Accessibility, Artificial Intelligence, museums
Staff Researcher
Envisioning the Future of Museum Accessibility ...

With AI’s ability to automatically produce content and process complicated datasets with high accuracy, museums worldwide are exploring ways in which this innovative technology can help them better achieve their missions and advance accessibility efforts. Through case studies, learn about three applications of this technology: content digitalization, language accessibility, and visual description.

Envisioning the Future of Museum Accessibility Through Artificial Intelligence
Artificial Intelligence, Public Policy, News & Announcements
Ian Hawthorne
October News: New Policies and Possibilities ...

October was filled with new debates on AI policies, a halt to one of the most significant AI safety bills in the United States, and a host of new AI developments in video, music, and even podcasts.

October News: New Policies and Possibilities for AI
Data, Fundraising, Marketing
Ian Hawthorne
Data Cultures Part I: The Many Markets of Arts ...

Arts and cultural nonprofits often operate in multiple markets for earned and contributed revenue. With increasing attention on data-driven decision making, effective market orientation often depends on effective data use. This fundamental collection, transmission, use, and interpretation of data within an organization collectively contributes to what can be considered an organization’s data culture.

Data Cultures Part I: The Many Markets of Arts Organizations
Advocacy, Community Building, Public Policy
Ian Hawthorne
Democracy on Display: The Dynamic Role of Art ...

Museums have increasingly begun to volunteer their spaces as polling places, acting as a democratic vehicle for their communities and adding to the greater fabric of America’s election infrastructure. In doing so, they can support local democratic processes and prove to their communities that they are not unbreachable temples for the elite, but open platforms for the people.

Democracy on Display: The Dynamic Role of Art Museums in Elections
Artificial Intelligence, entertainment, Film
Staff Researcher
Part I: A New Era of AI in the Entertainment ...

As exemplified by the Hollywood strikes of 2023, we find ourselves in a new era of Artificial  Intelligence in film and television. While studios are looking to cut costs, performers seek job security, and consumers seek quality content. Through research conducted in collaboration with facial motion capture technology provider Faceware Technologies Inc., Master of Entertainment Industry Management students at Carnegie Mellon sought to gain insight on how AI-generated content will transform existing industries, including how this technology could affect employment in the entertainment industry, content development,  budgets, contracts, legislation, and privacy rights.

Part I: A New Era of AI in the Entertainment Industry

app

,

Playing with Art: Tate Trumps iPhone App

,

Screenshot of Tate TrumpsIt’s no secret that there are apps for everything and art museums are no exception. The Mattress Factory lets you ask is this art and subsequently allows you to answer that question. The Andy Warhol Museum lets you put yourself into a painting with their D.I.Y. POP app. The Tate Modern has Tate Trumps to let you battle your friends with works of art. Yes, that’s right. Released in June of 2010, Tate Trumps is an application designed to increase viewer interaction with the works within the Tate Modern with a “bloody fight to the death”. Unlike the aforementioned apps, which allow users to interact with art anywhere, Tate Trumps only works within the confines of the Tate Modern.

Described as a “digital card game”, Tate Trumps is a free iPhone app for up to three players, which encourages users to travel the museum and collect points by looking at works of art. Players collect seven works of art and no work of art can be collected twice. A game of Tate Trumps has a minimum time requirement of a half hour, though there is no maximum time limit. Users meet up at the end of their adventure and play a game of trumps against each other, using the works of art they’ve accumulated.

Tate Trumps includes three modes. Battle Mode has users judge how useful a work of art would be in a fight, if it were to come to life. Players search for works of art that are exhilarating, menacing, or absurd in Mood Mode. The final mode, Collector, is for players that “wish they had a gallery of their own”, as they search for pieces that are famous, recently produced, or practical to house.

The viral video for Tate Trumps promises that “galleries will never be the same again”, which incites the question, do galleries need to change? Tate Trumps is a fun, light-hearted way to look at art with the intention of increasing viewer interactivity with the pieces. Does it accomplish this, or is this application trivializing the experience of the museum?

There aren’t any easy answers, and there may not be a right answer. I feel that Tate Trumps has strong potential to accomplish its goal of connecting the viewer with the works. The time limit and inability to repeat pieces in a game means that in a full game, players will spend at least a half hour looking at a minimum of twenty-one works of art. The different modes force the player into critically analyzing the works of art, on multiple levels. The idea of this application may not be appropriate for every museum setting, but could it work for you? Would you play an app game in an art museum?

(Photo: Screenshot from Tate Trumps)

New Poll: What's Your Favorite App for the Arts?

As 2010 rolls to a close, Technology in the Arts wants to know: What were your favorite arts-related mobile apps of the past year? Which apps this past year were the best? The wackiest? The most engaging? Take a second and click the link below to let us know. Enter the name of the app, the platform you use it on (iPhone/Android/etc.), and why you think it's the best of the best. We'll be taking the most popular app choices and including your comments in our year-end app wrap.