Hello Houston! You have a lovely art car show!

I’m in Houston, TX, for the 2011 American Association of Museums Annual Meeting. It’s been a great experience here, and I’m very excited to present on my summer internship at the Exploratorium tomorrow. As a student, this is a fantastic opportunity, and one in which I have the chance to represent other students and my graduate program. Our panel, Unpaid Volunteers and Interns: Perils, Pitfalls and Pearls will include perspectives of working with interns and volunteers provided by representatives from every part of the intern experience: the educational institution and program, the host organization, and the intern’s personal point of view. I hope some of you get to come by and be part of the discussion!

Until then, here are some really awesome cars from this morning’s art car show!

 

The Future

University of Oregon, AAD 550: Art & Society

The Future

How do you imagine the future of art and culture in society? How might transmedia experience/materials shape the future?

I cannot help myself but to internalize the ideologies and theories of the authors I have been so very preoccupied with recently in this late date of the quarter. And those authors cannot help themselves but to suggest the future of the arts in their writings, just what I have been asked to divine here. So forgive me, then, if what I write seems familiar, although I promise none of it is plagiarized (it may, however be weirdly brief because I’m tired, so stay with me).

the end is nigh

Lots of historians will tell you that looking into the future with any kind of accuracy demands a reflection on the past. This is no more true in any context than it is in the arts. In fact, I would go so far as to suggest that looking into the future of the arts is really a practice of conscientious and careful examination of the present. This would be based on a theory that the “arts” in any form (pick one, any one) is actually itself a practice of hindsight reflection… although I suppose it would need to be all fancy and pretty since it is the Arts. However, let’s leave that because it get’s to be a kind of time-space continuum/ flux capacitor kind of headache and this assignment is almost late already (in the near future it is late already).

archaic smile (i think kind of creepy)

But, if we are to look backwards to foretell the future of the arts, a distinct pattern may become increasingly visible, then clear, then undeniable. That the arts have become ever more democratized is hard to miss: with every step, with every new technology making every new media all the more accessible, with every new trend turning into generational aesthetic, the arts have traveled further and further away from the aloof coldness of the archaic smile to become unmistakably, and often uncomfortably, very very personal.

Digital communication technology, of course, has made art only that much more personal. Ivey and Tepper mention the concept of “curatorial me” (which instantly becomes “iCurator” in my head), and this is not such an alien idea. While many people with iPods generally enjoy music, the real unique element of an iPod is the capability of the user to select precisely what music to listen to and when. Similarly, the DIY culture that has emerged along with (and in lots of cases predating) gems on the Internet like wikiHow or eHow is in much this same vein. If it’s not there already, make it; participation with arts on a personal level includes every single grain and element the participant (me or you) wants it do, and excludes all those elements we don’t.

very, very personal arts

The demand for uniqueness of experience is characterized not only in iPods, however, but can also be distinguished in some more timely emergences, and oddly, I’m thinking specifically of the very recent mid-term elections and Obama’s subsequent “shellacking”. Although my daily experience of the news is in the form of NPR running in my living room while I get ready in the morning (because I’m afraid of ghosts that might come out at me if I let silence linger too long), I’ve heard several times now different opinions of what the results of the election are demonstrating. That the results indicate that the people are tired of stagnated legislation, that the people are rejecting the current administration, that the people are antsy for real action, etc. I have no intention of being political, but I will add my own theory about what the elections indicate: that the people (the voters) have an idea of individual “curatorial/ DYI” rights – that if what you want is not already put together for you, you gotta make it yourself – so much so that a considerable portion of the voting population has invented an unavoidable political party that is more Right-wing than the traditional Right-wing party (I’ll admit that I’m a liberal and this freaks me out). So to summarize this idea, individual curatorialism, the activity of democratizing participatory culture in general (of which the arts is certainly an important part) can include listening to a playlist you made on your iPod as well as participating in the Tea Party. This is the democratic form culture has taken most recently, although, as I said, this should be no surprise, if you have paid any attention to history.

For the arts more specifically, this personalization of participation in the arts (from deciding what is available to how the user will interact with what is available) goes hand in hand with another political trend, this one more directly related to the arts. The strategic plan of the National Endowment for the Arts for 2012 – 2016, revises the Endowment’s current focus on arts excellence and slogan, “A great nation deserves great Art,” to a focus directed at arts functionality and a new slogan, “Art works for America” (which is really cute, right?). In a way, this is a cycling backwards through history, a non-linear call back to the days of financial recovery (not unlike today) during the Great Depression and the Works Progress Administration, for which Dorothea Lange’s Migrant Mother

is the eternal synecdotal image. However, this new emphasis on function of the arts – specifically to revitalize the national economy – aligns with the “curatorial me” trend to become something new all together. While, yes, the NEA is a government agency that is clearly adopting the functional perspective of the arts, the newest trend of functional arts are pretty much entirely on an individual level. Rather than the establishment of government administrations to inject the arts into communities like in emergency intravenous tap-style, the movement of arts to revitalize the economy takes the form of millions (307 million, perhaps) of individual arts activities. Each individual citizen, in the spirit of uniqueness of experience, will approach the functionality of the arts on an individual level. This is hardly new, and certainly not only in the future (it’s happening now), but this trend may prognosticate the future of the arts in the how participation in the arts will affect participation in greater cultures and communities.

Now, I’m only half kidding here, but I see it going one of at least two ways: option A – people turn to participation in the arts as an opportunity to gain a competitive edge (as in marketable jobs skills) or unique qualities compared to their peers, and in the process become super humans capable of correcting decades of pollution and negligence to restore the earth and her children to their former glory and abundance (a’la Ivey/ Tepper’s Cultural Renaissance only better), or option B – specialization of interests that turn into specialization of skills, because people choose to only focus their attention on things that they are interested in, becomes niche identity-making and facilitates a greater socio-economic rift to usher in a Brave New World of alphas and epsilons (a’la Ivey/ Tepper’s Cultural Divide only much much worse).

I’d like to go with the kinder option, that from the terrible ruins our nation’s economy currently finds itself in, the arts can find an opportunity to emerge phoenix-like from the dried up and pale remains of arts education and arts integration to find itself an inseparable element of community and cultural experience for all citizens, based on a boutique-utilitarian perspective of arts in America. That we will all have flying – electric – cars that are pure function, but look really cool and futuro-artsy, too

 

Do you remember me? I was the sneezy grad student at that conference a week ago…

Networking… social or otherwise

I’m actually a pretty slick kid; I don’t scare easy in social situations, whether it be at some conference I’ve arrived at all by my lonesome, at a party (at which I am always responsible…), starting a new job, etc. BUT, and this is a big “but”, I can get thrown off and it can change a situation that I feel I have control of into something I feel exposed and uncomfortable in.

Case in point, right now I am missing out on some really valuable information and opportunities to interact with arts professionals and educators from all over the state in breakout sessions at the Oregon Arts Education Congress because I feel (sorry to use indelicate language) like crap. I think I’m having an allergic reaction to this city, but I could be sick, too. Either way, I’m sneezing and blowing my nose A LOT, so I’ve decided to avoid meeting people or participating in sessions for now. I’d rather not be remembered by anyone as the gross, disruptive youth in the back of the session. The downside, of course is that I won’t be remembered at all, probably.

It’s a competitive jungle out there – even in a business sector that is not profit-driven. Those of us in it to win it (hehe) need to be diligent in being part of things. The sidelines are no place to hang around when you mean to get ahead, that’s just logic. But would I be better served if I put myself out there to standout and be noticed by the groups of people who could be potential employers and key connections if I’m not making my best impression?

There are a couple of things involved in this issue. I, personally, believe people who are sick should not put others at risk by insisting on participating in situations that demand close contact or touching. I really don’t think I’m sick at all, I’m pretty sure they are allergies, but part of being a good networker is to be able to anticipate how other people are going to react to my actions. Even if I’m not sick, the fact that I keep stealing napkins from the coffee cart to blow my nose is just not attractive, and I don’t blame anyone who looks at me and thinks “ew.”

I will not have the opportunity any time soon to correct that image of me. This is a one day conference and that’s it. If I wanted to use this as a platform for getting recognition as an emergent arts leader, this small incident has destroyed that. It’s cool. I need to take care of my body first, so I figure if I am being noticed as that girl hacking and sneezing in the back, at least I will also be the girl that recognizes her priorities and takes the time to take care. That’s good for me.

So bottom line for this one: if you’re sick, stay away, don’t let yourself gain the reputation for being inconsiderate and gross; if you can’t avoid being noticed as sick, make the best of it and demonstrate your own self-awareness and resilience by negotiating the situation as best as possible.

Oregon Arts Education Congress

Oh Portland, I love you, but I don’t understand why you are trying to kill me with allergies! The Oregon Arts Education Congress in the Left Bank Annex is what has brought me here today, with the promise of networking and absorbing good ideas through osmosis, and the surprise of killer allergies.

I’m a little more than a little gross right now. I’m hoping these are allergies, but either way I feel cruddy and I don’t think anyone wants to shake my hand after I’ve sneezed into it. Since I’ve been assigned to monitor the tech in three different breakout sessions occurring simultaneously, I’m taking this opportunity to look busy and avoid hacking and blowing my nose during people’s talks. I am getting some bits and pieces, though, that I am happy to add to the Evernote public notebook, and hopefully I can be more involved when the borrowed Sudafed kicks in.

We’re here today to discuss the state of arts education in Oregon, a matter close to my heart as a former K-5 educator and as a museum administrator coordinating education and outreach programs in local schools. Some key (things) I’ve already heard:

• prompts to reconsider the function of arts in schools as elements of a new structure of learning, one that is guided by the student and facilitated by the educator, an alternative to the top-down structure of school houses
• the need for clear goal orientation, accessible funding, and collaboration between teachers, artists, and administration for successful arts residencies in schools
• professional development – we all are, and NEED to be, learning always/ constantly to allow arts education to remain relevant, to be sustainable, and to be supportable

These ideas may not be new, but they are no less salient. It’s also good to hear them reiterated over and over again, although in congruence with the OAS early last month, is there a way to integrate the arts in education is such a way that the ideals and goals of the arts are evoked in the very process of advocating for them? Can we change the structure as a whole, rather than picking at spots in order to maje a more dramatic change in education?

Also, there were puppets here – some were a little scary, but they were mostly silly and fun.

Mudeye puppet Company at the OAEC

The Aesthetic of Our Time

University of Oregon, AAD 550: Art & Society

What is the aesthetic of our time?

In what ways do practices, ideas, narratives, or ideologies associated with this aesthetic depend on transmediations?

Although it’s tempting to say “technology” or “new media” (on a side note, “new media” is one of my least favorite phrases, up there with “sustainable” and “tool-kit”) is the aesthetic that characterizes our time, I’ll have to say that’s not quite enough. There are several moving parts to this exercise, but first we’ll need some definitions…

‘Aesthetic’: The first time I read this word anywhere was on the cover of an outdated and discounted art history text. At the time, I was obsessed with the Beatles and I made it a point to look in the index of every book I came across to see if the Beatles had made it in as some kind of reference (you’d be surprised where you’ll find references to the Beatles, they’re pretty much everywhere). Being naiive and with no one around to correct me, I started pronouncing the word sounding every letter out: “Ay-es-thee-tik”. It wasn’t until I was much older that I began to understand (and properly pronounce) the philosophy of beauty and feeling. That it is what characterizes taste, but also what humans feel captures the essence of what to be, what to strive for. Beauty and perfection, the unattainable goals defined by their unattainability.

Lovely. Aesthetics can characterize those styles and concepts that we hungrily collect around ourselves to surround ourselves with what we deeply wish to be.

‘Our Time’: “who’s time?” and “who’s time is it not?” Does this mean my time? Is my time the same as the baby-boomers’ time, is it the same as the time of the Yirrkala (Aboriginal Australians) in Arnhem Land? I realize this is an issue of terms, but if we’re looking to understand what the philosophies of beauty and perfection are of a people, these distinctions, if they need to be made at all, are important.

In an episode from WNYC’s RadioLab, Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich discuss the concept of time and thinking beyond the traditional Western-European/American concept of linear time. They introduce a conceptual artist, David McDermott, whose voice sounds to me a lot like David Sedaris‘. McDermot refuses to live in the modern world, rejects it whole-heartedly for a sense of the past he has built around him through material collections and daily practices that I don’t mind saying sound utterly absurd. This artist refuses to use the Internet, rejects light bulbs, and even avoids using the ATM. Does the ‘Our Time’ include this guy? He is a “contemporary artist” (although I have the feeling he would really reject the title), living in this generation and experiencing the world (in his own unique way) at the same time as us lot.

Our time, as humans, in Carl Sagan’s cosmic calendar began 5 minutes before midnight on December 31. Our time, as citizens of the universe, began as Brahma opened his eyes, and it will be destroyed as he closes them.

Carl Sagan is one of my heroes

The aesthetic of our time, broadly, is synchronicity. We like things to come together and have meaning when they do. In Our Time, people are invested in making things make sense, and without the compartmentalization of previous generations. Instead, we pursue sync and harmony between all elements; we pray that they can come together and make something worth living. This includes the Euro-American obsession with social networking, mobile media, mass media, “new media”, etc. It also includes the indigenous struggle for identity in Post-Colonial regions. It is balance David McDermott seeks in his work to restore the past in the present, to create a balance where the universe has slid away from a period of time he treasures. Synchronicity is why when I was 12, I fanatically searched for references to the Beatles in random books. Why I looked for echoes of their innovations in later music, and why I used to fall asleep with headphones on blasting through the White Album and Abbey Road on repeat hoping I could get the Beatles into my dreams. A neurotic, weird little girl, I was searching for the Grecian thread that bound all the most significant and insignificant experiences of my life together, to give it meaning and purpose.

While many in our generation have rejected organized religion and the idea of a central God, we have not abandoned the search for mysticism and design in the happenstance occurrences of our everyday… in our time.

Part I: Oregon Arts Summit (Oct. 7)

Wow, I totally had the idea that we were going to Corvallis was the first coherent thing I said on Thursday morning. It was a cold enough morning that after riding my bike to the campus, the mascara on my lashes had stuck to itself and had clumped around my eyes, dramatizing my sleepiness. Our carpool pulled around a Dutch Brothers coffee stop, and as the four of us girls took turns ordering different variations of caffeine and milk, the server looked us over and said You ladies going into work?

 

really good coffee

 

Well, no, but kind of yes. We’re university students, not really professionals, yet, but driving out to Portland (twice the distance to Corvallis) to attend the Oregon Arts Summit to hear how the other half lives, and to maybe wriggle our way into this elusive world of arts leaders and administrators. We’re going to listen and learn, which as students is our jobs, so yes, we’re going in to work.

One hundred seven miles later, we were there: the Tiger Woods Center at Nike Headquarters in Beaverton, at the OAS. With the lightheaded feeling of actual and metaphorical arrival, I became aware of the sense that now really was time to work. This was the annual meeting of arts organization representatives from all around the state. The Summit was a practice in democratic discussion, an opportunity for arts leaders, managers, and administrators to bring to topic their most pressing issues – from board politics to community outreach strategies. From these discussions, participants – including university students – could go back to their communities and act upon the key issues that had been brought up. The OAS was a kind of bottom-up program of raising local and community issues to representatives from the Oregon Arts Council, and active solutions could be devised to take home. Some of these solutions, and some of the new ideas presented at the Summit, could even include the impetus of new cultural policy-making.

Perhaps the most demonstrative activity of democratic, bottom-up conversation at the summit could have been the active twittering, blogging, and messaging going around in the buzz of discussion. The 2010 Oregon Arts Summit transformed the community conversation into a multi-dimensional, metaphysical experience in sharing information and key issues with peers, future leaders, and the public. This activity created the opportunity for real cohesive exploration of widespread matters directly affecting arts communities that could be directly addressed by state council representatives and policy-makers. Communication technology has allowed constituents and those on the ground and in the action to have access to the processes of decision-making that will impact them most immediately.

 

this is the image that comes up first in google images for "disruptive innovation"

 

If there ever was a time to bring up those issues, the pressing matters that affect arts organizations and community institutions, the Summit was the time to do it. While the conference attracted administrators from different regions and organizations with diverse scopes and interest, it also combined the talents of many individuals, prompting collaborative thinking processes. At the same time as raising its own catalytic ideas for industry development and progress, embodied in the theme, “Disruptive Innovation”, the Summit also invited its participants to be proactively involved in the policy and industry change not only in their own organizations, regions, or cities, but also in those of their peers and fellow arts leaders for bigger, more impacted effect. Prof. Howard Gardner, one of the panel participants in some of the breakout sessions, encouraged the participants to think of collaboration, and the need for partnership within teams in organizations in order to access successful programming and organizational development. There is nothing to suggest that the same devotion to democracy and collaboration couldn’t work between different organizations as well. This is how change and progress is made, this is how organizations can stay relevant and vital in their communities.

My involvement this time around, as an infant professional, is the same as I hope it to be in the future, when I’m a full-grown professional. I hope to come to learn and to throw out my own ideas, although perhaps less sheepishly – at one point I blushed and began my comment with Well, I am just an intern, but I have this idea (…). What came away with me from this Summit is that everyone there is a stakeholder in our industry, that we all have something to offer as well as something to lose, grad student, seasoned administrator, whatever. These conferences are our platform for raising issues on behalf of our constituents and our organizations, to be exposed to the arts sector of the state. This is the network our industry depends on for practical solutions, and it’s vital for all participants to come expecting to learn, listen, be challenged, and participate in collaborative thinking in order for it to work.

Prelude: Conference Season for Nubes and HOP

Between October and November this year, I will have attended a few professional conferences focusing on management in the arts and cultural sector. As an “emerging arts leader,” the conferences have been unique opportunities for me to get real experience of the practical world of arts management, opportunities

herding cats for beginners

I would be remiss to not share on my “emergent arts blog.” Without trying to seem too pretentious, I really think that the perspective of a “nobody” grad student like me could be valuable to the wider community of arts and culture administrators. For one thing, I’ll probably be wrong about some things, or miss something big, so this is a fine opportunity for any seasoned a&c veterans out there to get in touch with the generation that is right at your heels. Also, this could be a chance to see how us kids see, for those of you who may be removed from your formative years by much experience and a little time. Emergent arts leaders like myself and my cohort find ourselves in a curious position – a limbo between once being only on the outside of the administrative world in the sector, looking in as target audiences and constituents, and someday being “in the know” although perhaps a little removed from our previous assumptions and possible misconceptions. We’re balanced right now between theory and practicality, between us being us and us being them.

Following this I will post my reflections of the conferences in a 3 part series: The OAS (Oct. 7), the WMA (Oct. 16-20), and the OAEC (upcoming Nov. 8).

Interestingly, all these conferences were/will be held in Portland, OR, which is great because Portland is great, and it’s pretty convenient for me, living in Eugene as I do (I guess it’s really not that interesting since two of the conferences are organized by the same state council on the arts, but I was definitely lucky the WMA was held in the Lloyd Center this year).

I am a little bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, I’ll admit, but it’s a fun time to suddenly look around and be able to understand what’s going on. I can compare it to the sensation of first learning to read. Not that this was a sudden experience for me, or one that I can remember very clearly. I remember when I was about 3, my parents bought me “Hooked on Phonics” to get me an early start on reading (very early I realize now). Of course, being waaaay young, I didn’t really pick it up very quickly. I did have a surprisingly cogent thought, however. I thought “Won’t it be cool when I can just look at these letters and words and be able to automatically understand what they mean, without having to really think about it?” I remember that experience, I remember not being able to read. And then, connected to that memory is another one from a few years later when I realized I had achieved just that: I could read street signs from my seat in the car as my mom drove around downtown San Francisco (of course, being plagued with chronic motion sickness, I immediately became nauseated after having this singular evolutionary experience) without feeling like I didn’t have the chance to see every letter and hear every sound to make single words in my head. It’s a corny story, but that’s my experience of having learned to read, and realizing that I had after a long time learning through immersion and practical application. It’s what I’m experiencing now as I realize that I don’t need to struggle through cultural policy readings anymore, with negotiating an organizational chart, or navigating line items on a budget. Maybe these are all skills most people learn in other contexts for whatever reason, but to me it’s new. And I’m new to it.

Summer Internship with the Exploratorium

University of Oregon, AAD: Internship

 

 

During the summer of 2010, I completed my AAD internship requirement with the San Francisco Exploratorium Volunteer Services Department. My duties as the intern were to support the Volunteer Services Manager, my supervisor Deirdre Araujo, and the volunteers in the department – mainly high school and university students completing their own course requirements. My supportive role included creating and managing volunteer programs, maintaining the department office, and assisting the Manager in daily operations. I also offered my volunteer help at museum events throughout the summer.

The internship was an invaluable educational experience, and I was given the gracious opportunity not only to be involved in the administrative work of the museum, but also to meet so many wonderful people, and create some cherished friendships.

 

 

Although I admit that is a little gushy – and I am no fan of gush in professional capacities – I really do think that the personal impact of the internship is inseparable from the practical experience I gained. I learned how to manage volunteers, how to work with people from different departments within the museum, even people from different fields and disciplines all together. The project of working with different people and negotiating different situations throughout the summer – the spontaneous characteristic of the non-profit and arts sector compounded with the unpredictability of working with volunteer staff – required a certain kind of adaptability and flexibility. These were skills that at the beginning of the summer I had not yet had the chance to develop and exercise, but by the time the summer was over, I felt incredibly empowered by my experiences to navigate the labyrinthine industry of museums, arts, science, and culture.

The greatest element in my internship and the immense satisfaction and sense of accomplishment I have coming away from the summer, was undoubtedly the relationship I built with my supervisor.

 

 

With the risk of descending again into unforgivable gush, I’d like to say that her incomparable managerial skills – her ability to enable me (and the volunteers who work with her) to be successful, while also inspiring the aspiration for excellence in work and product – have not only instilled in me a greater desire to be a dedicated and invested member of the museum community, but have also given me a role model. She is someone I admire, trust, and wish to someday be able to reflect in my own work and with an ability to inspirit others as she has for me.

Although that might seem like a departure from the practical skills I was assigned to absorb in the internship requirement, although my gushiness for Deirdre seems a little too fluffy to be counted among the essential applied take-aways I should have gotten over the summer (and I did, by the way), it is the contrary. Through working with her so closely over the summer (my internship totaled 353 hours over 13 weeks), I had the opportunity to emulate the master-apprentice experience of old, a relationship leading to excellence that has never been discounted, but has ultimately waned in so many fields as it has become “impractical” by bottom-line standards. Deirdre’s attention to me, my needs, and my abilities allowed me to offer my best work to her, to grow and create a personal investment in the work I did, giving me the confidence to be a professional in a field that is plagued by inner-competition and attention malnourishment. Like a back flip, working in museums and the arts and cultural sector is 75% confidence (I made that up, but couldn’t help the reference), at least for an emerging arts professional like myself and the others in my cohort.

 

 

Before heading off to our different internships all over the country, some in other parts of the world, each member of our cohort designed individual “work learning goals and objectives” as indicators of success (or, forbid, failure) of our internship experiences. I met mine. I had the opportunity to develop programs for different audiences, utilizing different skills, abilities, and interests of volunteer staff. I managed the work of volunteers and maintained departmental accountability. I even got to orient new volunteers, which I thought was cool, because up until then it felt like the most power I’ve ever had. So from that perspective, it was a successful internship. I admit, though, I had confidence that no matter what, even if I hated where I ended up, I would have gotten those skills anyway. They are easy to come by for a lot of people and I count myself in that team. What is difficult, and what was really valuable, was the ability to wield those skills in the right context, to use them to create better things, beyond the projected capacity, and to use them to allow others to also be successful.

So, fine, gushy and fluffy. I can’t really help it because, anyway, I am talking about the arts and cultural sector, and what is really more fluffy than that?

Choosy Institutions Choose Not to See

A little while ago, an episode of This American Life mentioned that fun thing writers, theorists and really anyone, do sometimes with scientific theories – turn them into metaphors for completely different contexts. As in “if we believe that the balance and order of the universe was begat and is maintained by elemental tension inherent in all material, then we can draw parallels to the origination of institutional movements within chaotic environments righting themselves according to systems with the least resistance and therefore this is the most natural and logical model of organization development.”

Hubble captures a galactic cloud

When these kinds of thought activities were discussed on TAL, it was in a lamentation sort of way, where the speaker burst out that it was super annoying to him and he wished people wouldn’t go there. I totally understand, of course, these kinds of thought experiments are laced with fallacy and misrepresentation of the meaning of theories. Transplanting a theory from one discipline to another – such as from astronomy to business management – is really inappropriate. But, it’s also really fun. If I can take this a step further, I will stretch the cross-disciplinary abomination to also include human psychology. People like to find connections and see threads of similarity between different things, even if they are totally different and have no business mixing together. People like those theoretical parallels among different field because it’s harmonious and people like pretty things. So I say go for it… and go for it I shall.

All that was just a clumsy prelude to my real intentions here.

At the Western Museums Association conference today, Paul Gabriel lead one of the breakout sessions with a small group of panelists, What Turns on Visitor Imagination? It was a really great panel with Lynn McRainey of the Chicago History Museum, Peggy Mohahan of the Exploratorium, and Tina Keegan of the Palo Alto Junior Museum and Zoo. Gabriel and all the panelists were excellent in giving quick, intuitive, and meaningful tips from their own work for creating engaging and effective experiences for all visitors. One of the most important elements that I walked away with today was the need for institutions to let go of expectations for their audiences and instead allow organic experiences to generate between the visitor and the collections. This call echoed a sub-theme from the Oregon Arts Summit last Thursday: be willing to fail, and when you fail, use it to do something. I like the idea of embracing failure, there is a similar philosophy in education, that a society that allows its members to experience failure not only exposes its constituents to greater opportunities for growth, but also relieves potentially damaging effects of recoil when failure is inevitably encountered (see: CFP 2009, Open Economy 2009, this abstract). It’s all a part of letting go of the white knuckle death-grip many institutions and sector leaders have kept around the neck of the industry.

yay lolcats!

Part of this, too, is the need for museum staff and exhibit planners to be able to take a different perspective, namely the visitor’s perspective, of the institution. The sense of flatness and single-mindedness among many within the arts and cultural sector is inescapable, although not irreparable. The symptom expressed is a disconnect between museums and some of their audiences – why don’t visitors like to spend time looking at this one exhibit we spent so much money designing and presenting? The symptom is the dissonance between what museums expect their audience to be engaged with, interested in, or provoked by, and what actually does move those audiences. The disease to treat, however, is that single-mindedness.  Of course it’s much easier to say, “well, then, just stop thinking like a museum and think more like a visitor,” because museums and visitors have different goals, although they are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Instead, perhaps it’s enough for now to say, “well, then, be more conscious that your thinking as a museum may limit your ability to empathize and better serve your communities.”

Be aware. Keep in mind what you are likely to always be lacking: the point of view of your most important assets: your audiences. The parallel I’d like to draw here (to bring this wandering post back to it’s inception with TAL) is useful and also fun. Think of institutional single-mindedness as the same thing as selective attention: we focus on what we think is important, often missing something really important (or just super great). To animate this point, consider the below video that tests Selective Attention. It’s sort of a popular video, so if you’ve seen it before, the effect will probably be lost, but the message is still there. Otherwise, if this is new to you, watch the video once all the way through and follow the directions given at the beginning… it’s pretty cool.

the Politics of Participation

University of Oregon, AAD 550: Art and Society

What are the politics of participation – in curation, collecting, critiquing, etc? How do power and social practice intersect? How do power and social practice intersect in transmedia environments?

 

The Bather, Ingres

 

The idea of “power” in relation to participation almost immediately made me think of Caesar and the “power of the gaze”. This is probably a familiar concept to other art historians or visual culturalists.

In the typical use, the “power of gaze” refers to the assumed agency of a subject as it is gazed upon by a viewer. In many examples from art history, the subject is a nude female figure represented in any media whose eyes are averted. In this example, the power in the relationship belongs to the viewer. The viewer looking at the representation is able to see the figure as an exposed subject, but the subject cannot see the viewer (basically a practice of voyuerism, although that would depend on the intention of the viewer). However, some historians have suggested a complete opposite effect of an unreciprocated gaze between viewer and subject. Caesar, when parading  with his court through the avenues of ancient Rome, would place himself in a position and dress in such extravagance so as to be conspicuous among all the other attendants and paraders. He would want to be seen, but at the same time, he would gaze off and not meet others’ eyes, he would not return their gaze upon him, and in this way he would affect power over those who were compelled to look at him. The same is true of casual relationships between any number of people.

 

Julius Caesar

 

Imagine talking with someone you know in class or in a meeting, and imagine that during your conversation, he never once looks you in the eye. I think that would be unsettling, for sure, but is it any more or less unsettling than if the same guy instead stares into your eyes for long periods of time? The issue then, is the ability to participate or not participate, and therein lies the power-granting element that is either usurped or stolen between the viewer and the subject.

It’s not the ability to look and not be seen or to be seen and not have to look, it’s the ability to make a choice between being seen or not seen, looking or not looking. That, to me, is participatory politics, being the choice is often whether or not to participate, and sometimes whether or not to allow someone else to participate. That power comes down to reciprocal values. It also touches on social practices, what kind of behavior is expected in a relationship in order to respect every participating party in that relationship by maintaining comfort and agency. Back to the example of your buddy in the meeting: with the caveat that this guy doesn’t have any social inhibitions or developmental disabilities, it’s rude and weird to not make eye contact when you are communicating, and it’s rude and creepy to stare. Or, at least it is in a Euro-American western society. The ability to negotiate these relationships comfortably, to chose whether or not to participate or allow someone else to participate, are fundamental human freedoms that are accepted and expected in most Western cultures, dictating appropriate social behavior.

 

Animal from the Muppets v. Dan Kanopka from OK Go in a starting contest

 

However, at some point with the mobility and access granted by contemporary communication technology those distinctions between comfortable, weird, and creepy, are unnervingly blurred. Take, for instance, a new example, one still rooted in visual culture, however completely distorting the relationship of viewer and subject. (Forgive me for this possibly indelicate example). In an online chat room dedicated to “romantic” relationships (romantic being used as an indicator of culture rather than an emotional experience), especially one that includes webcams, there is no longer a mutually exclusive activity of viewing or being viewed. The subject with the webcam is able to create an emotion or an impulse in the viewer. The viewer, who perhaps does not have a webcam, is able to maintain complete and selective anonymity. In this transverse environment, both parties can enact power on each other with different intentions and effects simultaneously. As it does in countless other contexts, technology enables the collapse of distinctions and identifiable relationships. In a community where exchange is the only mode of existence (you really don’t exist on the internet if you never log on, nothing of yourself is ever communicated in this media and so you really have nothing to do with it.) participation is not only a granted right, but it is the only possibility. You can only participate, opting out is not an option.

What happens to the power, then? One can’t have power unless there is another entity that is powerless, otherwise it means nothing. But everyone has power, at least to some extent, everyone in this environment can personally control how much she participates and how much she allows others to participate in her activity. Very much like an object in motion in a vacuum, power relationships are propelled in every whatever direction, without the impulse to stop or be restricted. Media that allows multitudinous levels of action or inaction in singular participants throws the assumed system of participation/power into disarray, allowing this relationship not to be enacted and maintained, but rather constantly renegotiated.

How do power and social practice intersect in transmedia environments? On multi-dimensional planes that are hardly imaginable.