I Search, Therefore I am: Envisioning a search-powered museum experience

Lately, I’ve been delving into the Semantic Web a bit. This came about partially out of a conscious desire to learn more about it, but also because I seem to be encountering it, in some manifestation or another, at every turn. The book I’m currently reading, “Shaping Things” by Bruce Sterling, envisions a “Synchronic Society” where everything is mapped, tagged, and searchable. Objects are now “spimes,” the next evolution in technoculture and design. Spimes are data-encrypted with information about their history (where they were made, how, by whom, etc.), as well as sensors that log information about their use and interaction with their environment. This log is self-updating and the data in it is crunched by powerful processors, creating a searchable database—an index, an “internet of things.” (He describes it better. It’s a great read!)

I also just watched a video of Wired’s Kevin Kelly talking about Web 3.0 and the Semantic Web. Even though the video is more than a year old—Kelly gave this talk at a conference back in February of 2008—as with any visionary train of thought, it seems to only grow more relevant, impending even (and all that implies). Again, the common train of thought here seems to center around increased access information, mapping, tagging and then, ultimately, being able to search it all (and, consequently, create a customized experience).

I’m also reading Koven Smith’s paper about the use of handheld devices in museums, and the combination of all three has me trying to envision what a museum experience informed by the Semantic Web would look like. Koven does a pretty good job outlining one, but before I finished reading his paper to find out what he proposed, I put it down to write out my own version:

A mobile, multimedia museum experience informed by the Semantic Web (to me) would look like:

I’m walking through The Whitney Museum, checking out their Claes Oldenburg/Coosje van Bruggen exhibition The Music Room and I stop in front of “Soft Viola.” It’s a sculpture I’ve never seen before and I am immediately intrigued. Maybe it’s the musical ties which speak to me, or the sad, melancholy way the viola sags there, mounted on the wall, but I feel an affinity for this particular object and I want to know more about it.

I take out my iPhone (or other multimedia device with wireless capabilities) and search for the object. The search brings me to the object’s landing page, which itself is searchable. [An interesting model for something like this, which I also recently encountered, is WolphramAlpha] I type in a keyword, say “inspiration,” which leads me to other potential links of information about what external factors, be they societal or personal, could have informed this artwork.

Maybe I find out that the work was created in response to something going on in their personal lives, or a critique of the deterioration of popular music—who knows? The point being is that I am able to gain added context through which to interpret and understand the work. More importantly though, the ability to customize that context—to be able to access additional information about it that is relative to my relationship with and interest in the artwork—makes the experience that much more powerful for me as an art viewer.

Koven takes the experience even further by suggesting the search engine also provide recommendations in the vein of Last.fm, Amazon or Pandora; as well as map out routes to those objects within the galleries themselves. In particular, I really enjoyed his thoughts on how this type of handheld museum experience would enable the user to “slice-and-dice” all of the museum’s available objects on display the same way he might filter the virtual collections information online.

“Having textual data available for every single object opens up the possibility to search, filter, and group objects. Our users have come to expect this ability on the Web; now give them that same ability in the physical space. Ad hoc grouping means that visitors are no longer restricted to highlights constructed by museum personnel – visitors can, in effect, create their own highlights, based on criteria they set.”

A museum experience of this sort would indeed be a lofty, ambitious and costly project for any institution to take on, but I think it would be a worthwhile one in the long run. For one thing, though museums may not be in a position to be innovators—that type of work is better left for nimble, risk-taking startups and entrepreneurs—they are in a position to analyze the trends and make calculated judgments of valuable technologies to explore and finance. I think search and customizable user experiences are the topics to pay attention to, and a handheld device is the perfect “form” to experiment with this kind of functionality. Not to mention, think of the potential to learn about your visitors and how they interact with the museum materials! All these search queries and paths are trackable and can be mined for insight that could be used to shape better, more user-friendly museum exhibitions and programs.