Mobile art bookmarking, collecting and sharing
Posted by Nancy Proctor on | May 18, 2009 | 6 Comments
For all those interested in bookmarking, collecting and sharing through mobile and fixed web, I’d like to have your opinion of this service: http://www.artstream.org/
Last week I spoke with Artstream’s founder, Olga Generozova, and it seems quite interesting. I have long wanted to be able to collect my favorite art from any museum I visit, revisit and share it from a central online place.
But I also don’t need anymore passwords to remember! Can this service be provided as effectively with existing social media sites like Facebook, Twitter & Flickr? John Gordy at the National Gallery in DC pointed me to the Artshare Facebook app, for example, which already has a lot of museums on board…
From the gallery or museum’s point of view, I also want to minimize the number of platforms where I need to maintain my content. Olga assured me that it is possible for the Artstream system to pull in my images and text from my own servers or from Flickr, but that there would be, unsurprisingly, some degradation in response time.
Artstream provides a web and SMS interface to the museum or gallery’s collection/exhibition images, text & related multimedia.
Users set up an account and can bookmark anything in the Artstream database. Bookmarked items get saved to their personal accounts, which they can then share with friends. Comments can feed through to users’ Twitter streams and Facebook status.
Each exhibition, artwork, and artist gets its own page which can also be commented on, e.g.
http://www.artstream.org/programmes/home/12
http://www.artstream.org/artworks/view/178
http://www.artstream.org/artists/view/58
And users get profile pages like:
Museums/galleries can include comments on artworks and the exhibition in general as mash-ups via RSS in their own websites.
There is also an ‘ask the artist’ service with alerts to both ends of the conversation via email or SMS whenever a reply is posted.
Olga’s going to send me an example of the template in which galleries and museums provide their content info & links to Artstream. She’s also going to send mock-ups of how the RSS feed could integrate into the American Art exhibition pages and permanent collection object pages. In the meanwhile, I’d love to hear what you all think!
Tags: Artstream > bookmarking > cellphone > collecting > Facebook > Flickr > Olga Generozova > RSS > sharing > SMS > twitter
Comments
6 Responses to “Mobile art bookmarking, collecting and sharing”
Leave a Reply
Search
What’s New
- inSitu Solutions™ by Kanvasys
- Products & Services
- My Tours
- Exhibitly (in progress)
- MCN Annual Conference 16-19 Nov 2011, Atlanta
- Museum-Mobile online conference
- AAM's Technology, Interpretation and Education 2011
- Exhibitly Needs Your Help!
- Virtuality, Technology & Feminism in the Museum
- DC Area Mobile Collaborations
Login
Mailing LIst
Loading...
May 18th, 2009 @ 6:50 pm
[...] Artstream.org-mobile bookmarking, collecting & sharing; what do you think? http://wiki.museummobile.info/archives/224 #mtogo fresh, [...]
May 18th, 2009 @ 10:52 pm
Nancy,
Thanks for bringing this to our attention. I have many questions!
Like you, I feel as if I don’t need another login and password. But, this is a common practice now for many museums, archives, photosharing sites so in some ways we’re all used to it.
I’d be interested to see how this all works in gallery w/SMS. Does SMS just allow you to comment and ask the artist? Having a feed to subscribe to would be important for keeping users updated on comments and artists’ responses, if they chose to stay in touch with others in that manner.
I accessed this site from Safari on my iPhone and it felt like any other website. I wasn’t redirected to a mobile style sheet, even though I see one exists. Registering from my phone was fine but might be clunky for other folks. Maybe this is easier if you are in gallery b/c you can text? Unclear.
At the same time, I also wonder for content creators
how does Artstream interact with a CMS? Can folks re-use and re-purpose content they have already created, or are they starting from scratch here?
There really isn’t much to the artwork page other than a label. Any idea if this is the same label available in the gallery? Where could one access more info, or is this more about the images?
Lots of thoughts and questions from me tonight, and not many answers.
Thanks again for sharing and will look forward to learning more about the project.
Sheila
May 19th, 2009 @ 10:33 am
Hi Sheila, thank you for your questions, here are my thoughts.
We would like to make it easy for museums to add social features to their website, supporting visitor conversations about exhibitions whatever channel or platform visitors might want to use in the museum or later at home. It can be mobile phone, touch screen kiosk, personal computer, twitter and others.
Our comment stream displays comments coming from all channels in real time, it can be projected on a wall in the museum, it is available on Artstream website, and can be displayed on relevant pages of the museum website.
Artstream sign up:
If you are an exhibition visitor and would like to bookmark artworks and share your first impressions, you can send text comments to our dedicated number.
You can sign up to Artstream at any point during your visit simply by sending a text with your name and email.
We are also planning to add support for signing in using existing accounts such as Facebook and Google.
Mobile version of Artstream:
Artstream started as mobile website back in 2006, when very few people used mobile web, and after many user testing sessions and product iterations we focused on the simplest and most accessible version: using SMS for bookmarking artworks and capturing immediate impressions in the museum, complemented with rich online experience on a computer or a touch screen kiosk.
We are currently working on a new version of our mobile site, optimized for iPhone and other phones with mobile internet access. You will be able to view what people are saying about the exhibition and artworks in real time, while walking around the museum.
CMS integration
While there’s clearly benefit in having an ability to transfer information from a museum to its online presence automatically, exactly how a given museum stores its data will influence this. Standard museum data Interchange formats would help, we look forward to supporting them. Currently we work with museum data exported in an interim format, which we import in our database.
However also putting my user experience hat on, it’s important to acknowledge that the web is a different medium, that people tend to scan rather than read in depth, and for best results there needs to be an editorial process moving from detailed, internal systems to world of the visitor with ‘continuous partial distraction’.
The low effort option which worked well for some of our clients is re-purposing text about an exhibition and artworks they have already prepared for a press-release and an exhibition catalog.
Artwork page
Artwork page can display as much information as a museum and the artist would like to provide. It can have a brief summary, full description, audio or video interviews with the artist, perhaps photos of the artwork at different stages or the creative process or links to any interactive materials you already have about it.
You can also include any additional relevant materials, that could not be displayed as part of the physical exhibition and links to further research for people who would like to find our more.
Some artists like sharing their creative process and inspiration like on this page: http://www.artstream.org/artworks/view/182
I will be very happy to answer more questions and show you a demo if you like.
Olga
May 19th, 2009 @ 9:41 pm
[...] Thanks for answering questions about Artstream.org at http://wiki.museummobile.info/archives/224 ! #mtogo @MoMAlearning @dincandela @matwater213 @nfofilm Thanks for this great film on Future of [...]
May 19th, 2009 @ 10:20 pm
Thanks, Olga for going through and answering my lengthy questions!
Sheila
May 25th, 2009 @ 12:01 am
[...] Artstream.org-mobile bookmarking, collecting & sharing; what do you think? http://wiki.museummobile.info/archives/224 #mtogo [...]