there and again. mapping exhibition items and visitors’ memories
DESCRIPTION
"There and again. Souvenir de voyage” was an exhibition produced by the Mart, Musem of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto between June and Semptember 2013. It featured videos, installations, paintings and sculptures by contemporary artists, but also accounts of journeys through documents, photographs and archive material. “Photographing”, stated Susan Sontag, “means establishing a special relationship with the world”. This was one of the exhibition themes that resonated within our web team: a group of 9 colleagues from all departments of the museum that uses online resources to provide access to quality content produced by the museum. We imagined the development of a map that, by exploiting the direct access to information made possible by social media, could make it easier to build the “special relationship with the world” advocated by Sontag. Such a map had to be beautiful. It had to be easy to populate with content: a selection of images from the exhibition and – clearly identified by a different visual identity – geo-tagged content uploaded by our web community. For non-contributors, visualizing content on an online map could be a way to better make sense of a spatial dimension needed to fully appreciate the exhibition itself prior of after an actual visit to the museum. Contributors were expected to become involved and hopefully advocate for the museum. We used the “reach-interest- involve-activate” engagement cycle (Visser and Richardson, 2013) as an overall strategy. Finally, we thought the map could give us some answers to the pressing question “what do your current or new audiences want to do with your content?” (R. Cardiff, R. Sinker and K. Beaven, 2013) Development We hired an external team of programmers, storytellers and designers (Pleens, Accurat), and we asked them to code and design the map. For a period of two months users could enter tweets, foursquare check-ins, facebook statuses and instagram photos, even if they were not geo-tagged; the #andataericordo hashtag had to be there, though. Extra work was done in the background to match entries with map points. Not all content would go on the map: an editorial check was done in real-time. The museum web team and the external developers worked together to find a community of influencers who would start to populate the map. The travel bloggers community responded with enthusiasm. They were our backup plan in case the map took too long to fill up with tweets. Results 1526 tweets were launched by 430 persons, and read by 789.000 persons, with a potential exposure of 7,1 million users (source: Tweetreach). 251 tweets were selected to appear on the map. 26 entries were in fact blog posts. After the conclusion we developed a plan to maintain the level of engagement of this new community with surprise present packages. We also used their feedback “We want to take photos inside the exhibitions” to partially change the museum photo policy.TRANSCRIPT
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There and Again
Mapping exhibition items and visitors’ memories
MartMuseo di arte moderna e
contemporanea di Trento e RoveretoItaly
www.mart.tn.it
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“Photographing
means establishing a
special relationship
with the world”
Susan Sontag
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Taking a photograph means
trying to make sense of the
world
Placing it on a map means
building and sharing knowledge
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At the Mart Museum, in
Rovereto, Italy, we thought
these
themes were particularly
urgent for us
It was early 2013, and we
were planning an exhibition
about travel, memories, the
Grand Tour and “the gaze of
the tourist”.
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“There and again. Souvenir de voyage” was an exhibition produced
by the Mart, Musem of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and
Rovereto between June and Semptember 2013.
Curated by the museum’s internal curatorial staff, it featured
videos, installations, paintings and sculptures by contemporary
artists, but also accounts of journeys that lead the visitors to real,
imagined and imaginary places.
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At the Mart we have a web team:
a group of 9 colleagues from all
departments of the museum that
uses online resources
to provide access to quality
content to various communities
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In particular, we reflected
on the idea that global
mass tourism inundates
us with images of places
with a “tourist slant”
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We imagined the
development of a web
map that, by exploiting
the direct access to
information made possible
by social media, could
make it easier to build the
“special relationship with
the world” advocated by
Sontag.
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We hired Pleens and
Accurat, two teams of
programmers, storytellers
and designers
We gave them just a few
hints
It was evident
early on they were
having fun
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The map had to be beautiful
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It had to be easy to populate with content
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It had to be easy to populate with content
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It had to be easy to populate with content
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We uploaded a selection of images from the exhibition
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And our web community contributed geo-tagged contents:
tweets, photos, blog posts
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We selected the best, and displayed them on the map alongside the
works of art. Exhibition items and users' content were identified by
different colours
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“Our tweets in the wonderful map of #thereandagain”
Contributors were expected to become involved
and hopefully advocates for the museum
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We expected to improve
the exhibition experience
extending the debate
outside the museum spaces
But we also wanted to find
out what our current and
new audiences really
wanted to do with your
contents
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Where am I?
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All content was expected to be
geo-tagged. But we soon found
out that while our community
loved the project, most of
them did not want or could not
understand how to geo-tag
their contents
Therefore, extra work was
done in the background to
match entries with map points.
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The museum web team and
the external developers
worked together to find a
community of influencers
who would start to populate
the map.
The travel bloggers
community
responded with enthusiasm.
They were our backup plan
in case the map took too
long to
fill up with tweets
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And our own web team members contributed content with
their own voices and skills
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But we really had no problems with quantity and quality
of users contents. 1526 tweets were launched by 430
persons, and read by 789.000 persons, with a potential
exposure of 7,1 million users
More important still, they were a great read
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251 tweets were selected to appear on the map
26 entries were in fact blog posts, some of which of
remarkable quality
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Our “Map of memories” has been active for two months
around september 2013.
After that we developed a plan to maintain the level of
engagement of this new community.
We delivered surprise present packages to around 300
twitter users who had proved to be ready to engage.
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Offering exhibition catalogues as a reward to people who
have shown a high level of engagement is cost-effective,
because we know that these books will be studied,
shown, discussed and will grow coffee stains all over, as it
should be
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And what about “finding out the things they really
wanted”
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We read the tweets carefully and asked directly to some
of the users that we realized were being more
influential.
They all said the same thing:
they wanted to be able to take photos everywhere at the
museum, including inside the exhibitions.
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Photos were not allowed at the museum.
So we revised our photo policy.
Now photos are allowed in the collections, and we are
working to grant permission whenever we can in the
temporary exhibitions
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Photos byMafe de Baggis
Laura Celi
Duccio Dogheria
Carlotta Fanti
Fernando Guerra
Jacopo Salvi
The Mart Photographic Archive
Gianluca Vassallo
We can be found atwww.mart.tn.it
twitter.com/@mart_museum
Corso Bettini 43, Rovereto, Italy
Stats: Pleens/Tweetreach