Audience Experiences of Contributory Projects

Audience Responses to Contributory Projects (suggestion, SB)

[in the Outline it says "Expectations"]

    Participants aren't the only ones who access and consume each other's content. ( Suggest leaving out the first sentence. It is part of the pattern of starting with negative, rather than positive statement. Heads us int the wrong direction or sounds apologetic. Could start with the question you pose at the end of this paragraph. SB) There is also a wide body of audience members--other visitors, stakeholders, sometimes scientists or researchers--who enjoy and use contributed content. What makes a compelling audience experience of a contributory project? (Examples below demonstrate audience experiences, but it is not easy to glean "what makes the compelling audience experience" that is the question you posed. SB)

    Some contributory projects, like citizen science data collection, are intended for a specific professional audience. In these cases, there are really two audiences for the data--the scientists who will use the data for their research, and the participants and would-be participants who are curious about what happens to their data once it is contributed.  When contributions are being worked into a private process, participants need to know where their contributions are going and how the process works. In the case of MN150, people submitted nominations of topics for inclusion in the exhibition over a year before the exhibition was opened, so the nominations functionally had two lives: internally for staff to consider, and then (for a subset of winners) externally once the exhibition was open. People are often comfortable "giving up" their ideas as long as they receive basic recognition and insider information about how the institution plans to use their content. (This section is speaking to multiple audiences for participation, rather than to what makes it compelling. It also reiterates the need for feedback loop that you have discussed earlier. SB)

    Interestingly, there are some citizen scientists (and managers of citizen science projects) who are advocating for more access to the data they collectively share with scientists. As noted earlier, people who only participate in data collection gain skills in a very narrow segment of the scientific process. Many of these participants would like to be more involved. For example, birder Eric Gyllenhall has requested that project managers "give people more tools to manipulate the data after it has been collected. Both FeederWatch and eBird allow some of that, but there should be lots more opportunities for data mining, data mash-ups (*), post-creation projects, or whatever you want to call them." (ISEN forum 2009) These are participants who would like to be able to use the data collected in more extensive ways, not necessarily in collaboration with scientists, but as data users in their own right. (Another collaborative data collection work is the National Geographic's Genographic experiment with DNA. DNA sample by citizen, with followup online as the sample is processed, outcome of DNA source and genetic line sent to participant via code number to maintain privacy, ongoing building of info on particular lines available online. SB)

    Data collectors aren't the only people who enjoy exploring and playing with participant-submitted content and data. In the late 2000s, manipulatable data visualizations became ubiquitous on the Web, and people enjoyed fiddling with everything from data on baby names to crime statistics to the frequency of different phrases in internet dating profiles.  From an audience perspective, playing with visitor-submitted data can be a fun and attractive way to explore vast sets of contributions while learning important analytical skills. Even the simplest visualizations--such as the LED readouts above the turnstiles in the Ontario Science Centre's Facing Mars exhibition--let audiences learn from, enjoy, and engage with visitor-submitted content. (Plus Facebook Clouds, Friend Network diagrams and other visual analyses of individual profile. SB)

    In 2008, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam hosted Damien Hirst’s piece For the Love of God, and with it, a visitor feedback system with an intriguing audience interface. The artwork is a platinum-cast skull encrusted with over 1100 carats of diamonds: a hype machine in death’s clothing. Entering the exhibit involved standing in line in galleries full of Dutch masterpieces (mostly ignored) and then emerging into a dark room with guards and the skull terrifically lit in the center. You weren’t sure how much time you were supposed to spend with the object or what to get out of it. There was no interpretative content in the room, and you were not allowed to take pictures. I walked in, self-consciously watched myself watching other people watching the skull, then walked out.

    At the physical museum, visitors who wished to provide feedback on the skull were instructed to leave the building and walk into a temporary structure that served as both a For the Love of God gift shop and feedback environment. The feedback stations themselves were little closed booths where you could record a video with your opinion about the skull.

    By positioning the feedback stations outside the flow of the museum (and within a solely skull-branded structure), the resultant videos were more topical and focused than is typical. But the thing that made this project stand out is the way these videos were shared on the Web. They were displayed on the For the Love of God website, which was created for the museum by a high-end outside designer. The format was reminiscent of Jonathan Harris’ We Feel Fine project, allowing users to view the videos by country of origin, gender, age, and some key concepts (love it/hate it, think it’s art/think it's hype). The videos were automatically chromakeyed (i.e., masked or cropped) so that each contributor appeared as a floating head, which created an eerie, appealing visual consistency. The browsing experience was somewhat clunky and the filters were not always accurate, but the overall website was impressive in its display and aggregation of videos. Not all of the recorded videos were used on the website; videos were curated for volume, and "harsh and insulting" ones were removed. The web designer functionally created an interactive online experience for audiences out of the contributions offered by visitors.

    This design was also notable for its overall integration into the exhibit experience. The visitors' videos on the website were couched in the same self-consciousness buzz that permeated the exhibit, with a welcome screen informing you that, “Never before has a work of art provoked as much dialogue as Damien Hirst’s ‘For the Love of God.’” Whether true or not, the website implied that the visitors’ videos were a justification for this claim, a demonstration of the rich dialogue supposedly surrounding the skull. In this way, the visitors’ videos were integrated into the larger art piece and are arguably as much a part of the skull experience as the posters, the lines, and the guards. The existence of controversy was part of the intentional setting of the skull, and so visitors were encouraged to talk. Whether online spectators experienced visitors' videos as evidence of this controversy, or just as a beautiful data visualization, the audience experience of the feedback contributions was immersive, intriguing, and quite haunting.

    The For the Love of God experience allowed audience members to perform secondary participatory activities like sorting, favoriting, and moving the contributed videos. There are many audiences who enjoy engaging with visitor-submitted content actively. Many people who are not motivated to create their own content are motivated to critique, edit, curate, and organize other visitors' contributions. As noted earlier, this is a different kind of participation which can improve the overall quality of visitor contributions and contributory outputs, especially in institutions where staff do not have the time to actively manage or curate contributions. A simple "favorite" or "mark as inappropriate" button can go a long way towards helping audience members feel invested in visitor-contributed content and winnowing out the best and worst submissions.

    But what about the visitors who are truly "just looking?" How does the experience of exploring visitor-contributed content differ from consuming standard exhibits or museum content? Just as diversity of contributions helps motivate people to participate in contributory platforms, diversity of creations can help some audience members feel more personally included in the institution as consumers of that content.

    In 2006, the Art Gallery of Ontario developed In Your Face, an exhibition of 4"x6" visitor-submitted self-portraits. Over 10,000 self-portraits were submitted, and the portraits hung in an overwhelming and beautiful mosaic, blanketing walls from floor to ceiling in the gallery. Toronto is a very culturally diverse city, and Gillian McIntyre, coordinator of adult programs, noted that, "The portraits noticeably reflected far more diversity of all sorts than is usually seen on AGO walls." She shared that "on several occasions children in visiting school groups from West and East Indian communities enthusiastically pointed out people who looked like them on the walls, literally saying: 'That looks like me' or 'That's me with dreadlocks.'" McIntyre further commented that these visitors’ comments represented the extent to which In Your Face helped the AGO be a more socially inclusive place. Visitors "saw themselves" in the exhibition in a way they never had before. The exhibition was incredibly popular, attracting significant crowds and media attention. Another visitor even took the experience from personal to collective, commenting that "it's depicting the soul of a society."

    MN150 has had a similar effect on visitors, despite being a much more conservative installation. Unlike In Your Face, MN150 was not a direct installation of visitor contributions. Instead, it displayed the distillation of 2,700 visitor nominations into 150 fairly consistently designed exhibits. Each exhibit label included the text contributed in the original nomination form, as well as a photo of the nominee. But otherwise, with a few exceptions in cases where nominees provided objects, the exhibits were designed and produced by staff in a traditional process. 

    In summative evaluation, staff learned that... (COMPLETE IN DEC WHEN EVAL REPORT AVAILABLE)

    Anecdotally, staff noted that the video talkback station in MN150 was particularly active. The kiosk invited visitors to make their case for other topics that should have been included in the exhibition. I assume the display of visitor's voices throughout the exhibition and the transparent focus on the public nomination process motivated more audience members to feel that there was room for their own voice and topics than in a typical exhibition. While it wasn't tested, my guess is that more people felt encouraged to add their own feedback than they would have if the exhibition had showcased only curatorial perspectives on the top 150 topics that have shaped Minnesota. Interestingly, the Art Gallery of Ontario's In Your Face exhibition had a similar effect, with many more visitors than was typical visiting a station where they could make their own portraits inspired by the installation. In this way, exhibitions of visitor-created or nominated content can become a giant modeling machine, encouraging visitors to participate with the exhibition in related but not identical ways.

    How important is it to visitors to know that an exhibition was created via a participatory process? Is the focus on the process a reflection of cultural obsession with user-created content, or is it actually useful or compelling to visitors in some way? In the examples above, we've seen how exposing the process can help audiences feel more socially included both in the content and the participatory experience of the product. In the introduction to the book Visitor Voices in Museum Exhibitions, Kathleen McLean and Wendy Pollock offered several ways that "visitor-response elements" can enhance audience experience of exhibitions, including "validat[ing] visitors' experiences, knowledge, and emotions," "redress[ing] perceived imbalance in the content of an exhibition," and "expos[ing] visitors and museum staff to diverse perspectives."  These all point to a very simple truth: visitor-contributed content is different from traditional institutionally-produced content.  It is often more personal, more authentic, more spontaneous, and more relevant to human experience than the labels and displays that committees agonize over for months or years. Just as people are becoming more distrustful of overly packaged marketing messages and news productions in the broader media landscape, visitors see the authoritative voice of traditional museums in a suspicious light.( I am not sure that recent AAM surveys support this statement. Museums are still one of the places that are trusted. SB). There are many studies and reports about shifting brand allegiances and how savvy consumers are more likely than ever to trust opinions of peers and scorn messages of traditional splashy advertisements.(Is this actually an argument for visitor-curation and products? Because it is more gritty and people feel more socially included, does that mean it is better or something to do? Is popularity the determining factor? Again, there seems to be a confusion of ends and means. Isn't the logic sequence more like:  What is the intention for the exhibit? What kind of participation makes sense to achieve that end? SB)

    In a world of aggressively marketed and abundantly available consumer experiences, people are trying to find the content that is most relevant and significant to their own lives. I don't believe that visitor-contributed content produces intrinsically better audience experiences than institutional-designed content. But at least so far, many museum staff members are unwilling to produce content that is as raw, personal, and direct as that which visitors create. [I'd also add that not every topic / exhibition is necessarily fit for visitor-contributed content. As Gail Durbin said in a Museum Communication Conference earlier this year in Madrid, what V&A seek when asking visitors'contributions is not for speciliased matters, let's say textiles in XVI century, area where the museum has the very best experts, but for content where people contributions can really add value, create new content (i.e. The Beach Stones project or the wedding pictures historical collection, etc)]. Hopefully, working with and seeing the positive impact of visitor-contributed content will give some institutions the permission they need to transform the way they create and display content as well. ( Another way of putting this, is that it provides another tool for museums to use rather than to reject out of hand. SB)

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