind had a very hard time figuring out which display to keep an eye on.
Another drawback for the Wii U? You can’t play your original Wii games on the Gamepad. As slick as the Gamepad is, you have to dust off your Wii accessories and sync them if you want to play “Trauma Center” or “Red Steel” – or even “Wii Fit.” Yes, you can play your Wii game, just not on your Gamepad.
If you aren’t comfortable getting your game on with the Gamepad? You can buy a Pro Controller – which resembles a Microsoft Xbox 360 controller – and play several games with it. It gives you the look and feel of a controller that several console gamers are used to.
Overall, I have been bombarded with questions about is the Wii U worth the upgrade, especially from people who own original Wiis that haven’t been turned on in years. After spending time with the Wii U, I think it’s safe to say it’s definitely WORTH the price. If you have Wii games and accessories already, you are good to go. From the new party games – “Nintendo Land” to the action games – “ZombiU” and “Ninja Gaiden 3” – the Wii U offers something for every gamer. The only challenge you will likely face is finding on for the original retail price.
My recommendation? BUY.
M4d Ski11z
November 19th, 2012
http://blog.chron.com/houstongamer/2012/11/review-wii-u-isnt-perfect-but-worth-the-price/
Wii U
Made by: Nintendo
Price: $299 for 8gb model with Gamepad controller; $349 for 32gb premium model with Gamepad controller and “Nintendo Land” game
Available: Now
Available at: Major retailers but supplies are very limited if you didn’t preorder the unit.
There’s no doubt in my mind that the Nintendo Wii U will be one of the biggest (and most sought-after) gifts this holiday season. There’s no doubt that finding a Wii U won’t be hard. With stores sold out of the console, the real question is how much will the device cost you?
Nintendo enjoyed a huge consumer demand for their newest console, the Wii. The Wii, which included the popular WiiSports, sold millions of units, most of it from word of mouth. Mothers and older citizens loved it. Children loved it. Nongamers enjoyed the Wii. Hardcore gamers, however, often were skeptical of the Wii’s success. It wasn’t made for the hardcore players – it was made – and pushed – by people who weren’t traditional gamers. Hardcore gamers wanted HD graphics, action mixed with violence and awesome performance in video games.
Nintendo, faced with criticism and sagging sales, decided to revamp the Wii. They decided to offer HD graphics, increased performance and hardcore games to win back veteran gamers – and have achieved their goal with the Wii U.
The Wii U not only offers great graphics (up to 1080P, via HDMI) and the ability to play Wii games on the console (and use Wii accessories, such as the Wii Remote), but it offers a new way to play games. The controller, called the Gamepad, offers the ability to play Wii U games on the Gamepad’s screen. On a few games, you can use the Gamepad as a second display, showing a map on it while your main television screen shows the actual game.
Not a fan of what’s on television? You can use the Gamepad to watch Netflix, Hulu Plus and YouTube (at press time, these features were not available to try out), surf the Web and visit amazon.com and buy more Wii U games. You can also program the Gamepad as a universal remote. You can control your television inputs with the Gamepad, volume and change channels. It had no problem finding my television maker (Vizio).
As slick as the Gamepad is, action games with dual displays (this can be disabled) – the same action on both displays – can be very distracting. When I played “Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor’s Edge,” I played the game on the Gamepad as it was shown on the television screen. However, duplicate displays are only good if you are watching another TV station. It can be very distracting and your eye will hate switching between your television and the Gamepad. While I played “Ninja Gaiden,” the action was so intense my mind had a very hard time figuring out which display to keep an eye on.
Another drawback for the Wii U? You can’t play your original Wii games on the Gamepad. As slick as the Gamepad is, you have to dust off your Wii accessories and sync them if you want to play “Trauma Center” or “Red Steel” – or even “Wii Fit.” Yes, you can play your Wii game, just not on your Gamepad.
If you aren’t comfortable getting your game on with the Gamepad? You can buy a Pro Controller – which resembles a Microsoft Xbox 360 controller – and play several games with it. It gives you the look and feel of a controller that several console gamers are used to.
Overall, I have been bombarded with questions about is the Wii U worth the upgrade, especially from people who own original Wiis that haven’t been turned on in years. After spending time with the Wii U, I think it’s safe to say it’s definitely WORTH the price. If you have Wii games and accessories already, you are good to go. From the new party games – “Nintendo Land” to the action games – “ZombiU” and “Ninja Gaiden 3” – the Wii U offers something for every gamer. The only challenge you will likely face is finding on for the original retail price.
My recommendation? BUY.
Xbox 720 to offer Kinect 2.0 and Blu-ray drive
To contact us Click HERE
Xbox 720 to offer Kinect 2.0 and Blu-ray drive, says Xbox World
The next-gen console will come with beefier hardware and a slew of other enhancements, says the magazine.
Lance Whitney November 19, 2012
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-57551679-75/xbox-720-to-offer-kinect-2.0-and-blu-ray-drive-says-xbox-world
Microsoft's Xbox 720 will unveil a new version of Kinect, a Blu-ray drive, and an A/V port for watching and recording broadcast TV, at least according to details leaked by Xbox World.
Promising "next-gen secrets inside," the latest issue of the U.K.-based magazine dug up several reported specs on Microsoft's next console.
First off, the Xbox 720 will introduce Kinect 2.0.
Microsoft has been as publicly mum about the next version of Kinect as it has about all details concerning the new Xbox. But a company document leaked in June touted a higher level of accuracy, stereo imaging, better voice recognition, and the ability to track four players at once.
A Blu-ray drive will also be part of the package, a rumor that's been around for a few years now.
Other features will include directional audio, an input and output for watching and recording TV shows, and an "innovative controller," noted gaming news site ComputerAndVideoGames.com (CVG). Last February, Xbox World said that the redesigned controller would come with a built-in HD touch screen.
Microsoft is also eyeing AR (augmented reality) glasses for the 720 at some future stage.
Codenamed Durango, the new Xbox would be powered by a CPU with "four hardware cores, each divided into four logical cores" and 8GB of RAM.
Dan Dawkins, Xbox World's editor in chief, told CVG that "Xbox World has been at the cutting edge of Durango coverage for over 12 months. Unless something really dramatic changes, everything...will be revealed long before E3 in June."
Xbox 720 to offer Kinect 2.0 and Blu-ray drive, says Xbox World
The next-gen console will come with beefier hardware and a slew of other enhancements, says the magazine.
Lance Whitney November 19, 2012
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-57551679-75/xbox-720-to-offer-kinect-2.0-and-blu-ray-drive-says-xbox-world
Microsoft's Xbox 720 will unveil a new version of Kinect, a Blu-ray drive, and an A/V port for watching and recording broadcast TV, at least according to details leaked by Xbox World.
Promising "next-gen secrets inside," the latest issue of the U.K.-based magazine dug up several reported specs on Microsoft's next console.
First off, the Xbox 720 will introduce Kinect 2.0.
Microsoft has been as publicly mum about the next version of Kinect as it has about all details concerning the new Xbox. But a company document leaked in June touted a higher level of accuracy, stereo imaging, better voice recognition, and the ability to track four players at once.
A Blu-ray drive will also be part of the package, a rumor that's been around for a few years now.
Other features will include directional audio, an input and output for watching and recording TV shows, and an "innovative controller," noted gaming news site ComputerAndVideoGames.com (CVG). Last February, Xbox World said that the redesigned controller would come with a built-in HD touch screen.
Microsoft is also eyeing AR (augmented reality) glasses for the 720 at some future stage.
Codenamed Durango, the new Xbox would be powered by a CPU with "four hardware cores, each divided into four logical cores" and 8GB of RAM.
Dan Dawkins, Xbox World's editor in chief, told CVG that "Xbox World has been at the cutting edge of Durango coverage for over 12 months. Unless something really dramatic changes, everything...will be revealed long before E3 in June."
PlayStation 4 won’t play PS3 games
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PlayStation 4 won’t play PS3 games, will stream classics through Gaikai
Anthony John Agnello
November 16, 2012
http://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/report-playstation-4-wont-play-ps3-games-will-stream-classics-through-gaikai
New details about the PlayStation 3's successor: First, Orbis isn't the final name, but PlayStation 4 is out. Second, games will look like Lucasarts' Star Wars: 1313. Finally, no backwards compatibility in the new console but classics will be in the cloud.
While the PlayStation 3 celebrates a major milestone even as its sun starts to fade, rumors about the heir to the PlayStation throne continue to leak out of the game development world. The latest details about the fourth generation machine come from Europe, shedding new light on how the PlayStation 4 or Orbis will support 4K resolution output, how used games will be handled by the console, and just how Sony will leverage the recently purchased Gaikai cloud-gaming service in its machine.
British magazine PSM3 (the details of which were reprinted by German website The G Net) provides a wealth of new information to supplement a recent story about the console that confirmed Sony will not call its console PlayStation 4. The reason: The Japanese word for 4 is “shi,” which also happens to mean death. While it might seem silly to break from nearly two decades of successful branding because a two words sound alike, it’s important to remember how branding has negatively affected the Xbox and Xbox 360 in Japan. Where “X” marks the spot in the US, it’s a negative sign in Japanese culture. (Hence why the circle button on PlayStation controllers is used to confirm most actions in Japanese games, not the X button like in the US.)
PSM3’s source claims that the device, which Sony refers to by the codename Orbis, will play games that look similar to recent tech demos for games like Star Wars 1313 and Square-Enix’s Agni’s Philosophy demo. These games, however, will not run in 4K resolution as has been hinted at in the past. If 4K playback support does make it into the final version of the fourth generation PlayStation, it will be for video.
Sony will be taking more severe measures against piracy. Previous rumors about the Orbis suggested that Sony might try to block used, disc-based games from working on the console. This new report claims that it will do so by linking each individual game to a specific PlayStation Network account.
Unlike past Sony consoles, Orbis will not have backwards compatibility with PlayStation 3, at least not with Blu-ray disc games. Sony will instead offer classic games through a cloud-based streaming service run through Gaikai’s infrastructure.
Of all the rumors surrounding the next PlayStation, its lack of backwards compatibility is the most disappointing. PlayStation creator Ken Kutaragi was insistent that every PlayStation made be able to play the previous consoles’ discs at a hardware level. Obviously Sony started moving away from this philosophy swiftly with the very first hardware revisions of the PlayStation 3, but it’s still sad.
The PlayStation 4, Orbis, or whatever Sony decides to name it, is expected to debut at E3 2013.
PlayStation 4 won’t play PS3 games, will stream classics through Gaikai
Anthony John Agnello
November 16, 2012
http://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/report-playstation-4-wont-play-ps3-games-will-stream-classics-through-gaikai
New details about the PlayStation 3's successor: First, Orbis isn't the final name, but PlayStation 4 is out. Second, games will look like Lucasarts' Star Wars: 1313. Finally, no backwards compatibility in the new console but classics will be in the cloud.
While the PlayStation 3 celebrates a major milestone even as its sun starts to fade, rumors about the heir to the PlayStation throne continue to leak out of the game development world. The latest details about the fourth generation machine come from Europe, shedding new light on how the PlayStation 4 or Orbis will support 4K resolution output, how used games will be handled by the console, and just how Sony will leverage the recently purchased Gaikai cloud-gaming service in its machine.
British magazine PSM3 (the details of which were reprinted by German website The G Net) provides a wealth of new information to supplement a recent story about the console that confirmed Sony will not call its console PlayStation 4. The reason: The Japanese word for 4 is “shi,” which also happens to mean death. While it might seem silly to break from nearly two decades of successful branding because a two words sound alike, it’s important to remember how branding has negatively affected the Xbox and Xbox 360 in Japan. Where “X” marks the spot in the US, it’s a negative sign in Japanese culture. (Hence why the circle button on PlayStation controllers is used to confirm most actions in Japanese games, not the X button like in the US.)
PSM3’s source claims that the device, which Sony refers to by the codename Orbis, will play games that look similar to recent tech demos for games like Star Wars 1313 and Square-Enix’s Agni’s Philosophy demo. These games, however, will not run in 4K resolution as has been hinted at in the past. If 4K playback support does make it into the final version of the fourth generation PlayStation, it will be for video.
Sony will be taking more severe measures against piracy. Previous rumors about the Orbis suggested that Sony might try to block used, disc-based games from working on the console. This new report claims that it will do so by linking each individual game to a specific PlayStation Network account.
Unlike past Sony consoles, Orbis will not have backwards compatibility with PlayStation 3, at least not with Blu-ray disc games. Sony will instead offer classic games through a cloud-based streaming service run through Gaikai’s infrastructure.
Of all the rumors surrounding the next PlayStation, its lack of backwards compatibility is the most disappointing. PlayStation creator Ken Kutaragi was insistent that every PlayStation made be able to play the previous consoles’ discs at a hardware level. Obviously Sony started moving away from this philosophy swiftly with the very first hardware revisions of the PlayStation 3, but it’s still sad.
The PlayStation 4, Orbis, or whatever Sony decides to name it, is expected to debut at E3 2013.
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