My heart goes pitter-patter every time I ride up the escalator and catch a glimpse of the spectacular Gravity’s Loom. Hear from the artists who created the commanding yet ethereal work:

Have you had a chance to see it? What do you think?

Filed under: Art, Interviews

Last week, I was lucky enough to spend a few days in London at the 2010 Tate Handheld Conference where a group of really smart folks were gathered to plan and brainstorm ways that museums can take advantage of new advances in mobile technology.

Planning the Future of Museum Mobile Experiences @ Tate

Many of you may know that the IMA has been really active in building mobile content for our main website, our special exhibitions, and 100 Acres.  One of the things I love about working at the IMA is that we always try to give a little love back to our museum buddies when we undertake new projects.  That’s why we’ve made all the software for these mobile experiences available for free to anyone who’d like to play around with them.

While I’m happy that many museums can pick these tools up and use them for their own content, it won’t be the right solution for everyone.  In fact, it only solves just part of the problem.

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Filed under: Technology

I decided to keep this volley a bit less cluttered than my “space pirates” version. I had made some vector bug outlines a long time ago and this seemed like a good time to use one. I used ants silhouettes to style the word “nature”. I’ve always been a huge fan of the Praying Mantis. I changed the mood by making it much darker. It’s starting to look like a scary/sci-fi movie poster to me now. Stay tuned for @jmscottimd’s final volley in this round coming soon.

See the other two round 2 serves before mine:

Also, see all four volleys from round 1 here.

Also, be sure to check out Aaron’s latest graphic design battle shenanigans over at at the official site of Layers Tennis. An epic battle of the beards sure to make you say wow.

Filed under: Art, Design, Local, Technology

Recently Google Maps posted an update to their imagery in the Indianapolis area. We have been looking forward to this update to see how 100 acres would look from the sky.

Seeing the progress of the park from these photos makes it appear that these images were taken a couple weeks before the park officially opened.

Since we are using Google Maps to create a mobile experience in the park, our application received an automatic update as well. If you browse to the IMA website on your mobile phone or use this link to go directly to the map: 100 Acres Map; You will see the updated imagery along with further information about each work and the nature around it.

Filed under: Art and Nature Park, Technology

Thanks to everyone who participated in our survey last week! Your feedback means a lot to us and has provided some interesting insights into how this little segment of our audience is thinking about mobile tours. As promised, here are the results we got from last weeks questions. I’ll generally try to summarize a bit and I’d be really interested in your thoughts / comments about what you see in the data too.

The graph below shows that most people are really intrigued by the possibilities of accessing mobile content from their own devices, follow by slightly fewer respondents who felt like they’d prefer to rent a device that was guaranteed to work.  If you’ve been following the blog, you’ll know that we most recently released a tour for the 100 Acres park that anyone with a internet-capable smartphone can experience. (visit http://www.imamuseum.org/ on your mobile phone and look for 100 Acres)  Internally at the IMA we’re still looking for that “right” balance between devices that we maintain and a user’s own device.  We’d be interested in your feedback in the comments if you have a good thought or opinion.

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Filed under: New Media, Polls, Technology