Digital Communication by Edouard

Traditionally museums and art galleries around the world have been funded by governments and local authorities. However, in the aftermath of an overall move in corporate management in the 80’s, museums started to expand their revenue streams by acquiring new audiences.  With the emergence of computing and its fast democratisation, art galleries found an opportunity to offer new experiences to their visitors as well as reaching new publics by implementing multimedia systems on the scene.  Lately, Internet as a communication channel has been widely adopted by museums and art galleries as a means to stand out of the competition. When the usual first step of creating a more or less successful website as interface has been taken by the majority, some others used Web 2.0 tools in order to develop much more original and efficient communication and/or vending platforms.

In order to have a better understanding of how can Web 2.0 tools be used, let’s first have a look at what are today’s customers expectations.

Visitors’ expectations:

• Associate museums with “leisure activity”,
• Vast Collections,
• Socially/Knowledge sharing –  friendly environment,
• Entertaining place,
• Credibility, security of purchase,
• Place that offers exhibition opportunities to new creators.

A common point between museums and Web 2.0 technologies is that both have been created in a perspective of sharing knowledge for a broad audience and for low costs. It becomes then interesting to investigate which dynamic can be created by the combination of two different formats which hold a purpose of the same nature.

Online opportunities:

• Cross Channel Customers: Young and wealthy,
• Web 2.0 enable visitors to be customers and producers in the same time,
• Auction and instantaneous purchase regardless to distance between seller and buyer,
• Purchase transaction encryption,
• Low costs,
• Community building,
• Price comparison.

The use of Web 2.0 tools offers undeniable advantages to museums and art galleries. However these opportunities diverge regarding to the properties of each employed tool.

1. Websites / Blogs

The gallery’s website should:

• Display thumbnails of a significant work for each artist name on a menu that allow the virtual visitor to browse through the type of art,
• Enable comments,
• Create discussion forums,
• Enable artists to post their creations,
• Build an online community.

The Powerhouse Museum for example created a blog that encourage people to share their thoughts about the digitalisation of the museum, which created a dialog between museum’s management and its consumers, and enhanced the museum’s digitalization process.

The Web 2.0 dimension of displaying artwork has to be optimized, Katherine Khalife, museums’ online marketing expert has listed nine common mistakes made by galleries websites:

• No Location listed on the front page,
• Slow loading,
• Use of flash or splash pages (technology limits),
• Links not obvious or no navigation bar,
• Outdated information,
• No map or driving directions
• Membership adhesion not available,
• Not e-mail address collection,
• Too much information asked.

2. Facebook, Social Network

• Facebook Groups or Fan Pages

These two tools can basically used by any business that wants to increase its brand awareness. Indeed, Groups and Fan Pages have the purpose of promoting rather than selling. Using these spaces, galleries and museums can create a social environment in which patrons can exchange ideas, upload artworks; create a community around the museum.

• Application

Creating a Facebook application especially tailored for a museum is another way to increase brand awareness. A really food example of its practice is the Brooklyn Museum application, Artshare. The users of this application can select and display museum’s objects images on their profile. Each image is linked to the Brooklyn Museum catalogue which holds information and resources about the relating object. An additional feature of this application enables artists to upload their own images. This feature enables the museum to appear as a socially engaged institution.

3. Twitter, Microblogging

Two facets of Twitter, the most famous microblogging platform can be used in order to enhance museums visitors’ experience.

First, Twitter can be considered as a coordination and communication platform with the other Web 2.0 tools. Twitter as the foundation of the museums’ community is used to communicate about the content shared on other Web2.0 platforms and create a daily contact with the fans. More than just being a means for the gallery to communicate with its visitors, it could create relationship with the fans or potential buyers. Also Twitter is the ideal platform to communicate at the time of an event. Museums can create the buzz and promote their events before that it happens. Communicating through Twitter during the event could help to provide additional information about the event or about displayed objects.

On the other hand, Twitter can be used to increase sales of a virtual gallery. Twitter is an excellent channel to offer special discounts, discounts limited in time or special services. Twitter followers consider themselves special as they feel like taking part of a private sale. Christies’ made a perfect use of Twitter when making its sales calendar online. Christies’ tweets were redirecting online visitors to other Web 2.0 tools as Facebook where the user could browse through 450 auctions.

4. Youtube, Videos

First, demand for online video worldwide has exploded. Over 100 million videos are watched on YouTube every day and BitTorrent, the internet protocol, facilitates online sharing and distribution of video and audio. Second, opportunities to produce video have exploded. Teenagers are producing and posting rich media online in numbers that are growing exponentially. According to one estimate, almost half of all video online today is user-generated.

Museums can produce accessible educational video for their educational needs; catalyze new and more formal production initiatives, build new tools as editing, annotation or summarization for more cost efficient video production, collaboration, and distribution worldwide. Museums can also organize new multi-institutional collaborations into a distributed educational video production network or establish an educational video commons with rich resources where use and reuse rights are identified.

The Harlem Digital Archive, launched by Columbia University’s Center for New Media Teaching and Learning and Intelligent Television has made great use of the video. The university used its community to collect stories and testimonies of Harlem and its inhabitants during the last decades. Topics like Harlem’s history, politics or culture have built a valuable repository for a range of teaching and learning materials about New York, African American history, American history, and world culture.

5. Flickr, Images

Two dimensions of customer needs can be applied to Flickr.

First, the entertainment aspect can be created by the museum. Indeed Flickr has the interesting feature of enabling users to bring modifications to a visual document. This use of Flickr within the museum sector was again investigated by the Brooklyn Museum. The museum first used Flickr with an exhibition called Graffiti in summer 2006. This exhibition welcomed members of the public to contribute to a “crowd created mural” using pens and pencils hanging from the gallery walls.

Another use of Flickr in a museum context has been illustrated by The Houston Ballet. Indeed, the organisation used Flickr to offer a backstage pass to all of its fans.  Moreover, the ballet company offers to its enthusiasts visual insights into the organization’s activities and administration. It offers to the fans of an organization feeling of being special and add value to their membership.

6. Delicious, Tagging

Social tagging, where “tags” or keywords are shared online by the general public appeals to art museums because it appears to fill gaps in current documentation practice.

Tagging:

• Offer an additional means of access to art that could enhance institutional perspective,
• Dialogue between the viewer and the work,
• Enable people to connect directly with artworks, to own them by labelling or naming them,
• Visitor adds value to the museum, for themselves, and for other visitors,
• Museum analyse tags to learn more about their visitors and to support their use of collections,
• Enhance the personal exploration of collections,
• Create connections between museums and users.

7. Second Life, Virtual World

Two different properties of Second Life offer benefits to the museum sector.

The first advantage is that virtual worlds are the only places where you can walk hand in hand with someone anywhere on earth. There is no geographical or physical barriers for a random visitor to push the door of a museum and walk in! Virtual worlds are the web 2.0 tool that offers a 3D environment to a business.

The second opportunity resides in the fact that some limits set by the “real world” environment do not affect the avatar in Second Life. One of Second Life museum called “The Splo”:

• By creating visual effects:

When the viewer is rotated, the distorted image of avatar Patio Plasma becomes obvious.

• Playing with the scale:

An avatar interacts with a scale model of an earth/moon system – a companion exhibit developed for the Exploratorium’s total solar eclipse Webcast.

Unlike experimentation in the real world, it’s easy to change the perception of the reality or the scale of natural phenomena in the virtual world.

It sounds like these new tools can offer a full range of additional experiences to museums’ visitors. However the main advantage of the internet can also be its biggest weakness. On one hand, the screen as a communication interface modifies the hierarchy and the nature of relationships within the art community.  On the other hand questions have been raised about the loss of the aesthetic experience…

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