Museums are embracing mobile technology

Mike Short tipped me off to an interesting event coming up in September showcasing how museums like London's Tate Gallery are using mobile technology to enhance the visitor experience. (It's a one-day event "From Audiotours to the iphone" on 5th September and costs £150.)

And it got me thinking as to what museums are doing in the field of mobile marketing, advertising and media. And it seems they're up to quite a bit. And I imagine some of these things will be explored further at The Tate's forthcoming Symposium.

Across the pond, Cellit ran 'The Digital Post Office of Love', a Valentine's Day promotion, for the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art as part of its ongoing SMS marketing effort. This featured a large, interactive display where visitors could use their mobile phones to instantly post messages via sms to woo other visitors, all in the spirit of Valentine's Day.

Dan Sutch from Nesta's Futurelab has some ideas as to what mobile learning and mobile experiences could be like, particularly from a youth marketing and youth engagement perspective. The slides are interesting and should be food for thought.

Boston Museum of Fine Arts launched a mobile initiative, MFA Mobile. Through MFA Mobile, users are able to personalize a mobile device with works of art from the Museum’s extensive collection of art, ranging from a Claude Monet water lily or Edward Hopper lighthouse to an Egyptian sculpture or African mask.

However, I'm slightly more cynical about this as they were charging $1.99 for an individual image or $4.99 a month for a subscription. I suspect that you could actually take a picture with your cameraphone of *most* of the exhibits which would negate the need for the download. And not only that, if you go to the website, it's easy enough to save the images for free.

I think if I were running this service, I would look to make a donation optional but easy to do to help generate revenues. And perhaps provide the subscription package as an added value bonus to some other fundraising scheme. Maybe Boston museum-goers are happy to pay these prices?

I've been a fan of TXTual Healing for some time and they help create public performances with text messages, some of which are at museums and art galleries. Check out their blog for details of past events.

And if that's not enough, then a rifle through Textually's blog using the tag museum will come up trumps with some interesting examples of what's happening with mobiles and museums, including a lot of art exhibits.

A musical interlude

A few musical bits and pieces have struck a chord with me in the last 24 hours.

First off, coming home from the lovely Oli Barrett's 'Quality Connector' do last night, I ended up sitting next to a guy who, as he read The London Paper, turned to his friends and said, 'I'm gonna be a pop star'. To which I replied, 'good choice'. Anyway, we got talking and it turns out the man who wants to be a pop star is actually Herbie Treehead, a Glastonbury regular (I was in the right field at the right time apparently, but missed them too busy doing something else!), who has an album out and is the man behind the chirpy 'Happy Song'. It put a smile on my face anyway when I heard it.

Secondly, I'm browsing through some blog feeds taking a cursory glance at some of the blogs I don't get round to reading very often and stumbled across this post from popbytes about a British artist Bat for Lashes and their song horse and i. Natasha Khan, the brains behind the outfit, is also a visual artist and was also at Glastonbury, although I didn't see her either, but never fear, she's playing the Electric Picnic in a month's time. Wahey! Anyway, I'm suitably impressed with her quirky but very appealing style and there's a video clip of her performance at Glastonbury on theblog as well as a free download of horse and i. You'll need to be quick to get the download though as it will only stay up on the site for a few days to promote the new album, Fur and Gold. You might want to check out her myspace page too.

And finally, if you haven't signed up yet, then sign up to Ade's TunAtheday.com. It's free and 5 days a week, you'll get something new to listen to to get your day to a good start. There's also a discussion forum where you can talk about what you've just heard, make suggestions about tracks for upcoming tunas and generally put the world to rights. Oh, and in true web 2.0 stylee, you'll also find Ade and his tunatheday on myspace and facebook. Go on, sign up, you know you want to!

Tune in for mobile, marketing and media stuff shortly!