Posted: July 4th, 2010 | Author: Jasper Visser | Filed under: Innovation, Thoughts about museums | Tags: challenge, future, inspiration, museums, people | 8 Comments »
This is an article I wrote for the (recently launched) project Creating Trustville. This project is a place for ideation of new social structures and the conceptualisation of the institutions of the future, started by Vandejong.
What is a museum?
Over the course of history museums have had to reinvent themselves a couple of times. Once they housed the private collections of kings and other leaders. Their audience: the owner’s friends and enemies whom he wished to impress. Then museums became centres of research, romanticised in the late 20th century in movies such as Indiana Jones. In the meantime museums had discovered their public role, often housing elaborate educational and visitor programmes.
In the early 21st century, with the Internet and the 2.0 revolution, museums all over the world flirted with yet another meaning for themselves. Visitors became actors. The recently launched YouTube Play project of the Guggenheim museum in New York exemplifies this change. Online video artists have a change to see their work displayed in one of the most renowned museums in the world. It is my strong believe that by the year 2020 this paradigm shift in thinking about museums and their role in society will have had a lasting impact on the sector.
So, what will a museum be in 2020?
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Posted: June 1st, 2010 | Author: Jasper Visser | Filed under: Audience, Interaction | Tags: community, connections, conversation, do's and don'ts, guidelines, Interaction, people, storytelling, tips | No Comments »
Today was the fifth edition of Mediamatic’s Kom Je Ook? conference.* Today’s topic was storytelling. Storytelling seems to be hot. As some of the speakers at today’s conference pointed out today, however, it’s nothing new. Virgil’s Aeneid and Homer’s Iliad used to be told as stories. That’s a long time ago. Storytelling once was the only real source of information sharing we had. The Moroccan storytellers who still tell the stories of A Thousand and One Nights are one of the many examples of this ancient tradition, still present today.
So, what we’re doing is trying to reinvent an old tradition. Fortunately, most of today speakers showed that we haven’t thrown away X million years of experience with storytelling. Actually, we might have made some small steps forward. Or regained some lost skills.
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Posted: May 27th, 2010 | Author: Jasper Visser | Filed under: Exhibitions, Innovation, Technology | Tags: community, exhibition, experience, inspiration, pilots, practice | 3 Comments »
An automatiek type vending machine, or trekmuur – “pull wall” – as we call it in Dutch, is a traditional piece of robust technology used to sell deep-fried snacks. Many visitors to Holland might have seen it, especially late at night when they’re popular places to get something to eat.
Over the last years some machines started to sell other stuff than traditional Dutch snacks. There are ones that sell Chinese food and even sunglasses, but that’s about all the innovation the machines have seen. The Museum of National History and Mediamatic decided to take the vending machine to the next level. Yesterday we launched the pilot of this project. Read the rest of this entry »
