Indianapolis Museum of Art Blog

I’ve got audio, not video on my mind, which is an oddity. We have a whopping one audio guide online but over 50 videos available. Recent events however, suddenly presented several audio experiences, highlighted emerging projects, revealed new music and provoked thought on this forgotten subject. This might surprise you, because we have don’t typically dabble with audio content and we are such a video-centric new media department. That’s about to change though. Charge your iPods.

(struggling for an image, I decided to show my favorite Pioneer HDJ-1000 headphones…courtesy of pioneerelectronics.com)

So what happened recently to cause this shift? It’s been a convergence of experiences really, and it all occurred kind of like this:

I was on 38^th Street…
This past week I found myself standing in Best Buy, initially contemplating a purchase of a Wii or PS3 (I bought neither). After a few minutes I wandered into the music aisle. I typically download from iTunes but occasionally I buy a CD. I stood in the rap section and an entire world of 80’s old school opened up. I walked out with 2 CD’s – KRS-One and Eric B. and Rakim. I’m listening to Follow the Leader, right now. This set the tone for the rest of the week and the audio coincidences followed.

Meanwhile back at work….
Think of music online and it’s a hard not to think of iTunes. My colleague Despi spent the past week preparing, organizing and finalizing our audio and video content for a new partnership with iTunes, called iTunes U – essentially content from universities and cultural institutions, such as museums. She’ll be blogging about it later, so I don’t want to reveal too much. The IMA on iTunes, pretty cool and it’s kind of a big deal.

Thinking of LOST and Copland…
Previously on…..not LOST (but I can’t wait for the season to start). In past posts I’ve mentioned a project we’re working on with musicians from the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. This project will become an audio guide for our American Galleries, featuring performances from ISO musicians. So when I’m not listening to 80’s hip hop, I’m also now into Debussy, Stravinsky and Barber. We’re in the selection stage for what songs will be recorded and will begin this process very soon….

Local music…
For an upcoming fashion exhibition Breaking the Mode, we are acquiring runway footage featuring work from the designers in the exhibition. You can’t really have runway footage without music, so our web and flash designer Matt Gipson suggested a local band he knows, The Sound Defects. I recommend visiting their site and listening to Kick Stand. We’re working with them to feature some of their sounds in the videos we will produce online (I know – it’s a video…but there is a good audio connection here). Coming soon to imamuseum.org….in some form.

For a totally new experience…
If you’re in iTunes, search for ‘spurse audio tour’. It’s an audio guide we produced with the artist collective spurse, a couple of years ago. Their exhibition is long gone, but the audio tour lives on and might make a comeback. Check it out – I did recently and had a chuckle. It’s not your typical audio guide.

So what does this all mean…
Well, these were my experiences for the week of Jan 21-25, 2008. We may never be an audio powerhouse like MoMA or SFMOMA – but you will begin to see some new and unique audio experiences - and we haven’t given up on audio yet. In the meantime, if you have any audio project ideas, please leave me a comment.

Now who’s ready for The Buggles?

• Tags: , Audio, Eric B. and Rakim, ima, Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, iTunes, MoMA, New Media, SFMoMA, The Buggles, The Sound Defects, Video

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 27th, 2008 at 2:09 pm and is filed under New Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.