“But why?” said the curator. “They could have studied it in the museum! We’re very interactive these days!”
“Interactive?” said Vimes. “What do you mean?”
“Well, people can … look at the pictures as much as they want,” said Sir Reynold. He sounded a little annoyed. People shouldn’t ask that kind of question.
“And the pictures do what, exactly?”
“Er … hang there, Commander,” said Sir Reynold. “Of course.”
“So what you mean is, people can come and look at the pictures, and the pictures, for their part, are looked at?”
“Rather like that, yes,” said the curator. He thought for a moment, aware that this probably wasn’t sufficient, and added, “But dynamically.” (Pratchett, 2005)
If you are someone who is my colleague, friend, or acquaintance, you are aware of my hyper-critical, cynical nature. That being said, I thoroughly enjoyed myself at this year’s MESC Annual Institute on Leadership. In most cases, I find myself holding myself back from participating in the Q & A session, for fear of being perceived as asking unfair or entrapping questions, or at worst, to be perceived as making myself look smarter than the speaker.
This was not true for the Keynote Address speaker Ben Cameron. I couldn’t respond immediately because of the inspirational high off his energy, ability to articulate leadership, and confront from the problems we all face as museum educators. Not to disappoint my fans, I could find a small criticism that I can’t help but comment on (although to be fair, I cannot help but compliment this excellent keynote).
Ben Cameron sets up the “sense of urgency” (those who heard Dr. Abraham-Silver speak later will know what I’m referring to) for us to develop a vision for the future of museums. In the keynote, he states that because of modern technology in social networking, self-produced art and content made possible by YouTube and the similar sites, and blogging, that the era of democracy is here, and it is up to us to be able to transfer from educators to engagers, directors to facilitators, and et cetera.
But then he attacks video games. It surprised me that video games beats out web, TV, and other entertainment. This is probably because the last game I seriously played was Ms. Pac Man (quite progressive, now that I think about it, considering the use of “Ms.”). Actually, I consider this one of my few talents; I am excellent at Ms. Pac Man. Yes, I have attempted to play games such as “Grand Theft Auto” – but for some odd reason, I cannot remember what all the buttons are for and I think if I stared at the nearly-real looking imagery too long I’d probably have a seizure.
Regardless, Mr. Cameron’s claims that video games today includes violent, unacceptable, and many things as arts and museum educators, we try to teach against. I have no additional commentary on this, as ignorant as I am of video games, I’m positive that the same imagery and content that drives other aspects of American culture drives the video game realm of entertainment.
But I disagree with the assumption that our role is to compete with this media. No, I’m not saying we should have museum video games. The phenomenon of the popularity of video games is what we should be looking at to help us to define a future pedagogy for Museum education; actually, it should drive the museum as a whole.
Let’s face it—the world is against us. For the last hundred years, serious deep content was lost to the University. To add salt to our wounds, we have seen our important work (e.g. being a sidekick to the mediocre education system and civilizing the unwashed masses) fall terribly to the technology revolution. Yes, face up to it: Wikipedia delivers content better than us museum educators.
(Ok, ok, I concede a little bit. Technology has not completely eradicated the impact of museums on the world, just that of exhibitions and most of museum education (we still have babysitting responsibilities!). In those institutions that support research, we need to face the fact that is overlooked greatly, that curators and research has the largest audience and impact on society. “Heresy,” I hear you say, “all our curators do is research, argue with each other, and make our lives miserable.” Yes, and they publish, argue, research, argue, publish, argue some more, and so on. And the knowledge that is produced by this research contributes to the worldwide body of knowledge that eventually is sifted into galleries, school textbooks, and Wikipedia. No, we no longer believe that the plague is caused by tarantulas and that demons are the cause of crazy behavior—we know better because somebody researched it). For better or worse, our curators are building the future’s reality, and as international communication increases their impact amplifies. Just don’t tell them that. In essence, the sum total of research constructs our perception of reality. But just try counting that on your next impact report!)
Back to video games, the key is interactivity. I hear you old timers saying, “we tried interactivity back in the late 1980s and early 1990s.” No, we didn’t. A great example of this failed buzzword is the Natural History Museum’s “interactive” portion of the Hall of Birds. A lot of static content, buttons to reinforce that static content, and lots of broken expensive equipment, but nothing really interactive.
Videogames are interactive. Compared to movies, which the ‘experiencer’ goes and passively receives the narrative from a director, a video game facilitates the constraints of the narrative, but the director is the ‘experiencer.’ In other words, if I could play Grand Theft Auto, I would be calling the shots (pun unintentional) and I chose how where I am going with the content. It is brilliant, powerful, and ultimately, popular. Imagine if we could harness that same level of interactivity at our museum?
Another criticism common of video games, television, etc. is that these media deprive users of social interaction (is the old couch potato now the mouse potato?). Not true. Actually, quite the opposite—so I’ve heard. Most games, including the dreaded Grand Theft Auto, have a way to play against international gamers and still within the constraints within the game creators, interact with each other. This has resulted in some sort of virtual subculture which has its own jargon, moires, values, etc. In fact, in 2006, hardcore “gamers” got their own non-profit, called the Electronic Consumers Association[1] that lobbies and advocates for their very niche interests.
Before the anti-obesity lobby blacklists me, I must reinforce: no, I’m not advocating for the museum video game. Like the fruitless competing with multinational corporate theme parks that will always squash our so-called “edutainment,” we don’t, and will never, have the resources—or skill—to compete in the video game market. Also, it would NOT be innovative. In fact, it would be embarrassing and tragic. And no, please don't put more buttons in your gallery reinforce the same dead content.
The idea that we need to turn our museums into places that respond to the needs of the publics that we serve is a decades old issue. One just needs to dust off their copies of museum studies or museum education books written in the last 20 years and you’ll find each address this conundrum.
Here is the question we must answer ultimately: how can we create a museum or museum program, but have the visitors drive or produce their own learning and experience within the constraints of our mission and museum narrative?
Quote from: Pratchett, T. (2005). Thud! New York, New York, USA: HarperCollins.
