DAVE COBB, SR. CREATIVE DIRECTORIAAPA 2014 MUSEUM DAY

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BREAKING THE GLASS CASE:How Museums & Science Centers Stay Relevant Through New Technologies

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STARTING A DISCUSSION ABOUT EXPERIENCES BY LEADING WITH

TECHNOLOGY...

...IS ULTIMATELY ABOUT THAT TECHNOLOGY, NOT THE EXPERIENCE

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It’s not about a magic bullet or game-changing widget.

It’s about using technology that changes the audience’s vector of approach and inspiration

THE BEST MOST COMPELLING THINGS WE’VE SEENRECENTLY ARE THE THINGS WHICH ARE

AUTHENTIC, HUMAN, AND KEENLY & PROFOUNDLY CENTERED ON ON THE

PEOPLE THE MUSEUMS WANT TO SERVE.

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YOUR AUDIENCE HAS AN AUDIENCE

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And the most profound shift in all of the technologies that are changing entertainment & museum design today is this alone: your audience ALSO has their own audience -- everything from simple user reviews & social media, all the way to elaborate user-created content.

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This creative impulse for expression and connection has rippled through nearly every modern audience, and technology has made it accessible and possible. Music fan? Make an album on your laptop. Like movies? Make a film and watch it go viral. Gamer? Indie gaming is now where indie film was in the 90s, exploding like crazy. Crafting? DIY? Show people how to make stuff on Instructables, sell your stuff on Etsy, display your cool new invention at Maker Faire or even Kickstart a whole new consumer product.

Any tech that will shape the future of museums needs to leverage this social change in audience behavior and encourage their creative impulse to not just be passive viewers, but to instead become active contributors.

BLOOMBERG GRANT• $17m to increase access to cultural institutions through technology• Not a one-size-fits-all solution, but unique to each location• AMNH, Brooklyn Museum, Cooper-Hewitt,SF MOMA, Science Museum London, Singapore Gardens by the Bay

• Apps, App+Docent Combos, Interactive Galleries, Magic Pens!

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The upcoming $17 Bloomberg grant is going to be an amazing nerdy lab of museum innovation -- each museum is tailoring tech to their own unique collection, needs and audience. AMNH is releasing a new-and-improved version of their award-winning Explorer app, while the Brooklyn museum’s upcoming Q&A app is taking a uniquely human approach where you can use the app to ask a question about the museum and its collection -- and an actual person will come find you and answer it. Opening in December, the new Cooper-Hewitt museum has innovated a digital “pen” that allows every guest to quite literally contribute to the museum and write on the walls -- and that’s a Smithsonian institution! So things are changing.

AUTHENTIC YET TRANSFORMATIVE TO LOCATION

• Battle of Bannockburn, Scotland• Nature Lab, Los Angeles Natural History Museum

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Museums can often create site-specific, authentic content that speaks to their location, as well as the cultural & educational needs of their specific local audience. The Battle of Bannockburn historic site in Scotland uses 3D projections and game-based interactivity to vividly immerse visitors in a medieval war that changed the course of Scottish history. At the Los Angeles Natural History Museum’s new Nature Lab, they’ve created a long-term urban biodiversity project that is gathering and presenting real-time data specific to the Los Angeles area -- reminding guests that, believe it or not, there really is a huge natural world around them, even in an urban city like LA, and giving them a new way to experience their city.

BIGGER DOESN’T MEAN BETTER

• Micrarium, Grant Museum of Technology• Mmuseumm, NYC

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Spectacle comes in all sizes, sometimes smaller can mean more unique and intimate. It’s said that 95% of known animal species are smaller than your thumb, but despite this most natural history museums fill their displays with big animals, while thousands of very small specimens in their collections are kept in storerooms rarely shown to the public. So, the Grant Museum at University College London converted an old office into a beautiful back-lit cave covered with wall-to-wall microscope slides, called the Micrarium. Meanwhile, in a 60-square-foot refurbished elevator shaft in a trash-strewn alley in Chinatown, the Mmuseumm finds beauty in unexpected, everyday objects from life in New York City, and the stories behind them.

BEYOND THE FOUR WALLS• Tech that meets guests where they live, or brings their content to you, or expands upon a larger unseen collection

• AMNH Aboriginal Exhibit & Digital Youth Programs• Gallery One, Cleveland Museum of Art

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Using technology also allows museums to transcend the physical limitations of their collection, allowing visitors to explore more than what can be displayed, or make their unique connections and discoveries across their own interests, like the groundbreaking Gallery One at the Cleveland Museum of Art. It can also extend the collection beyond the four walls of the museum, connecting a museum’s content to users long after they’ve left -- or create content in the other direction, like AMNH’s incredible Gapuwiyak Calling, connecting museum guests with art and culture being created and documented on mobile phones by an Australian Aboriginal tribe.

YOUR GUESTS CAN’T MAKE THEIR OWN MUSEUM...

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We encourage museums to look at technology as a way to tell guests that, even though they can’t make their own museum, they can make the museum their own.

Technology isn’t just a widget or an app or a touchscreen -- it can be an empowering force that enables an increasingly expectant audience that wants to participate and, yes, curate their own experience based on your museum’s expertise.

YOUR GUESTS CAN’T MAKE THEIR OWN MUSEUM...

...BUT THEY CAN MAKE THE THEME PARK MAKE THE MUSEUM THEIR OWN.

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We encourage museums to look at technology as a way to tell guests that, even though they can’t make their own museum, they can make the museum their own.

Technology isn’t just a widget or an app or a touchscreen -- it can be an empowering force that enables an increasingly expectant audience that wants to participate and, yes, curate their own experience based on your museum’s expertise.