Mark Thompson: Web 2.0 could be 'disruptive'.
Lena Maculan kicks off a new analytical thread of content on 24 Hour Museum with a look at podcasting in the cultural world.
We're in the grip of a new wave of online technology and there is a big shock coming. The current developments online 'will be fundamentally disruptive, and the foundations on which much of traditional media is built may be swept away entirely.'
This is what Mark Thompson, director-general of the BBC, said in his April 2006 Creative Futures speech. He was referring to recent developments in digital media, the new wave of the web commonly called Web 2.0. Thompson argues 'any creative strategy will fail unless it takes account of these revolutionary and accelerating changes both in technology and in audience expectation.'
Podcasting is one of the technologies closely associated with Web 2.0 and this feature is all about how museums can get involved - what are the opportunities podcasting offers for museums? But before we go there, however, the term Web 2.0 needs some clarification.
In general Web 2.0 is related to new ways in which online content providers and users communicate, engage, socialize; as well as generate content, structure it and share it. Because there isn't an accepted set of standards of what Web 2.0 actually means, critics have questioned the aptness of the term Web 2.0. However, whether one likes the term or not, it's not just the BBC's Mark Thompson who see some radical changes on the horizon in online cultural content provision.
My Space - suddenly the web has exploded into communication
In the old web, applications were sold as packaged software; today, they are more associated with online services. With the rise of web telephony, blogs and social community sites, such as MySpace, one can see the shift from the web as information resource to the web as medium of mass communication.
Another important insight into the qualities of the current developments online is given by Dion Hinchcliff: 'Web 2.0 is not a technology, it's a way of architecting software and businesses.' Tim O'Reilly describes Web 2.0 as a 'set of principles and practices,' and the first of these principles is the idea of the 'web as platform'.
In similar terms, Brad Stone, Newsweek's Silicon Valley Correspondent, writes of 'a new generation of Websites [which] harvest the participation, creativity and collaboration of their users.' Hence, platforms of communication, community, collaboration and sharing seem to be the buzzwords associated with Web 2.0.
Every object tells a story - because it's an .mp3 file
What is the difference between mp3 downloads and podcasting?
Putting it in simple terms, podcasting is usually a web feed of audio or video files that users can subscribe to that are automatically updated and downloaded as they become available. This automatic download distinguishes podcasts from simple downloads of mp3 or mp4 files or from real-time streaming.
This may sound like a very subtle difference, but it is significant. It is considerable, because once someone has subscribed to your feed, you have a direct link to him or her. In other words, in order to keep your audience up to date with changes on the web site, you do not have to continually lure the user back to it, because the updates are automatically delivered to him. This offers an opportunity to build and maintain a new relationship between content provider and subscriber.
Beyond the technological differences between simple downloads and feeds, podcasts are about content. In general, the content of a podcast could be anything that lends itself for audio or video recoding.
The quality of currently offered podcasts is very heterogeneous, and ranges from very low tech, home-made audio recording, to high quality programmes offered by major broadcasters such as the BBC. Implicit in this is that the producers of podcasts can be anyone from a private individual to a public institution.
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art takes the richer media route to podcasting
Why have museum podcasting?
Looking at a broad range of cultural heritage web sites, many museums across the globe and throughout different disciplines are using online new media to deepen relationships with existing and develop new audiences, by offering online programmes which inform, educate and entertain.
Within the context of questions of how museums could exploit the web as medium to make their collections more accessible, as well as to enhance interactivity with their audiences, podcasting potentially offers an exciting new means of communication.
Furthermore, you can see that not only the audio and video based radio and TV stations, but also an increasing amount of quality newspapers, such as the (UK) Daily Telegraph and the Washington Post, have started to offer podcasts. This suggests two things:
First, the media industry is taking these developments in on-demand services very seriously. Secondly, in the near future we will probably see major changes in the way people consume news media, which is why Thompson projected that web 2.0 might prove to be fundamentally disruptive for traditional media distribution.
Right now we are seeing a continuing growth of online digital media for the purpose of learning and enjoyment. We are also seeing an increasing amount of podcasts within the traditional media industry, and unsurprisingly, they also offer a variety of programmes touching upon arts, culture and museums.
The BBC's Take One Museum has already started providing downloads of museum audio tours: against competition like this, museums risk losing audiences to other content providers if they don't engage in podcasting themselves.
Ars Electronica is one of the few European web publications to embrace web 2.0 media
Some museums have already started offering podcasts.
With a few exceptions, such as the V&A's Every Object Tells a Story project, the Hayward Gallery's Dan Flavin Soundscape and a few other culture and heritage related offerings, podcasting in the UK has kicked off very slowly.
Also, with the exception of the Ars Electronica Center in Austria, and the Science Museums of Corunna, there are few museums on the continent listed in the major podcasting directories, such as iTunes.
Looking at podcasts offered by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Walker Art Center, it seems, the most interesting examples of museum podcasting are currently found on the other side of the Atlantic.
The Met in New York does podcasting the traditional way - interpreting the exhibition like an audioguide, didactically.
What can podcasting do for museums?
Here's one approach: The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York made a podcast with Fritz Umbach, a professor of World History at the City University in New York. This 45-minute programme references common audio guides. The speaker not only talks about the objects, but leads the visitor through the space, giving advice on where to go, when to stop and when to switch the audio tour on or off. This approach transfers the traditional authoritative voice of the museum to the realm of podcasting.
A very different mode of using podcasting within the exhibition has been explored by SFMOMA, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden and MoMA New York. These museums' podcast series: Gallery Exploration, Walkthrough Series and Special Exhibitions, respectively, feature interviews with, and talks of living artists, who currently show work in the museum. Moreover, curators who set up the exhibitions, talk about selected works or lead visitors through the show.
These podcasts are made so that visitors download the podcast on to their mp3 players, prior to visiting the museum and listen to it onsite. In comparison with the Met's audio tour type podcast, these podcasts, however, are much less scholarly. They take a more broadcast journalism-orientated approach to podcasting, which probably makes them more appealing for audiences who seek a quick introduction into the subject, rather than a 45-min in-depth tour. Ultimately, this less scholarly approach, makes the podcast intellectually accessible to a broad range of audiences.
The San Francisco approach - making museum media more like radio
Another interesting podcast is SFMOMA's Monthly Artcasts. This type of production is already far removed from the audio tour type format and is closer to a radio programme. In this series of episodes, artists, writers, curators and musicians discuss works on show at the museum. In comparison with the Gallery Exploration series, this content can be enjoyed by any type of user, regardless of whether they intend to visit the museum or not.
It's interesting to note these interviews include newly produced as well as archived content. This shows how podcasts provide a means that can bring documents, otherwise inaccessible to the public, back to life. Moreover, visitors are sometimes asked about how they feel about works on show. 'Vox pops' of this kind are not only an entertaining feature to include in the programme, but they also allow the museum to include the voices of audiences.
This very brief review suggests a range of ways podcasting can be applied within museums. It shows that museums can offer visitors audio tour downloads for their personal mp3 players. More interesting applications of museum podcasting, though, seem to be those that go beyond the transferral of traditional museum content onto a new medium.
Programmes such as those offered at SFMOMA would probably stretch the IT skills of most curators to their limits. Furthermore, SFMOMA's Artcasts probably make some prospective museum podcasters shiver, as they would realize that beyond sound and video editing, there are also broadcast-journalism skills needed for the production of a satisfying programme.
In any case, with their monthly ArtCast, SFMOMA has shown how to usepodcasting as another means of communicating information. They show thatpodcasting can be used as a tool to present additional interpretation, inaddition to that already found in educational activities, in catalogues, onwall labels, etc. As well as this, SFMOMA have shown how podcasting can serve themuseum to bring material that is otherwise inaccessible to the public, suchas recordings of interviews with artists, back to life.
Taken together it is these features of podcasts that would allow museums to move beyond established ways of conserving, communicating and exhibiting the treasures in their collections.
CHIN advocate web 2.0 as a tool to precisely target specific narrow audience strands
Tailoring content to different audiences
The Canadian Heritage Information Network argues the next generation of virtual museums should not address broad audiences but 'fine grain' groups. In the document The Virtual Museum (of Canada): The Next Generation it is argued that 'historically, museums have only addressed broad audiences. While occasionally museums have addressed programmes to a particular audience (primarily a particular age group or ethnic group), these activities have been addressed to very broad audiences and constitute a small portion of a museum activity. But new technological developments will allow the museum to address fine grain groups with a level of discourse that is appropriate for that group.'
Looking at the different sorts of podcasts offered in conjunction with the Hiroshi Sugimoto exhibition at the Hirshhorn, for example, one can see how podcasting lends itself to tailoring content for different target audiences.
For example, the museum offers a podcast of Michael Fried's lecture. Then the Hirshhorn offers another two podcasts where Sugimoto talks with the exhibition co-curators about his work, his vision and the creative processes. Finally, there is an audio tour type podcast, where Sugimoto is taking the visitor through the exhibition.
Looking at these three offerings in more detail, one could assume the podcast with the lecture probably appeals to an already knowledgeable audience. The more light-hearted conversation in the interview series is probably more interesting, or at least more accessible, for those not so familiar with art history. Finally, the audio tour, is probably most relevant for an audience planning to view the show onsite.
With MoMA's Modern Kids and Visual Descriptions series, we find more examples of how podcasts can be made for a variety of users, with different levels of education, knowledge, age and abilities. Whereas the former is targeted at the younger generation of museum visitors, the latter, according to MoMA, 'offers extended visual descriptions of works in the Museum's collection for visitors with visual impairments and those seeking an in-depth looking experience.'
MOMA audio - broadcasting audio content in multiple forms to suit different audiences
Content vs. technology
With podcasting museums have an opportunity to provide content in exciting new ways. Yet, the potential of podcasting resides not in the technology alone. Whereas radio and TV programmes are more easily converted into podcasts, museums need to think carefully which part of their activities would lend themselves for audio or video programmes.
Therefore, to make quality podcasts, museums need to curate them, just as exhibitions are curated or books edited, so that users will get the kind of quality they should expect from cultural heritage institutions. This medium represents a new challenge to the creativity of museum professionals to exploit podcasting to provide a variety of content that addresses audiences with different levels of interests, education and skills.
In 1998 Walter Schweibenz said 'connectedness does not merely mean to link objects together, but to give visitors the opportunity to focus on their special interests by pursuing them in an interactive dialog with the museum.' This is an important step in the development from the traditional museum to the museum of the future, as Hooper-Greenhill (1994) emphasizes: the museum changes from a 'collection-driven museum' to an 'audience-driven museum' that tries to relate to particular visitor groups and to focus on the visitors instead of the collections they visit.
It seems that eight years on, podcasting will spark many new debates around the definition of the audience-driven museum. Considering the ever increasing choices users have in retrieving online cultural content, museums will need to be aware of their audiences interests and needs, even more than they are today. Otherwise, they will probably find it difficult to deliver programmes to large audiences.
But it is not only audiences interests which will affect the production of a podcast. It is also the type of hardware as well as the user's physical location, which needs to be studied and taken into account, when making a podcast. A user consuming a podcast on a home computer probably has different programme preferences, compared to a user who is listening to it on a portable device, sitting on the tube. Furthermore, a local user who is only a short way away from the museum probably has different preferences to the user on a different continent.
At the moment, there is little research exploring these arguments. However, the two studies conducted by Forrester Research and Bridge Ratings reveal interesting facts about user behaviour. Forrester's study is only available for subscribers, however, Charleen Li published some of the data in her blog.
Although Peter Meng's Podcasting White Paper and Rodney Rumford's Podcasting White Paper are already a year old, which seems very old in the fast moving IT world, they provide interesting insights.
Museums and the Web 2006 in Albuquerque - Web 2.0 finally reaches the museum web sector
This year (2006) the Museums and the Web conference had a focus on Web 2.0. Peter Samis and Stephanie Pau talked about their experiences of making podcasts at SFMOMA. The contributions from Tana Johnson and Tim Svenonius, also from SFMOMA and Ken Dickinson from the Ontario Science Center Canada, focused on the practical side of how to create a podcast. The V&A's Toby Travis talked about how podcasting offers opportunities to foster visitor involvement.
What this body of literature suggests is that podcasting represents many challenges and opportunities for online content providers. It remains to be seen, however, whether we are in another net bubble or whether podcasting will deliver what it promises.
In any case, this time is certainly an interesting one for museum professionals who are involved in online media production, and time will show whether they will exploit this technology to enhance their online offerings, and whether their audiences will appreciate it.
Lena Maculan is researching a PhD at the Department of Museum Studies, University of Leicester. She is writing a thesis with the working title 'Museums, Web 2.0 and the illusion of access: The divides and challenges of the new publishing and broadcasting models of communication for Europe’s digital culture.'
Lena also writes for Austrian art magazine Parnass. Other publications include the Catalogue Raisonné of the American artist Elaine Sturtevant, which she edited in collaboration with the Museum of Modern Art Frankfurt. Lena has previously worked for commercial art galleries and the Vitra Design Museum in Berlin.
Bibliography
Bridge Ratings 'The Future of Podcasting. Measuring & Projecting Behaviour'
Bridge Ratings 'Bridge Ratings Industry Update - The Podcasting Outlook' (22.3.2006)
Dietz et. al., The Virtual Museum (of Canada)
Hinchcliff, Dion. Web 2.0 Blog 'The State of Web 2.0'
Hooper-Greenhill, Eilean. Museum education: past, present and future. Towards the Museum of the Future. New European Perspectives. Ed. Roger Miles and Lauro Zavala. London/New York: Routledge, 1994.
Li, Charlene. Blog, 'Forrester podcasting report - just 1 % use podcasts', (5.4.2006)
O'Reilly, Tim. 'What is Web 2.0. Design Patterns and Business Models for the Next Generation of Software' Oreillynet (30.9.2005)
Rumford, Rodney L. 'Podcasting White Paper. What you don't know about podcasting could hurt your business: How to leverage & benefit from this new media technology' (June 2005)
Stone, Brad. 'Talk Transcript: Tracking Technology' in Newsweek (28.3.2006)
BBC TV: Take One Museum audioguides
