Categorising digital visitor contributions: Should you take God at face value?

Photo UCL, Grant Museum of Zoology / Matt Clayton

I’ve been undertaking some open coded analysis of visitor contributions to the QRator iPad’s in the Grant Museum for my PhD.  It is fascinating to assess the contributions and try and create categories based on the types of visitor comments.  At the most basic there three key categories; comments about the museum, comments about the topic discussed on the iPad and associated specimen cases, and then there’s Spam (not as much as you would expect).  But then there are comments like this one:

“This museum make no sense! Everybody kn[o]ws that GOD created man and beasts and that there is no such thing as evolution. You should be ashamed!!”

I don’t quite know how to categorise this.  This is one of the big problems with analysing textual data, without having any background information on the visitor who provided the comment.  I don’t know if this is a true belief or a joke.  It is really hard to remain neutral and not create researcher bias when a comment like this comes up.  If it is a visitor’s honest opinion, then how cool is that?  It is something that I haven’t really seen reflected in a Science Museum before, that I am aware of anyway (other than the creationist museum).  How do you deal with concepts from religious beliefs when working with zoological or in fact any biological collections?  Should there be an alternative interpretation to that of the scientific?  I’m a firm believer in the idea that there are multiple interpretations to objects, as every visitor brings their own interpretation, whether it is based on ‘fact’ or not, it is always based on previous experience.  So should museums be encouraging more religion based labels in their interpretative programming?  But then again, if it’s a joke, how do I categorise it? Should I take it as face value and class it as a visitor opinion about the museum? Should it count as spam as it isn’t really relevant to the topical discussion? How would you categories comments like this?

Regardless of how to categorise it, comments like this one highlight the usefulness of digital content creation between visitors and the museum.  It’s changing the way people think, not only visitors and curator but researchers like me. I love it when interesting visitor comments make me think differently about how to categorise, how to interpret and how to represent objects in new ways.  Gotta love digital technology for opening up the conversation.

How does a museum move 67,000 specimens into a new venue?

I’ll let Jack and this brilliant video explain moving the Grant Museum…

 

I have only been involved in a small part of this move, the digital part of course, but it has been amazing to watch how it has developed, and grown into a fantasticly beautiful, engaging, thought provoking space.

Yesterday’s objects: the death and afterlife of every day things: Preserving Video Game culture notes

Last week I attended a really interesting event run but the Autopsies group entitled Yesterday’s objects: the death and afterlife of every day things.  It gave plenty of food for thought. I really enjoy conferences as I become very absorbed in the topics being discussed, and get very over excited about ideas and concepts and cant wait to see how I can fit those ideas into my daily work.  Over the next few posts I will attempt to bring my quick and dirty notes from the day in to some sort of coherent whole.

First up is the first presentation of the day on the session “Keeping yesterdays objects: Museums and Galleries”

Mark Carnall – Preserving Video Game culture: making the same mistakes with a new medium

Mark discussed the issues of Social acceptance of video games, or lack of. Posing the question “Are we missing an opportunity ?” Because video games are quite niche, the opportunity to preserve is being lost because it is not considered important.  All digital media are vulnerable to long-term loss, particularly video games. There are very few systematic attempt to preserve video games, despite video games being  an important part of modern popular culture. Robert Ebert’s recent journal article titled “Video games can never be art” is a recent example of how video games are still tentatively striving for a concrete affirmation of social acceptance.

Mark’s presentation reminded my of the brilliantly titled Grand Theft Archive, which attempts to understand the reasons for the current lack of video game preservation in the UK and suggests that this understanding is necessary in order to develop strategies of preservation and archiving  for the future.  Mark also pointed out that there is hardly any discussion about how museums should/could/need to display video games in museums. But of course we cant archive and display everything, are people right to let video games slip through the net?

Ideas were discussed about the broken games industry. Years of development active shelf life measured in weeks. There is little interest in backward compatibility. Boom and bust game development studies.   Computer and video games formats become redundant very quickly. Eg. Xbox 2002. Some formats that have become obsolete and require the original media or hardware as a condition of access. Users on the companies behalf have been trying to preserve but being told that they cant.

An opportunity- imagine how carious media histories would be different with a ‘full’ record. Video games are just past the tipping point whereby a ‘full’ history could be preserved. How should we go about it?

Do established measures of archiving still apply?

A design argument, the best designed games don’t have or need instructions but the real mind blowing stuff happens in gameplay mode which is complicated. Give a stranger a controller see what happens. Instinct is an important part of gaming. So play thought facilitated play and wider non object focused evernt. Context and authenticity. Playing the ‘right’ way.  Can you archive that?

Are video games museum going to be as elitist and niche as the worst art gallery?

Authenticity – which version is the authentic version? When preserving technology  authenticity quiet often goes out of the window

Anatomy of a video game-  what do you archive? The finished game, which may not physically exist. Finished game in all its versions, box, manual marketing materials, adverts, merchandise, films, design docs, other assets music, press reviews interviews trailers demos DLC, authors recollections 100s or even 1000s of people. Actions in the game itself. Community feedback- which takes many forms, fan art fan fiction, music remixes, video, video reviews, whole books. Games and other media inspired by it. Preserving Actions in a game? How on earth do you do it?

Inaccessibility is an issue.

Some examples of museums that have displayed video games

The national video game archive

La muse du jeu video (i like their website it makes me smile)

Game on exhibition at the science museum

Strong museum http://uk.gamespy.com/articles/106/1064646p1.html

However Mark mentioned that many of the examples he talked about were simply random collections of stuff, or a timeline of objects. One way conservation. No community.  Which fails to capture the excitement around games and the massive gaming community. Is that the way forward? crowdsourcing collections and exhibitions of niche popular objects? sounds like a cool idea.

The aftermath.

The past 48hours have been quite something.

You may or may not have noticed the large amount of press coverage about a certain Mr Murdoch, involving opinions on creativity, culture, humanities, digital content and in particular the British Library; that were flying around online today. I don’t think a bunch of overly tired, yet still buzzing digital humanists have been so excited in a confined space with flower pot muffins before. (some coverage can be found here, here, here, here, and here and many many more places)

Why? Well…  We officially launched the UCL Centre for Digital Humanities yesterday evening! Hooray!  James Murdoch, Chairman and CEO of News Corporation, the guest speaker gave a really interesting speech with some strong opinions (you can read the full text of the speech here).

It’s going to be really interesting to hear the alternate view of what James Murdoch spoke about.  There are a lot of strong opinions flying around, particularly with regards to cultural heritage institutions and electronic publishers and digital humanists.  I have yet to get my brain in gear about my thoughts on what James was suggesting.  It will be very interesting to hear the responses from others, particularly those championing freely available digital content .  ucldh are seeing what we can do to facilitate that response. watch this space. If you want to respond do let us know.

For me though, it wasn’t the speech that was the highlight of the launch, for one, I didn’t actually get to see James speak. I was running (well walking quickly whilst trying to maintain an air of decorum –most likely failing) with a clip board and an iphone trying to make sure everything went smoothly. Yes, I can now add, major event planning to my repertoire. No, this isn’t my job. For the past month as well as working on three research projects I have been juggling quite possibly the biggest (I don’t think I have ever seen as much bottles of champagne in my life) event I have ever been a part of. Crazy. Myself and my colleague Simon took up the organisation  of the launch after another colleague had to take leave unexpectantly. I don’t think we really knew what we were letting ourselves in for. I’ve organised conferences before, but nothing like this! We have been so busy, I think I have forgotten what hot tea tastes like as I never had time to drink it. But it all came to a head this week. Its been stressful, but brilliant. Yesterday involved so much running around, phone calls, emails, sticky wotsits, logos and name badges.  During the day, what could go wrong did go wrong. Thank goodness for  iphones – they were our life saver yesterday, also my ability to memorise securities multiple phone numbers (my number memory response is now at all time high). But the event itself was a triumph! (i hope)  we may have been paddling furiously under the water, but on top we had the elegance of a swan! It was the people who came to the event, the people who helped, the people who gave us their time and energy, and most importantly the people who gave their smiles yesterday, that was the highlight for me.  I cannot thank enough all the people who helped on the night, and on the run up. We couldn’t have done it without you!

I have also seen so much more of UCL than I ever thought possible, a special lift in the library and the roof! Oh my the roof is amazing! ( I took some pictures from the roof with a very cool app called Hipstamatic, I will post them as soon as I find the usb cable).  I must also add that none of this would of been possible without the genius of Claire Warwick and Melissa Terras, they are quite simply amazing.

But that was only the first event. Oh yes. Two events, makes Claire a very dazed girl. Today saw the Time Trust and Authority: is web 2.0 the tool for you? event, which I have been working on with Anne and John. I fear I let the side down on this, I was a incoherent mess after all the running around at the launch yesterday. But nevertheless a brilliant day! I learnt some really cool stuff, UCL is really flying the flag for social media content and distribution, with some interesting research projects and technologies already in place.  Utilising social media in an education institution is always frought with difficultly with questions about trust and authority not to mention copyright and ownership of content. Despite this, UCL is doing some brilliant work; creating digital content, encouraging discussions and collaborations and broadening audiences for our research and teaching (possibly a controversial thing after the launch speech).

There is likely to be many more posts about the past 48hours to come. But right now I am going to have a sleep. Drained is not appropriate for this. Drained but happy.

bright club: bio film, ‘primitive tribes’, stripy icebergs, world cinema and why nitrate wont wait.

Last night I went to Bright Club, run by UCL’s Public Engagement Unit, In a nut shell it aims to prove that underneath the tweed jackets and elbow patches, academics can be quite funny. You can find out more about it here. I didn’t quite know what to expect. I went along to support my colleague Anne, who is funny in real life, so I imagined she would be manage to be funny on stage. And boy was she!

Not only was it hilarious, and I was not at all bribed to have a good time by the free lollypops and retro sweeties on the tables, no. I learnt quite a bit too.

Did you know that the glass roof at St Pancras is self cleaning? I didn’t and it all because of some clever bio film. Thanks to Charlie Dunnill,for that gem… I will be championing the quiz team soon, I can feel it! I cant remember the difference between hydrophobic and hydrophilic bio film but one of them bounces right off!

A marvelous anthropologist/film maker/digital filmographer Mike Yorke told us about his time with some pretty cool tribes, contracting devils grip, going into trances and increasing your power…a little bit, by doing some very painful yet spiritual things with a big stick.

Peter Mullany, was also talking about bio film, but he focused on stripy icebergs and 1000year old bodily odours from polar bears.

Matthew Gandy told us all about world cinema, now I haven’t retained any snazzy quiz facts from this apart from its really easy to insult people in Korean by saying they have a bun shaped face. Matthew was just really funny. Either that or world cinema is really funny… maybe I’ve been watching the wrong films.

Then there was Anne.

She taught us that librarian’s, not only are chic but that they work not just with books, but exploding films too! And why Nitrate just won’t wait. Whatever you do, don’t take a nitrate film into a smoking carriage of a train, because disaster is sure to strike. Not only was Anne funny from start to finish, but she managed to plug the new Centre for DH, my work (also noting that I’m not a librarian), and her boss being on the BBC’s virtual revolution. Represent.

So all in all, a great night. Thanks to all involved!

object retrieval: are you really the route master??

Earlier this week on my way in to work I was faced with a big red bus. Nothing unusual there London is full of them. However this one was parked in the main quad of UCL right in front of the iconic (to past students at least) dome. So what is a big red bus doing in the middle of UCL? Goodness only knows I thought, but I took a picture of it none the less ( ive only been in London a couple of weeks, I’m still in tourist mode or just plain snap happy but stupidly don’t have the download usb cable). It wasn’t until later that I realised that it wasn’t just a bus. It was a bus with interesting billboards on it. Where you would normally see ‘zac effron’ or whatever the latest film poster is, there were museum objects and the destination of the bus was entitled ‘object retrieval’. I was still baffled, so I googled it and came up with this… http://www.objectretrieval.com/

So object retrieval is an interactive exhibition open to the public, a team of researchers from UCL will be exploring a ‘mysterious object’ from any and all routes (routes…bus.. get it?) – be it art, archaeology, biology or chemistry – so utilizing all avenues to gain information about an object from the UCL museum collections to try and gain a coherent interpretation of its past identity, biography, use.

First and foremost, it’s a really interesting attempt to look at single objects history using different means. So its likely to achieve a more rounded interpretation. Its also a good hook, a rather large London bus has been turned into a lab! Cool. But, and it’s a big but. I work at UCL and I had to google it, as I had no idea what it was about. Is that a good thing? Surely some marketing or something (and I mean more then a plain text PR blurb on the UCL website) should of gone out to gather interest? The website states its ‘It is open and free for everyone.’ But is it really? Its in the middle of UCL. who apart from students and staff at the university are going to be able to access it? How is it open to everyone, if its already in an inherently closed space? Would it not have been more inclusive if the big red bus was in a more open, welcoming and to be perfectly honest, in a place where normal people hang out? Like a tourist spot Trafalgar square for example, or even more down to earth a supermarket carpark? Ok so fair enough its using academics from the uni and it’s a uni artifact that’s being investigated, but surely letting people actually know about it would be a better way of it being ‘open and free’ ? hmm. I mean its great that UCL museums are actively trying to engage with the public, and maybe its just a blatent attempt to get more students to go and visit the UCL collections (when I was a student here I shamefully admit that I didn’t go to the museums on campus) I wonder how its actually going to pan out. I mean the website looks cool and is encouraging participation, but will anyone actually do it? It remains to be seen.

but if you do want to come and check it out go ahead its on from today the 15 – 21 October 2009
UCL, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT

map of how to get there

Goodbye Geevor…hello London!

Today’s my last day at Geevor! My time here as flown by! It only seems like yesterday I arrived smartly dressed, bright eyed and bushy tailed and excited about the project ahead. The smart clothes went out the window straight away! (there is no place for shirts and heels at a mine on a cliff edge).

I have certainly left my mark at Geevor, mostly dents in doorways where I have banged my head so many times, earning my title as possibly the clumsiest person in the world. I’ve also brought my special brand of endless enthusiasm and my extreme tea and cake eating abilities to Geevor.  Especially with the girls in the learning team, hopefully Claire S will carry on this tradition with style.

I’ve loved working here, it hasn’t been easy and yes I have ranted and raved, but I have thoroughly enjoyed the challenge and can not thank the University of Exeter, Geevor and KTP for giving me this opportunity.  I have made some good friends and even more great colleagues, I have so many thank yous I’m not even going to begin, but I thought I’d leave you with some of my best bits….

• The Blog! I love it! it shows a side to Geevor that you don’t get to see when you visit! A behind the scenes look at the goings on at Geevor. It also gives you an insight into the sense of humour of the staff, Bill’s posts make me laugh so much.
• Flickr and Twitter- brilliant tools that are encouraging Geevor to interact with the outside world, and for you guys to interact with us! Some of the photos on the Geevor Flickr group are truly inspirational.
• Banging my head on one of the new cases in the Hard Rock Museum a week before the grand opening and getting concussion. Nick T being more concerned that I’d got blood on the case, before tending to the egg shaped lump on my head and taking me to hospital.
• Bringing an ethos of ‘tea?’ to the learning team. What on earth did you do without me and tea?
• My endless enthusiasm, no matter what gets thrown my way.  I am excited by everything and love the potential that Geevor has. I hope this pro active and opportunistic mentality sticks with Geevor as the go from Strength to Strength.
• And finally, the website! It was hard going and I’ve done my best with the resources and time available! Its not bad for someone with no web experience what so ever! Dress the miner seems to be going down well, and my favourite is the whoosy image thing (lightbox that does cool things to see the image better).  As I said in a previous post on the Geevor blog, there are so many things I would like to develop and improve on, but I now leave it in Geevor’s capable hands and look forward to watching it grow.   I hope you like it.

And where am I going? What am I doing next?

Moving back to London that’s what!? After two years in idyllic Penzance, I’m moving back to the big city,  back to UCL! Im gong to be working on a project call Linksphere looking at virtual learning environments and social media.  I get to geek out basically, looking at how/if academics are using blogs, twitter, wikis and facebook.  Yes I am a nerdosaurs.  I’m very excited about it.  but it doesn’t mean I will forget about Geevor. .. I’ll be keeping my eye on you….