HERE TO STAY
For developers at the metaLAB, this integration of technology across disciplines is the next step in unlocking the latent possibilities of a collection. But as developers brainstorm how to integrate cutting-edge technologies into the museum experience, they are meeting resistance from those hesitant to move away from the traditional museum encounter.
Harvard Art Museums administrators, however, suggest that they do not see technology as a threat. They are careful to emphasize that their first priority is what Martinez calls “deep and prolonged looking.”
“We have a deep, strong, almost religious feeling that nothing replaces the objects in the museum,” Lentz says.
In Jamaica Plain, Parry has already encountered resistance from the public regarding technology in the Arboretum. Some people, he says, are worried that the presence of devices like iPads will steal the spotlight from the plants themselves.
“A lot of people, when we talk about this project, are concerned that we’re taking a site that offers you something other than the urban experience and muddying it,” he says.
This kind of worry is not exclusive to a natural museum like the Arboretum. In discussions with art museum administrators, Loukissas says that he and other developers have spent a lot of time considering how people can “divide their attention between the material artifacts that have historically been the focus of attention and the clouds of metadata that have encircled them.”
According to Parry, one possible solution is the incorporation of sound into galleries. Listening—rather than reading or watching extra material—while viewing exhibits could increase immersion while minimizing distraction. Although audio tours have been a common fixture in the museum scene for years, curators at Harvard are thinking beyond the traditional format.
At an exhibition in the Sackler Museum called “Jasper Johns / In Press: The Crosshatch Works and the Logic of Print,” curators used a device called a “sound dome,” a reverse cone-of-silence that projects sound downward so that only the person standing below it can hear the audio.
And at the Arboretum, researchers are working with soundscape artist Teri Rueb to produce an oral history accompanying a path through the Bussey Brook Meadow, a wetland section of the Arboretum.
“The technology is here to stay, and we have to deal with it,” Loukissas says. “That’s not to say that we should accept the current manifestations of the technology. One thing we know for certain is that these types of interfaces will change and we have the chance to shape them.”
—Staff writer Gina K. Hackett can be reached at ghackett@college.harvard.edu.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
CORRECTION: May 14, 2013
An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that a camera with a UV lens at Harvard’s Arnold Arboretum is robotic. In fact, it is latched to a wooden track.