Projects 2013 > Orion: Behind the Mask > Journal
While in Ghent for The Ghent Film Festival I made a visit to the hugely inspiration Huis van Alijn on the recommendation of our academic advisor Dr Lucy Robinson. It describes itself:
"The House of Alijn tells a timeless story about the culture of everyday life, a magnificent tale about all things great and small. In the museum, ordinary objects and curiosties offer a startling introduction to our common inheritance. They reveal the spirit of the times as well as ways and customs and they remind us of days past. You can zap into the digital photo album, listen to sound-recordings and plunge into film excerpts. In short, this museum offers a striking portrayal of the evolution of 20th century everyday life."
I was given a private tour and offered an insight into how their collection is gathered and managed. For years they have crowd sourced much of their collection from the public and saught expertise from their audience whether that is a show about marching bands, pigeon racing, cars.
In the early days the museum used analogue and traditional methods to elicit audience engagement. As the museum has become better known and their audience expanded the ask had adapted and changed incorporating more technology. They have also adapted the ask depending on the project's need and the media being used.
They did a project a few years ago called (I think) I love my Car. They had a great volume of car photographs but did not have the knowledge to idetify individual models. The expertise lay in their audience, in retired, older people. They created a "job description" advertising the need for "supertaggers", people who were able to help the museum identify what they had in ther archive. This was backed up by a workshop where they explained how to "click click" in order to make a tag. Once the technical hurdle was overcome the taggers were away and responded with great enthusiasm. I think it's hugely interesting that they adapted their ask to fit the audience they had, to make it easy for them to participate. The technology, in the end didn't get in the way.
Their new project takes crowd sourcing one step further -Time for the eighties
Screenshot from the Time for the Eighties dashboard.
Huis Van Alijan are working with Tintup in order to allow content to be contributed via social scraping. Anything hashtagged "#timefortheeighties" is scarped into the dashboard of the project. It means that their is no sign up, 10 social media platforms are supported and takes the project direct to the audience, using the social media they use. It's an enormously exciting approach and I have been in touch with Tintup to see if it can be incorporated into the Orion wireframe.
Posted by Jeanie Finlay