ALL ABOUT ORBS

Technology Tuesdays | Val Masters

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For my first Musings contribution, I want to talk about one of my favourite subjects: orbs--Where to find them, what they do, how to appreciate them. I want to introduce the sorts of technological orbs that you can find in museums!

Science on a Sphere

The most educational of orbs: Science on a Sphere (SOS). Created by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), SOS is a system of computers running special software and projectors that work to display and control data on a six-foot diameter sphere.

Science on a Sphere at the Kalamazoo Valley Museum in Michigan. Notice the kiosk! Source. 

The greatest strength of SOS is that it comes with a host of resources, but is customizable to the museum and to the user. You can create a narrative from scratch or use one of the provided lesson plans. The sphere can display animations, layer datasets, and it is interactive. It can even display real-time data. The data catalog is growing, and includes work from NOAA, NASA, universities, and science centres.

Want to learn about the Aurora Borealis? Cities through time? Great White Sharks? The possibilities are nearly limitless.

Currently, the only places to see Science on a Sphere in Canada are the Museum of Natural History in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and the TELUS World of Science in Edmonton, Alberta. The United States, China, and India lead the world in the number of science spheres. I think SOS would be a magnificent addition to our local Ontario Science Centre (OSC). Speaking of OSC . . .

Life of the Earth, Death of the Sun

When I heard about this exhibition at the Ontario Science Centre, I thought it would be similar to SOS. I was wrong! It was much, much, bigger and stunningly beautiful. This orb is an art installation (in fact, it debuted at Nuit Blanche), a moving experience, and a political commentary. This work is meant to unify viewers over this simple fact that the Earth and the Sun are the only orbs we cannot live without. This puts things in perspective: each minute you spend viewing the orb during Death of the Sun represents one billion years.

During the Life of the Earth phase of the experience, you can watch our planet change over the course of 335 million years. Meanwhile a dizzying sequence of images flashes on the wall, beginning with images of nonhuman life, and then moving into art and culture through the ages. At some point, there is a shift – and we are in the future. The Earth browns, the lights wink out, and the waters rise. The images on the wall are no longer of art and culture; they are war, unrest, dire news headlines, graphs of global temperatures going up and up and up. This vision of the future is a call to action to mitigate climate change and take responsibility for the Anthropocene. I found this experience to be a unique and moving contribution to the growing body of orbs in museum collections.

The author in front of Death of the Sun, planetary nebula phase. Photo Courtesy of Val Master.

Which type of orb you find more engaging? An art installation with a story to tell, or an interactive where you can create the story?

SCENTS AND SENSIBILITY

MUSEUM INNOVATIONS

BY CASSY KIST

Museums have always been seeking new and interesting ways to tell history and stories. Whether that be through interactive digital components, images, objects, audio etc. - the list is endless. But lately I have been reading about multi-sensory exploration and how to some, especially curators touching is vital to understand and appreciate an object. However, another sense beyond hearing, seeing and touching has also been explored in museums and art pieces. Scents and smell have the potential to create not only excitement and intrigue, but also facilitate new forms of interpretation within museums. Scents tends to be excluded in history narratives and documented events, yet they are important details with the capacity to reveal aspects of time, space and context. If you recall a memory, maybe even walking down Bloor street, a multitude of smells will assault your conscious - maybe Chinese food, coffee or smoke; all these reveal something about the modern day Toronto city context.

Some Historians argue that scents even vanishing ones, are a pivotal part of history and should be preserved. Does that mean we should try to preserve the smell of the modern day theatre? Shopping mall or god forbid gym? Perhaps! While some scents might be unappealing they can reveal details related to time and place and thus, help narrate the tale of everyday life.

An after hours culture festival in the UK (Culture 24), encourages British museums to use scents at their events and in their exhibit spaces, allowing visitors to interact with museum objects in new and unique ways. According to Culture 24, you can animate collections with scent, alter perceptions and create opportunities for new interpretation. Furthermore, scents also create imagery, influence emotions and when shared between people, create connections and discussions.

But how can museums use or reconstruct scents to tell the tales of a historic past through exhibits and objects?

Source

One can look to the National Museum of Singapore for inspiration. The museum hired a perfume artist to create different scents that would bring to life their 700 Years exhibit by creating connections between visitors, the objects and their context pertaining to segments of Singapore’s history. Each era within the exhibit was complimented and encapsulated by 12 scents; one of these, a scent called Fear was fabricated out of musk and ammonia for the era representing Japanese occupation during WW2. Other scents such as the 8 Cent Meal, was created to represent the meals that social welfare departments handed out during the post-war years. This scent included passion fruit, coconut milk and vanilla beans; ingredients which the perfume artist researched in collaboration with the museum over 4-5 months.

Within the 700 years exhibit. Source

This added exhibit detail may cause complications if museums are to become serious in not only using scents but creating them. For example, what scents do curators use to enliven an exhibit and how do they decide which scent combinations will be an accurate representation? Staff may need to research the period, event or person they are representing and decide what scents will work to the advantage of the exhibit themes. Simple raw ingredients like cinnamon or musk might suffice or if representing a complex olfactory context, say perhaps an Egyptian ritual, one can consult an olfactory historian.

A what??? 

Olfactory historians are scholars who have researched scents that have been documented or referenced to over the past centuries. On the other hand, if wanting to compliment a display of Egyptian scent bottles, a curator may decide to use a 3,500-year-old perfume once worn by Pharaoh Hatshepsut and reconstructed by scientists and archaeologists.

At the end of the day no matter the research or choices that the curators make, visitor interpretation is always subjective. That being said, even if a scent doesn’t completely convey the curator’s intention, they can still connect people, place and things, bringing collections and narratives to life.

Of course with every new interaction there is always potential risks, such as how scents can affect objects and if they could cause collections to become inaccessible to people allergic to scents. Some scents might be naturally repugnant to some and interpretations of scents in relation to objects may distract from the exhibit themes.

Morrison smelling books (Source).

On the other hand there are people who are firm believers in the power of scent and their ability to not only entice reflection and discussion, but also give satisfaction. Ask Rachael Morrison who spent 3 years smelling books in the MoMA library as an art piece.

Source

THE CLEVELAND MUSEUM OF ART: GALLERY ONE

EXHIBITION REVIEWS

BY: TABITHA CHAN

Interactive Kiosk (Source)

The Cleveland Museum of Art officially unveiled Gallery One in January 2013, as part of an ambitious overarching initiative to reinstall and reinterpret its entire permanent collection into new gallery spaces. Gallery One offers visitors an innovative opportunity to experience and learn about art through technology. The space fluidly integrates interactive and immersive digital activities with physical artworks from the museum’s collection.

There are four main digital components: a 40-foot multi-touch MicroTile Collection Wall, six interactive learning kiosks, a dedicated family area called “Studio Play” and the ArtLens application. Gallery One has six stations or “lenses” to examine groupings of physical artwork through: sculpture lens, lions lens, epic stories lens, globalism lens, thirties lens and painting lens. Each lens offers interactive games and activities designed around the specific theme and question of the lens.

Collection Wall (Source)

The sculpture lens features two different activities called “Make a Face” and “Strike a Pose” that enables visitors to use their physical bodies to create connections with the artwork. In the first activity, a visitor’s facial expression is matched to artworks within the CMA’s collection using facial recognition software. The nodal points in the visitor’s image are compared to the nodal points in the database of 189 catalogued artworks. 

Sculpture Lens: "Make A Face" activity (Source)

In the second activity, visitors are asked to mimic the physical position of the image of a sculpture displayed on the screen. Through the use of sensors, visitors are “evaluated” and given a percentage based on how accurate their pose matches the original. These activities incorporate an aspect of humour and encourage visitors to interact with the artwork in a fun, unconventional way. Although only one person can partake in each activity at a time, this lens naturally attracts groups of people to watch.

Sculpture Lens: "Strike A Pose" activity (Source)

The painting lens has a total of five activities, but I will focus on two called “Make Your Mark” and “Remix Picasso”. In the first activity, visitors are presented with three artworks from the CMA’s collection representing three different abstract painting techniques. Visitors are invited to experiment digitally with different painting techniques such as pour, drip and gesture. They are able to share their paintings to a visitor-created collection in the lens. 

The second activity encourages visitors to adopt the mindset of Picasso and digitally rearrange abstract pieces of a composition by using rotational and zoom functions, as well as, manipulating flatness and depth perspectives. Both of these activities give visitors the chance to learn about abstraction by becoming the artist and creating their own abstract artwork.

Visitors are empowered to play and create their version of abstraction, while a real Picasso or Pollock is hanging in front of them. The goal of these activities is not for visitors to learn how to paint, but in adopting the mindset of the artist, they are able to make a real connection to the greater context of what constitutes as abstraction. Abstract art is often a difficult topic to approach for visitors without an art background. These activities act as an accessible entry point, as visitors are engaged in active learning and motivated by discovery.

Painting Lens: "Make A Mark" activity (Source)

In addition to these interactive games, all six stations have a “Look Closer” mode activated by touching any artwork on the screen. This mode gives visitors the ability to rotate and zoom in on high-resolution images of the artwork. Visitors can learn more about each artwork through informational hotspots, in the form of text and video, conveying further details about the artwork, artist and time period.

Although Gallery One makes use of thematic groupings, the CMA’s role as a museum according to its mission is primarily to provide the institutional space, art objects and technological tools to transform visitors from being passive observers into active participants. The magnitude and depth of how much is learned is left up to the visitor. Gallery One is successful in providing visitors with opportunities to learn experientially through digital technology and to ultimately enjoy the process of learning.

Resources:
Alexander, J. (2014). Gallery One at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Curator: The Museum Journal, 57(3), 347-362. doi:10.1111/ cura.12073