[ARCHIVED] Collection Activation - Databases

[periode]

Pick a museum website and look through their online database (you can start with the museum databases page).

Post the one you would like to activate here, with a link and a paragraph of why you find it interesting, and what kind of app you would design around it.

[AakSin]

Working with @hannah-y-zhao

Our collection was inspired by this line I found in the page for Museum of Unheard Things

"BERLIN SEEMS TO BE FASCINATED with the examination of “things.” The Museum der Dinge, a collection of everyday items devoted to modern object design, and the Design Panoptikum, a surreal museum of extraordinary industrial objects, are a couple examples. This beloved curio collection of “Unheard of Things” is further proof."

We wanted an exhibition of objects that aren't necessarily real objects but rather inspired by a concept like "unheard things". We came up with the idea for a museum displaying German fusion words like Handschuhe (hand shoe i.e. gloves) or Staubsauger (dust sucker i.e. a vacuum cleaner). As we are working in AR, we have the liberty to be creative with our interpretations of these objects as well. Hence, for example for EIsbar we might make a bear out ice, rather than displaying a polar bear.

[Opal42]

I want to build my app around works from the Museum of Bad Art (MoBA). I found the premise of the collection really fascinating, with their tagline: 'art too bad to be ignored'. I think that building an app that explores the idea of critique, value judgements, and asking the question of "What is good/bad art?" would be really interesting. In my honest opinion, I think that many of the pieces on display at MoBA aren't that bad, and it is never quite clear whether the museum serves to display "bad art" as a rejection of traditional gatekeeping and exclusivity of museums, or rather as a means of public ridicule.

My big struggle right now is figuring out how to do that in AR, in a way that wouldn't have been more productive in another form instead. I am considering doing something with spatial audio as a reflection of the critical voices in the art industry, but my experiences with spatial tracking in AR have been very poor thus far, so I worry it won't be viable.

[hannah-y-zhao]

Working with @AakSin

We are interested in a collection of objects that aren't necessarily real or functional, but rather inspired by really long/fused German words that describe something specific. In addition to the examples that Aakarsh gave, our collection is also reminiscent of concepts of Chindogu or Carelman.

Like Aakarsh said, we are interested in using the compound words but not with their intended meaning, such as Zahnfleisch (aka gum, aka tooth meat).

[Yupu-Chen]

Hong Kong Museum of Art >> https://hk.art.museum/en/web/ma/collections/ks-lo-collection-of-tea-ware-and-seals.html

I am interested in this collection about tea wares and seals from Hong Kong Museum of Art. In this collection, there are many tea pots and wares of various purposed and shapes. There are also a few personal seals. With this collection, I could explore the tea culture of China and Chinese seals as well as their significance regarding identities and Chinese cultures. The shapes, colors, materials of these tea wares and seals all tell different stories.

App: About the app, I imagine that I could create an application that allows people to put these tea wares and seals on their own tables with AR functions. I would possibly make people leave their own comments or even upload the pictures of their own tea wares or sales if they have one. What I am concerned about it the 3D objects that I could use for this app. I do not think that I could find the exact 3D models of the objects in the collection above. Therefore, there's a need to think about what objects I should use,

[daniaezz]

The museum I would like to build this app around is the World Famous Crochet Museum. I am interested in this collection mainly because I enjoy crocheting, but also because I haven’t really thought about crochet as “art” before.

I imagine that the AR app would help the visitor delve deeper into the objects on display, showing them the different types of stitches used and the colour palette or general theme of what the object is supposed to be. Is it a stuffed toy? Is it a needle holder? A clothing item? The app can also help illustrate how these things can be found in homes of people who crochet and what they bring to the place they are/used to be in.

[cz2109]

I have a broad framework for how I might want to execute this final project. I was inspired by the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Museum's (https://www.redcrossmuseum.ch/) use of AR, especially in their method of telling the stories of real people who have faced human rights injustices by having the visitor place their hand on the person's hand (on a screen) and triggering an audio recording. I wanted to do something similar where in an app, the viewer is able to trigger an audio recording while in direct, emotional confrontation with an object, person, etc.

The subject matter is still TBD, but as of right now, I am leaning towards creating a showcase/case study on a specific artist/art movement/art school (Subjects I have been toying around with are mirroring a collection off of Frida Kahlo, Antoni Gaudi, Ai Weiwei, Neo-Gothic/Art Nouveau movements, or The Bauhaus School, ...).

Another idea, that would be similar to the ICRC museum, is telling the stories of those who have faced diaspora in either Berlin/NYC, specifically, but not limited to East Asian experience, or another historical/social/political subject of similar gravity.

[emersonmack]

With this project, I want to explore storytelling within museum spaces. How does AR show a narrative that cannot be conveyed through a classic museum setting? I find inspiration in the Mmuseumm's collection in New York City which holds a wide variety of objects that rely on "story" to show importance. One of the notable exhibits I saw there was called "World-Leader Used Tissues". This display consisted of five crumpled up tissues in clear plastic boxes with world-leaders like Donald Trump and Queen Elizabeth labeled on them. This fabrication of artifacts still holds significance because of the stories and perspective attached to them.
I would like to look at other museums and collections for this project but really like the idea of exploring storytelling strategies.