Indianapolis Museum of Art Blog » TAP

The Pharmacy

Kate — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 13:38:58 +0000

The Pharmacy prescribes the following links to combat Monday online anemia.

http://www.beardrevue.com

It’s all about the beards, people. This blog has a simple description: ‘Review, commentary & discussion for the beard enthusiast. Up the beard ratio!’

ArtBabble Video: Creation of a Tibetan Mural

Pema Rinzin paints a mural of the Buddhist Guardian Kings of the Four directions. Pema Rinzin on his personal decision to paint the Four Great Guardian Kings: “They are unique imagery in that they are solid; they are protectors; and they are closest to our human form. For example, in Tibet at the largest monasteries like Drepung, all the Guardian Kings are in the front of the monastery. I thought they would also protect us here in the United States and at the Rubin Museum.

IMA Work of Art:

Madre Jerónima de la Fuente from Sacred Spain: Art and Belief in the Spanish World

Tweet:

rjstein: TAP is selling out regularly… Waiting lists and iPods not getting enough charge. Great problem to have! Time to buy more iPods!

Columbus Day at the IMA

Meg Liffick — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 12:20:28 +0000

From writing large-scale, big-budget marketing plans to proofing marketing pieces for the printer, I generally have about 15-30 different projects cross my desk every day. Some things take a considerable amount of attention, while others take seconds. Some days I have six meetings, while others I have just one. As with many jobs, my position requires me to switch back and forth between projects all day, every day. At times, I find the harried nature and varied scope of my work to be exhausting. But most of the time, I find it exhilarating. Regardless, I love every minute.

To give you an overview of what someone who works in museum marketing does , I thought that I’d outline my typical day. In order to do that, I recorded my activities throughout the past Monday. While some of you were relaxing (or partying) on your Columbus Day off, I was hard at work with my fellow colleagues at the IMA.

Image taken from ugotbling.com

COLUMBUS DAY, OCTOBER 12, 2009*

8:27 Arrive at office. Plug in laptop.

8:35 Sip coffee and respond to emails sent over the weekend.

8:50 Research the 100 Acres: Virginia B. Fairbanks Art and Nature Park for IMA Magazine article.

9:15 Write interview questions for article to send to Ed Blake, the landscape architect for 100 Acres.

9:32 Email interview to Ed Blake.

9:37 Discuss signage in Efroymson Family Entrance Pavilion with Marketing Manager.

9:42 Register for Next Audiences Summit.

9:52 Review marketing budgets from last 2 years.

10:22 Read NYT’s article about the Louvre’s attempt to ‘Loosen Up.’

10:34 Get distracted by Jamie Oliver article in NYT’s Mag.

10:39 Review Web site content. Put together work plan to present in the afternoon’s Web team meeting.

11:22 Read Geoff Von Burg’s blog entry.

11:31 Email this week’s TV schedule for Sacred Spain commercials to Max, curator Ronda Kasl, and Nugget Factory.

11:38 Check attendance numbers from the weekend.

11:39 Organize opening weekend debrief meeting for Sacred Spain.

11:45 Polish up communication pieces for potential Winter Nights and Summer Nights media sponsorships.

12:18 LUNCH (Lean Cuisine and Fage Yogurt).

12:38 Watch Gentleman Broncos movie trailer.

12:41 Send movie trailer to Dan Dark.

12:44 Change Twitter name from @IndyArtGirl to @MegLiffick.

12:50 COFFEE.

1:00 Catch up on emails from the morning.

1:30 Web Team!

2:50 Review and edit Group Tours corporate mailer for Sacred Spain.

3:15 Respond to email from Contemporary Curator Lisa Freiman about the prestigious national award that her husband received. Congrats, Ed!!!

3:17 Create an initial inventory of marketing materials that can include media/corporate sponsor recognition during 2010.

4:02 Continue to draft 2010 marketing plan for Public Programs.

4:48 Brainstorm about communication ideas for TAP.

5:21 Respond to remaining emails.

5:42 Leave office. Head to gym.

6:13 Check email while running on treadmill at gym. DANGEROUS!

6:16 Attempt to respond to an email while on treadmill at gym. EVEN MORE DANGEROUS!

8:15 Read IBM’s social media guidelines while watching Will Ferrell on Man Vs. Wild.

8:30 Close laptop. No more work for the day.

*Please note that I have left out some details such as phone conversations, specific email correspondences, bathroom breaks, and Facebook and Twitter checks.

Next up (Oct. 28), I’ll tackle the ginormous topic of branding a museum. Stay tuned.

Exhibition Easter Eggs in October

Daniel Incandela — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 12:51:35 +0000

I’m actually talking about Easter Eggs in the technology sense. Hidden tips, tricks, messages and so on. A bunch of us have been working on TAP: Sacred Spain for some time now and it’s been slightly exhausting. With the exhibition, Sacred Spain: Art & Belief in the Spanish World, opening this weekend, it’s been a mad dash to finalize this exhibition experience that features audio commentary, music, polls, videos and high res imagery, all accessible for $5 on an iPod Touch.

X-Ray of the Virgin of Guadalupe

Way back in September, Charlie initially wrote about TAP, giving our readers an early look at the software. The application is designed to be extremely flexible, meaning that we will be reusing TAP for future exhibitions both inside the museum and conceivably outside. Although the IMA attempted a multimedia guide back in 2005 for the American galleries (does anyone remember this?) – this will be the first time we’ve attempted this type of visitor-focused experience for an exhibition. And to think, the entire software development and authoring, content production and implementation was done entirely in-house (check out the video below for a closer look at TAP).

When it comes to new media production, a lot of footage and content goes unused in the final product. In the case of TAP – we shot and recorded hours and hours of media for the tour. Once it’s all edited and fine tuned, it boils down to about a 90 minute experience. What happens to the hours of unused material? This brings me to Easter Eggs. We wanted to provide some surprises in this tour and make use of content we ordinarily wouldn’t use. In some ways, Easter Eggs are similar to a cameo by Alfred Hitchcock. They are little surprises or experiences that were created to augment the real or planned experience. In the technology sense, they are intentional, additional pieces of content that are hidden, hard to find – but the in the end, result in a funny or unexpected discovery. What will you find?

The hidden location!

You won’t find Alfred Hitchcock on TAP – especially since he once said “Always make the audience suffer as much as possible” - but you will be able to locate secret 3-digit codes that will lead to you new stories. How do you find these Easter Eggs? Well, you can surf around HERE or come to exhibition and investigate. You might find something – are you up for the challenge?

An early look at TAP

Charlie — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 14:47:15 +0000

As publicized on the exhibition web site and in IMA’s Previews Magazine, we will be offering an iPod Touch driven multimedia tour of our exhibition, Sacred Spain, called “TAP into Sacred Spain”. The software development side of TAP is mostly complete. Now the work primarily lies in the hands of the content creators. TAP’s software design is somewhat interesting in itself. The content creators actually manage the tour content in a Drupal powered web site. We can export the tour and all associated media from the site as a plugin for the iPhone application. We developed an XMLSchema, TourML (pronouced “turmoil”), in which we conform to. The Dallas Museum of Art is actually using the same format to drive a tour that is not a native iPhone app, but rather a mobile aware web site. They have an excellent video podcast which describes this. You can find out more about this collaboration and more by visiting the MuseumMobile Wiki.

I’m going to let the images do most the talking, but please note that none of the design or content is completely finalized below.

Some IMA Summer Plans

Daniel Incandela — Thu, 28 May 2009 13:43:29 +0000

The end of the long soccer season always signals the beginning of summer for me. So, when Manchester United got soundly beaten (2-0) by a technically superior FC Barcelona last night in Rome, I immediately turned my thoughts to the summer. As you may or may not know, I occasionally try to throw in some soccer talk when possible, and I try to make it somewhat relevant. In this case, it’s the teaser into some of the things we’re doing at the IMA this summer. Not bad, huh?

New Media will have a very busy summer, both inside and out.

Regarding the great outdoors, we plan on installing more of the bird cams in 100 Acres. You may have seen this video, but our hope is to capture more activity of the critters that inhabit the park (hopefully a fox!), as well as the changes that will take place this summer with construction and the beginning of art installations. We’ll be on hand to try and capture all the activity and of course snag as many artist interviews as possible for ArtBabble. It’s not a bad time to wander out into nature with a video camera.

100 Acres, you should check it out sometime

Speaking of ArtBabble, we’re working very hard on growing the site and adding content. From IMA’s perspective, that includes our own agressive approach to producing video content, which will focus on visiting artists, exhibition related pieces and a major documentary (more on that in a future post). The broader strategy for ArtBabble is to grow engaging and innovative content from other AB partners. This means more videos and more museums. I speak for everyone at IMA when I say we’re excited about the new crop of organizations joining ArtBabble.

And if we weren’t busy enough, we’re also developing a handheld tour for the upcoming Sacred Spain exhibition. This handheld experience will function on an iPod Touch and will be available at the IMA during the exhibition. Charlie, Ed, Matt and Rob have all been busy developing the framework for the application itself. For most of the summer, we will be working very closely with curatorial, education and design staff to develop and shape the visitor experience of this handheld tour. We will focus heavily on building connections to the impressive works of art in the exhibition by using video, audio, high res imagery and a couple of other tricks up our sleeve. The main goal is not the technology itself (although I think it’s cool), but the content or stories we tell to help our visitors discover connections to the artists or their works. It’s a process much easier said than done. But much more on this in another post. In the meantime, enjoy a current mock-up of part of the interface.

Early interface design

So, what are your summer plans?