Museum Walking Tour Apps Balance and Google+ Hangouts

I am amazed at how lucky I am here are at the Powerhouse Museum. We have an incredible range of equipment to use and staff with a multitude of untapped talents. I was reminded of this yesterday we we decided to do the voice-over for the new Powerhouse Museum walking tour app I've been working on with Nicko and Luke. It's a 21 stop tour of 'Old George Street' and we were able to use the ThinkSpace labs thanks to Peter Mahoney and when I asked Einar Docker who works here to do the voice he was fantastic. Hope to release in next few weeks and for it to be our first on Android as well as Iphone.

Music of the week - Pharoh Sanders - Balance - I listened to this piece of music on the way to work and felt like it altered my thought processes in preparation for the day – listening on the way back home confirmed this is an awesome 12 mins of music – to be taken in moderation however!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cN6l-tBd_jo

Book: 500 Cameras: 170 Years of Photographic Innovation ; George Eastman House is showcasing its own collection of 500 groundbreaking cameras. Includes detective, digital, stereo, sub-miniature, 35mm, and spy cameras hidden in watches, It includes essays by Robert Shanebrook, Martin Scott and Mark Osterman. http://britishphotohistory.ning.com/profiles/blogs/book-500-cameras-170-years-of-photographic-innovation

In 2009, artist Josh Melnick used a scientific research camera to film portraits of New York City subway riders in slow motion—very slow motion, about a hundred times slower than normal film speed. The result was a moment viewed as if through a high-powered microscope, revealing a degree of temporal detail inaccessible to the naked eye.

This is an excerpt of Melnick being interviewed by Walter Murch which will appear in full in Melnick’s book, The 8 Train, soon to be published http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2012/02/07/josh-melnick-and-walter-murch-in-conversation/

I was really impressed with Ross Dawson's new site which includes links to his Framework infographics http://rossdawson.com/frameworks/

The Beatles Abbey Road Photograph Sessions were taken on 8 August 1969. These were taken by Ian MacMillan as John Paul George and Ringo walked across the crossing three times. In all he took just six photographs and the 5th frame was the one chosen. All the frames – some background – and some insight into the people in the background can be seen at http://www.snapgalleries.com/exhibitions/beatles-and-bystanders-the-abbey-road-sessions/

Lytro Light Field infinite focus Camera's – while it's yet to be released there is lots of interesting info in this camera manual at http://www.engadget.com/2012/02/09/lytro-fcc/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

I thought this was nice idea – the Penn Museum program allows patrons to adopt artifacts rather than just donate http://thedp.com/index.php/article/2012/02/penn_museum_starts_quotadopt_an_artifactquot_program

The programme for MuseumNext conference at Barcelona is confirmed and looks worth following if you can't make it there. It has over 40 presentations featuring speakers from 13 countries and will cover everything from how to use social media for marketing on a budget, through to augmented reality, mobile phone apps, crowdsourcing, open data and educational projects.

Google has also released its beta of Chrome for Android - http://www.appbrain.com/app/google-chrome-to-phone/com.google.android.apps.chrometophone

Cisco has released a whitepaper stating it believes the cloud will be taking up to half of the world's digital workload by 2014. http://xfactorcomms.visibli.com/share/Mv5R20

I kinda liked this - 4,200 Coca-Cola crates used to create a giant statue in Cape Town, South Africa. http://designtaxi.com/news/351534/4-200-Coca-Cola-Crates-Used-For-Giant-Statue/

Three Creative Ways of Using Google+ Hangouts - Pam Sahota has submitted a short article on creative ways to use Google Plus Hangouts. It’s an opportunity for individuals or businesses to utilise this virtual “hangout” to communicate with others in their community or business via video. The only disadvantage that appears right away is the restriction of 10 people per hangout. However, when it comes to meetings and having the chance to build a deeper relationship among community members sometimes fewer can be beneficial. See more

This is pretty wild use for 3D printing - surgeons successfully replace a woman's infected jaw with a 3D printed one from Forbes Magazine http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2012/02/05/woman-has-jaw-replaced-with-3-d-printed-model/

Australian Policy Online has released statistics for Australian Government expenditure on Information and Communications Technology (ICT), 2008-09 – 2009-10 http://apo.org.au/research/australian-government-ict-expenditure-2008-09-%E2%80%93-2009-10

Ten meta-trends impacting learning #HorizonReport via @heyjudeonline
http://heyjude.wordpress.com/2012/02/01/ten-meta-trends-impacting-learning/

Is the Museum Exhibition Model Broken?

Ole Worm's cabinet of curiosities, from ''Museum Wormianum'', 1655. Original source Smithsonian Museum

Over the last fortnight I've been in the midst of a lot of discussion about exhibition development for museums. Primarily the question has been approached from ... what are our exhibitions going to be about and how do we get them on the floor?

Both valid and necessary questions when it comes to upgrading the museum's exhibition space and it's certainly seen as core function of most museums - if not the primary function. Indeed for many the exhibition provides the main mechanism by which museum professionals believe they broker their mandate with the community at large.

But in the middle of a conversation about how an exhibition's design and content was to be fed into the 'Ford-like' production line to create the labels, design it, and then fabricate and advertise it I had this thought ...

PERHAPS THE EXHIBITION MODEL FOR MUSEUM'S ACTUALLY MINIMISED AUDIENCE INTERACTION WITH MUSEUM COLLECTIONS & THE PROBLEM WASN'T THE THEME OR THE DESIGN OF THE EXHIBITION - IS IT POSSIBLE THE ENTIRE MODEL IS OUTDATED?

This sounds a bit of a radical thought but perhaps not as much as one would at first think. Museum's haven't always adopted the model of using themed exhibitions to broker audience contact. In fact the earliest museums, the cabinets of curiosities and the history museums that followed them, were actually incredibly open experiences in relation to the display of their collections.

In the 1560s the Belgian scholar Samuel Quiccheberg made the modest claim that the museum (read .. Cabinet of curiusities) was,

"A theatre of the broadest scope, containing authentic materials and precise reproductions of the whole of the universe'

These private collectors could of course never attain such a universal collection but the objects they had were all on show for their public, albeit a very limited one. It's clear when looking at images of these phantasmagorical collections like those of Ferrante Imperato, Septimus Jorger,and Francesco Calzolari that the museum was a kind of scholarly open book, a visual microcosm of the worlds objects collected, and arranged, to inspire, amaze and encourage serious research.

The civic museum in the 19th century was also in many ways a much more open book when it came to brokering the interactions between audience and museum collections. And some of those great institutions like the British Museum, the Pitt Rivers Museum, the Louvre, and many others around the have carried that legacy right through to the present. Its embedded in their very DNA; the architecture that houses them, and the desire to be a three-dimensional archive of the culture that surrounds them.

But of course the scale of these collections ensure well over 90% of the collections are stored away from the public. And increasingly the museum as a site from which to glimpse the narrative of culture across time has shifted toward emphasising the culture of the present. Not really unexpected given change and culture appear to have sped up. It is now more global in nature, but change is also increasingly found in digital containers hard for museum exhibitions to grapple with, and produced on a scale that makes many ownable by people who once might have visited the museum to engage with these technologies.

But in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the exhibition was a solution for addressing problems relating to access to collections and contemporary culture. And its almost universal adoption has, for many years, made real sense of some of the museums activities. In the earliest years exhibitions provided a mechanism by which the curator,(and in those days it was a curator with a few assistants), could rearrange the displays in a designated area by changing over objects. Design was in fact quite modular as the existing cabinets and collection area designated how and where they were displayed. But it wasn't a very dynamic environment for other museum professionals and as museums expanded to include a broader range of staff: non-curatorial managers, registrars, educators, marketers, conservator, loans officers, etc., this curator controlled mode began to show signs of redundancy - and not just in the area of exhibitions.

The most prevalent exhibition model adopted seems to have been inherited from Art Museums. And this still shows in the way exhibitions are implemented and thought about. Even now discussions about exhibition are contingent on style, design, often white boxes, certainly white labels, and developed around a person, a single theme, a particular manufacturer. By the end of the C20th they had turned into the primary focus for resources in most large scale museums. They had also generated a massive infrastructure for developing and marketing exhibitions all justified because people coming though the doors of the museum were believed to be the primary way in which the museum brokered its madate and relationship with the communities that surrounded them.

All well and good. But what about now? Museums have their collections online, wireless devices mean people can experience these collections in spaces outside the museum, and its staff are interacting over multiple platforms in the social media space,publishing e-books, and talking live with students online: the list is an ever expanding one.

As Seb Chan points out in his blog post, mobile tech impacts in museums blog post, the new museum has to acknowledge the experience starts well before, and continues long after, the visit. In fact the notions constructed around building permanent or temporary, large or small, exhibitions and then tearing them down and replacing them with a new crop may also be open to question. I certainly believe the way people interact with museum collections and their interests are changing and broadening. These collections can now service a wider group than the cliched bespectacled enthusiast or academic.

In many ways museum business has already changed, its just we have spent such a long time developing a particular way of doing things its hard to change direction, and like ships it sometimes feels like the bigger the institution the bigger the curve it takes to change direction. Ironically I think we can actually learn some lessons from re-visiting some of the methodology adopted by the earliest museums. The open display style of the Cabinet of Curiosities with its multitude of objects when combined with new wireless technologies and interactive databases could provide engaging and ever-changing museum experiences. Ones tailored to the visitors needs not dictated by museum audience research. Scalable experiences where objects could be requested for display, stories are developed through broader community interaction and narratives are expanded to merge the past, present and the future.

Early Meteorology in Australia

Lieutenant William Dawes, who came out to Australia with the First Fleet, made the first recorded meteorological observations in Australia but the next set were probably made from Parramatta Observatory between October 1822 and March 1824. 

In 1821 Governor Brisbane had arrived in New South Wales and set up the colony's first observatory in the grounds of Government House at Parramatta. Although it is uncertain which meteorological instruments Brisbane may have brought with him in 1821 we do know that by 1847 Parramatta observatory had: two mountain barometers, one of which was made by Troughton, an ordinary barometer by Banks, an eirometer by Jones and a hygrometer by Saussiere. 

By 1840 meteorological stations were established at South Head, Port Macquarie and in Melbourne. The observations were kept by convicts of a class known as 'specials', or gentlemen convicts, who, because the work was specifically recommended by the Secretary of State, were paid and annual per diem of one shilling and six pence. The abstracts of their work were published weekly in the Government Gazette. 

The new Sydney Observatory was completed in 1858 and by the middle of that year the Government Astronomer, William Scott, had unpacked twelve sets of meteorological instruments and made journey's into the country to establish meteorological stations at Albury, Armidale, Bathurst, Cooma, Deniliquin, Goulburn, Maitland, Parramatta, Gabo Island, and Newcastle. 

Meteorological work was amongst the most important undertaken by the Sydney Observatory and in 1858 Scott presented a 'progress report' on meteorology to the Philosophical Society of New South Wales. Scott also saw the summaries were sent as monthly reports to be published in the Sydney Morning Herald. 

In 1860, due to the inconstancies in the recording of information from country stations, Scott requested that eight sets of instruments should be transported to telegraph stations. As a result meteorological observations and a monthly return of their observations to Sydney Observatory become a part of the telegraph clerk's duties. 

The next Government Astronomer G. R. Smalley was appointed in 1864. The extensive list of projects prepared for the new astronomer was made up by the Astronomer Royal at Greenwich. Although the list proved impossible for Smalley to accomplish on the observatory's limited budget he did initiate the first systematic recording of tides in Sydney Harbour. These were conducted at Fort Denison and by 1866 were being recorded automatically. A second major project initiated by Smalley was the establishment of a coterie of volunteer observers. By 1870 forty three of these observers were situated around the colony where they recorded rainfall, evaporation, temperature and wind at 9 a.m. each day. Each observer was also provided with the requisite set of instruments necessary for making these records. 

Smalley died in 1870 and was replaced by H.C. Russell who revoked Smalley's policy to enable the observatory to focus more on astronomical work. However meteorological work was not ignored and in 1877 Russell arranged for the telegraphic exchange of observations to be expanded to include observations from selected stations in other Australian states and also began publishing a daily weather chart for Sydney. By 1898 the number of volunteer observers had grown to over 1600. 

The next Government Astronomer was H. A. Lenehan who was appointed to the position in 1903 after Russell became ill. Lenehan himself became ill and died in 1908 but one of his major achievements was the starting, in 1906, of the recording of the earth's activity using a Milne Seismograph. This device continued to be used for the next 40 years. 

By 1896 H. A. Hunt was working with Russell and had assumed responsibility for preparing the daily weather charts. However after Russell left the Sydney Observatory's meteorological duties were complicated by the introduction of the Commonwealth Bureau of Meteorology, headed by H.A. Hunt, on 1 January 1908. This initiated a separation of the work of the meteorological branch from other activities at the observatory. 

Lenehan's replacement, W. E. Cooke, was appointed in 1912 while the New South Wales office of the Weather Bureau still occupied the residence part of the Observatory building. The Weather Bureau was moved out of the Observatory around 1917 and initially occupied the Observatory messenger's cottage. From 1922 moved into a purpose-built building on Observatory Hill. 

text and photo by Geoff Barker

References
Harley Wood, 'The Sky and the Weather', A Century of Scientific Progress: the Centenary Volume of the Royal Society of New South Wales, Published by the Society, Science House, Sydney, 1986?
H.C. Russell, 'Astronomical and Meteorological Worker in New South Wales, 1778 to 1860, in Proceedings of the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science, Sydney, 1888
Russell, H. C., 'Moving Anticyclones in the Southern Hemisphere', in Abercromby, R., Three Essays on Australian Weather, Frederick W. White, Sydney, 1896
G. P. Walsh, 'Henry Chamberlin Russell', in (ed) G. Searle and R. Ward, Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 6, 1851-1890, Melbourne University Press 1968
Gipps, Sir George, to Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, Dispatch 144, 3 June 1847, Historical records of Australia, Series 1, Governor's Dispatches to and From England, Volume 25, April 1846 - September 1847, Library Committee of the Commonwealth parliament, 1925, p.183