Tag Archives: museums

chatbots in the gallery

Earlier this year we ran a Web Science Institute-funded pilot project called ‘Chatbots in the Gallery.’ The project team, Dr Sarah Hayden, Samantha Schäfer, Lesia Tkacz and myself explored the use of conversational agents or chatbot applications in an art gallery setting. Building on the SIAH-funded ‘Towards a Creative AI Lab’ project (Sam, Lesia and myself), […]

the city is already a playground

The city is already a playground. Creative projects to turn urban spaces into playful installations or events are often predicated on the implicit assumption that the city is not already playful. That urban centres are cold, alienated places just waiting for artists, architects, designers and cultural producers to bring their creativity and imagination to bring […]

toying with the archive

I’ve just been awarded a research stipend by the Bill Douglas Cinema Museum at the University of Exeter. Here’s the rationale: My interest in the Bill Douglas collection centres on two categories: Toys in general, and Optical Toys. A particular concern is toys as media objects, both as communication media in their own right and […]

we both know your yearnings

I know who I am, but who are we? Distributed subjectivity in the postindustrial machinic phylum. The card is delivered to me from a fairground fortune-telling machine in the collection of the SeaCity Museum in Southampton. Its message is printed on thick card and has the look of handwriting. It assumes an intimacy between us, […]

smARtmurals

A project I have been involved in – smARtmurals for Southampton City Art Gallery – opened on Thursday 22nd February in the Spark Building at Southampton Solent University, with AR-activated posters also installed around the Cultural Quarter. Testing ideas for attracting new audiences to the Gallery’s modern art collection, and led by Dr Alex Reynolds, the painting Deer Dog by Dan […]

at play in the flocking routine 2

From a draft version of a chapter for Michelle Henning’s forthcoming collection on Museum Media. Accompanying video is here. Occupying the final room of the centre, visitors entered the installation after walking through a range of natural history and ecological displays, from living animals in vitrines to interactive screens and videos. Visitors enter a […]