Community: bloggers@brooklynmuseum

Brooklyn Museum has just joined some of the other non-profits hosting content in the Beyond Campus area of iTunes U (tip of the hat to Despi at IMA for initial info on this). For us, the idea seemed like a good one because it allows us to host long-format content in a setting where people want to find it. Many of the Universities using iTunes U are hosting lectures and we’ve got a ton of artist talks and panel discussions, so this seemed like the right location to do it. In addition, we’ve always wanted to find an easy way our visitors could download our audio tour content right to their iPods and the iTunes U setup accomplishes this. Finally, all of our content is all in one place. We’ll still be uploading to YouTube and blip.tv as appropriate, but iTunes U gives us the ability to host everything in one location without file size and length limits.

When working with the iTunes U template, we wanted to keep our categorization as simple as possible. Most of the traffic to our own website goes to three areas: Exhibitions, Collections, and Visit. In iTunes U, you’ll find our content divided into three categories to mirror this idea. The jury is still out on if this will work for us in this venue, but we are giving it a go and keeping it simple for now. On the right hand side, we are owning the “wisdom of the crowd” and showcasing top downloaded content which seems like an interesting way to get visitors deeper into the site.

If any colleagues are thinking about doing this, feel free to give us a ring if you need any information.

I’m happy to mention that Brooklyn-based artist Paul Notzold will be bringing TXTual Healing to our upcoming Target First Saturday on May 3rd. I’ve long been an admirer of this project and am thrilled to be able to see it live and in-person in our lobby.

TXTual Healing is an ongoing series of interactive performances that encourage the creation of dialog through text messaging from mobile phones. The project harnesses the SMS capabilities of the cell phone as a medium to interact with and explore our shared public and physical space, not as a means to escape it. TXTual Healing builds community through public story telling.

Using the speech bubble as a symbol for communication, participants send text messages to a provided phone number that automatically, anonymously, and in real time, displays these messages inside the bubbles projected onto the facade of a building. The result of projecting in shared public space give participants in the street a voice as loud as the corporate and government entities who financially predetermine the information in these spaces.

TXTual Healing encourages the public sharing of thoughts, experiences and ideas using networked mobile devices that typically support more private communications. Positioning the projections next to windows, or integrating the SMS interactivity with religious, political and socially charged graphics, invites people to share their own uncensored views of the information around them in the form of interactive theater.

For our installation, Paul has adapted the system to display images from our Utagawa exhibition  and worked with our Education and Curatorial staff to give txters questions to ponder. If you are coming this Saturday, be sure to bring your cell phone and if not we will be posting photos to Flickr and hopefully a really awesome video soon after the event.

Pics in this post are from the dry run last Tuesday.  While I was in Denver for AAM, Bob was having fun testing and sending me pics (see below - very funny Bob).