Role Playing is Gaming with the Whole Body

Fighters with rapiers and daggers at a reenactment, 3 September 2007, 11:57, Crossed Blades, Jean, upload by Herrick, from Wikimedia Commons

Apparently, role-playing is undergoing a "renaissance."

Which is a wonderful play on words, as a lot of these stories are really medieval.

According to the WBUR story "You Be the Dragon Slayer":
The term interactive storytelling is used to describe all manner of games where both the audience and actors are part of the performance: live-action role-playing (LARPs); alternate reality games (ARGs) that often mix in technology or mobile devices; interactive theater; and everything in between, including old-fashioned role-playing games (RPGs) like D&D.

There is also the Society for Creative Anachronism.
(Sorta the anti-sport fencing.)

The connection here to museums is pretty clear, as there are a number of living history museums -- Old Sturbridge Village, Conner Prairie, and Plimoth Plantation to name a few -- that use role play as interpretation.

And there is a host of information coming out about gaming as educational, as well.
(Or not.  There is some debate.)

So is there some way we can combine these?

Higgins Armoury Museum already is.

Can we at indoor, non-armoury museums use this experience?

Fiscally-Responsible Museum Branding; or, Do They Have a T-Shirt for That? ;)

Last week in museum management class we were discussing Fiscal Responsibility. In many ways, it was about how to keep the integrity of the organization intact. In other words, what could harm the brand and some thoughts about what to do to keep brand identity strong and therefore consumer loyalty.

This might sound strange in relation to a museum, but really, if we’re talking about a non-profit that needs to focus its mission to deliver (educational) services, create a clientele, be participatory, and continue to exist, isn’t that about brand management?

Business strategies are not a bad thing. Business theory applied to non-profits, however, has things work a little differently. See an excellent article on working for a non-profit in MORE magazine, August, 2011, for explanations made by former heads of for-profit divisions who now work for non-profits: life is different.

As we wrangled with the question of business-museum relationships during class – for example, having a Louis Vuitton shop (profits going to LV) inside a special exhibit – my inner voice kept asking two questions:

1) Aren’t museums businesses (albeit non-profits)?

2) Are the issues of “curatorial independence” fitting to this time and place?

Question #1 has a simple answer I think: yes.

Question #2 led me down some interesting by-ways:

To Wit: How is that museum’s today are so separate from the collectors, the artists, and the visitors?

Historically, museum collections were the products of one person’s passion.

The collection itself was the personal property of that person. The acquisition of these objects were commodity transactions in and of themselves. The museum itself would have been established by that collector and their personal likes and dislikes dictate exhibition. The Higgins Armory Museum in Worcester, MA is one such example. The Frick in NYC is another. The genesis of many larger collections is the aggregation of such personal acquisitiveness, no?


Also, those who are insisting on museum exhibitions conforming to a certain standard seem to have two things in mind:

One, museums are supposed to be dusty and non-interactive.

Two, that museums as non-profits created to serve the educational interests of the public have a duty to the greater good, and “shameless commerce” is not part of that duty. In this view, museums are a public good. Yet, unlike true economic public goods, museums are run by private boards, not the public government.

So, really, are capitalist transactions out of place?

Frankly, we have commoditized a large number of public goods.

Education is one – schools are run on grants in order to overcome the budgetary shortfalls and private business have influence, from signs on football stadium fences to commercial ads in homeroom broadcasts. The Post Office is another – it is supposed to a be self-supporting business these days; hence the sales of "related products."


Given this line of thinking, why should any art go into a museum?

Why not just have gallery shows or personal collection viewings?

Or why not expose “curatorial control” as the rule by a few elite?

Or promote a shop inside the exhibit as an example of a participatory event?

hmmm….

Ultimately, I guess, it’s a question of maintaining institutional trust and educational purpose.

To do that, fitting the activities and associations of the museum to its mission and purpose, with an eye to that economic intangible of goodwill is important.

So, probably, shameless commerce is a no. But the lessons of Exit Through the Gift Shop still have me wondering… Should we be entering through the gift shop?

The Participatory Museum

Today (Thursday, September 22, 2011) I was lucky enough to get some professional development time to attend a workshop sponsored by Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) and hosted by the Higgins Armory Museum.

It was "Fostering Innovation in an Interactive Museum Culture" led by Nina Simon.

Nina Simon is currently the head of a museum in Santa Cruz and the head of Museum 2.0 blog. She is the author of The Participatory Museum.


Simon, an EE grad of WPI, says she is out to change museums. Chiefly by making them more interactive. How? Three key ways, says Simon, changing museums:
--from a destination to a place of everyday use
--from a trusted source of information to a trusted host of social experiences
--from a place of seeing and exploring to that AND being a making and sharing place.

Simon elaborated with examples of how museums typically are static sources of information that people visit only three times in their lives (studenthood, parenthood, and grandparenthood) -- that they need to go from being purely a content provider to being a platform provider, i.e., being a place where people go to do things with stuff and each other. For example, hosting an evening "stitch and bitch" group in the galleries. These shifts would create the participatory museum.

This makes sense to me as, in high school, I took an afternoon modern dance class in the Addison Gallery. I have deep and significant memories of contemplating the art even while I tried to refine a footwork sequence. There is one abstract, almost Cubist, painting of a daffodil that I still want to re-visit as it symbolizes my junior (upper middle) year.

While creating participation could be through digital means, Simon's focus today was in the museum gallery, working directly with objects.

One of Simon's big points was that participation needs to center around objects. In other words, people need an object to discuss. Simply throwing two strangers together may not work. A mediator (usually an object, but could be another person) is necessary. Anyone who has tried to have a conversation with a teenaged boy understands this -- sitting side by side, working on something (playing a video game, repairing a bike, watching TV) will produce a conversation, while staring at each other over a table with the command to "Talk!" will not.

Social objects have these qualities (but not necessarily all at once):
--often very big
--draws one in with their process of creation
--connects to pop culture
--provocative
--requires some figuring out
--has some motion to it.

How do you know when you've got a "social object"? (Or, what are the 'metrics"?) You'll see the people interacting with it and each other produce the following behaviors (again, but not necessarily all at once):
--talking
--pointing
--taking photos
--'reproducing' (mimicking the object, or building something in its image)
--moving around it or with it
--asking others to join them with the object
--interpreting the object for others.

It occurs to me, that the new Chihuly sculpture -- the Lime Green Icicle Tower-- at the MFA Boston is such an object. It's greenness, size, texture, location, newness and importance as a fundraiser all lead to conversations of people clustered around it, even if the comments vary from "ooh, ahh!" to "wtf?!?".

After talking about examples of participatory experience from a variety of museums across the country, we spent the afternoon "walking the talk" [ha!] by going upstairs into the Higgins Armory galleries to determine what exhibits provoked participation and in what ways could we design participatory exhibits/experiences. They group as a whole had some terrific ideas.

Also, the venue and its stuff was awesome. By the nature of the collection and its appeal, the immersive nature of the building and galleries, plus the work done by the education staff to host a variety of events, the Higgins Armory and the workshop group make participation easy.

And, I'll admit, I'm a sucker for a sharp blade...

Thanks to Simon and the other participants for a thought-provoking day!

See you at Saturday's "Festival of Ale"?

Or, better yet, at Higgins Armory in November after they open their Wii-based interactive exhibit Extreme Sport: Jousting Then and Now?!