A friend sent the attached link amazing!  What if all transportation infrastructure was kinetic sculpture?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falkirk_Wheel

Concept Video:

http://www.bennettmg.co.uk/video/falkirk_concept.htm

In Operation:

http://www.bennettmg.co.uk/video/falkirk.htm

I have started a group on LinkedIn called “Artists, Science and Museums”.

Click to join

LinkedIn Link:

http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=2869188

A networking group for artists, designers and museum professionals working in the field of Science Centers and Children’s Museums to share ideas about incorporating sculpture into science exhibitions.

The Eames “Do-Nothing Machine” is one of my favorite sculptures.

Ray and Charles Eames on Wikapedia

Exhibition design of Ray and Charles Eames

• Textiles and Ornamental Arts of India (1955)
• Glimpses of the USA (seven screens for the American exhibition in Moscow, Sokoolniki Park) (1959)
• Mathematica (for IBM) (1961)
• IBM Pavilion at the 1964 New York World’s Fair
• Nehru: The man and his India (1965)
• The World of Franklin and Jefferson (1975) built for the US Bicentennial Commission opens in Paris, travels to five other countries and the US

I am currently in Saigon, Vietnam, and visited the War Remnants Museum, a very powerful experience! As I am walking through the Museum I keep noticing small issues that are easily changed, but have a large impact on the visitor experience such as lighting, wayfinding and heights of graphic panels. Recently I have completed an exhibition audit for the Mobius Science Center preview facility.  The  Review included:

• Interviews with visitors
• Mapping of the visitor experience
• Review of exhibition lighting
• Suggestions for changes to visitor flow
• Review of graphics
• Review of wayfinding
• Review of audio visual systems
• Review of exhibition media
• Review of exhibit maintenance and repair program
• A review of the mix of types of exhibit, static, highly interactive, simple manipulatives
• A written report containing, recommendations for changes

If you are interested in a $1000 objective exhibition audit send me an email;

Mark’s Email

for a copy of a sample exhibition audit.

Just learned about Heritance, love their thinking.  Check out the online museum http://openmuseum.org – Mark Walhimer

Heritance Website

From Heritance website:

“Heritance promotes open museum practices that foster diversity and good governance.

Heritance promotes open museum practices through Open Museum (OMo), a free web site and global museum that allows museums to create dynamic exhibits that support (encourage!) visitor co-creation.

Open Museums matter.

Open museums encourage everyone to play an active role in preserving, protecting, and promoting their heritage.

Open museums promote tolerance by embracing the complexity and contradictions inherent in all history and culture.

Open museums encourage good governance by embodying the values of transparence and inclusion.

And finally, open museums are simply more interesting, engaging and rewarding to their visitors when they present a variety of contrasting perspectives and interpretations. Because any story worth telling always has more than one side.”

About Open Museum

WHAT:

Open Museum is a non-commercial exhibit space open to all. Any organization or individual can create dynamic online exhibits; any visitor can contribute content; and everyone can access the global museum. Open Museum is the collaborative project of Heritance and Zirgoflex L3C.

WHO:

Heritance is a cultural and educational nonprofit (501c3) organization whose mission is to promote open museum practices that foster diversity and good governance.

Zirgoflex is a registered Vermont L3C (designated low-profit) social venture specializing in the design, development, and deployment of web-based products supporting public sphere collaborative content production.

The Open Museum Team, Jeff Doyle, Lauri Berkenkamp and Maureen Ward Doyle, are participants in both Heritance and Zirgoflex and bring decades (if not a century!) of technology, communications and education experience to this project.

WHY:

We at Open Museum believe that culture is for everyone, and that museums can create vibrant and thriving real-world communities by making online connections with their visitors.

Museums are important cultural cornerstones: they are public spaces where people can explore the world’s art, culture, and heritage, and immerse themselves in the complex stories of our shared past. But while most museums focus long and hard on presenting information that they hope visitors will internalize and appreciate, very few museums really interact with their visitors, have conversations, or make the one-on-one connections that really create a community.

We created Open Museum because we think it is ideal for preserving and promoting art, culture and history in a way that static web sites don’t and can’t offer. For museums and organizations with no online presence, Open Museum provides a great initial web presence as well as a way to have a virtual catalog of the objects in that museum’s collections. For museums and organizations with existing websites, Open Museum provides a complementary presence that offers features found in the most cutting-edge online museums such as MOMA and Brooklyn Museum.

Open Museum is on the leading edge of rethinking and retooling the way people interact with arts, culture and history, and we believe that it is an opportunity that should be shared by all kinds of organizations, regardless of their finances, location, or technical skills.

We feel that the equation is simple: objects + people = museums. So with Open Museum, we are combining online exhibits of collections with social networking features, to make a website that allows people who like museums, art, and culture, to visit exhibits online and get to know other people who also like and visit museums.

HOW:

Open Museum is a not-for-profit project that is funded by donations from foundations and individuals. To keep it free for everyone, consider making a tax-deductible donation to Open Museum.

Help shape Open Museum by telling us what you think!”

http://hackerspaces.org/wiki/List_of_Hacker_Spaces

Hackerspaces are communites of people that gather for “Do it yourself projects” or Maker Movement projects.

Most science centers lose visitors at age 12, Hackerspaces is a great way to extend participation for teenagers and adults.

Read Museum 2.0 article for more information

Machine Project Loves Me from Jeremy Quinn on Vimeo.

Machine Project

1200 D North Alvarado
Los Angeles, CA 90026
213-483-8761
http://machineproject.com

from website

“Machine Project exists to encourage heroic experiments of the gracefully over-ambitious. We provide educational resources to people working with technology, we collaborate with artists to produce site-specific works, and we promote conversations between scientists, poets, technicians, performers, and the community of Los Angeles as a whole.”

Reuben Margolin, a Bay Area visionary and longtime maker, creates totally singular techno-kinetic wave sculptures. Using everything from wood to cardboard to found and salvaged objects, Reubens artwork is diverse, with sculptures ranging from tiny to looming, motorized to hand-cranked. Focusing on natural elements like a discrete water droplet or a powerful ocean eddy, his work is elegant and hypnotic.

http://www.reubenmargolin.com/

Click Image for video

The Exploratorium
3601 Lyon Street
San Francisco, CA 94123
(415) 563-7337

June 19, 2009-September 20, 2009, Daniel Rozin at the Seeing Gallery of the Exploratorium

“The Seeing Gallery is part of the Seeing collection on display at the Exploratorium. The gallery showcases exhibits exploring artists’ perspectives on seeing and perception.

This summer’s Reflections exhibition features the interactive artworks of Daniel Rozin, whose mechanical and software mirrors and sculptures respond to your presence and provide intriguing new perspectives on your image. You’ll be absorbed by Self-Centered Mirror, lose yourself in Self-Excluding Mirror, reinvent yourself as a snowstorm at Snow Mirror, strike a painterly pose for Mirror No. 10 (Sketch Mirror), and more.

Daniel Rozin is Associate Arts Professor at the Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU and is an artist and developer working with interactive digital art. All Rozin’s artworks appear courtesy of bitforms gallery and ITP-New York University.”

From Exploratorium Website

First in a series on interactivity in Museums and Science Centers

There are several conferences where emerging technologies for museums is exhibited:
Association of Science and Technologies
Siggraph
InfoComm
Maker Faire