The New Media Gallery is a contemporary public art gallery devoted to the presentation of international and local new media art. With the goal of encouraging people of all backgrounds to learn and appreciate art, Sarah, and Gordon – the directors and curators of NMG have been working hard to ensure that all the visitors to the New Media Gallery feel welcomed there. One of the ways that they do so is through the iBeacon technology- a device that enriches the gallery viewing experience for visitors. During my time interning there, I have been using this technology to create a project in response to Witness exhibition.

The iBeacon technology in New Media Gallery is provided by Judy- the CEO of Neartuit. iBeacon is a small device that allows Bluetooth devices to receive tiny and static pieces of data within short distances. In simplistic words, it consists of two parts: a broadcaster (beacon device) and a receiver (smartphone app). Using a smartphone or a tablet with Bluetooth, the receiver would detect these Bluetooth radio packets and sends the desired information deemed by the creator depending on how close or far it is from them. For the person with the smartphone or tablet to receive this information from the beacons, however, they would need to first install the app onto their hand-held device.

One of the most common ways that iBeacons have been used is to be installed behind artworks in a gallery, so that whenever a visitor walks by the artwork, the beacon behind that artwork would send information about it to whatever handheld device they’re using. This information can go beyond the general descriptive information and could contain more engaging mediums such as images and videos. However, for NMG- a gallery that specializes in new media artwork, as opposed to static mediums like paintings and sculpture, it could be problematic to install this technology next to the artworks. This is because the dynamic nature of these artworks would require the viewer to pay attention to them, and focus on them only instead of being distracted by another technology.

As well, many artists would also not like their art to be viewed with such a distraction in the way, and hence I decided to place the beacon technology outside of the gallery space, and yet still incorporate it with the exhibition inside the gallery. Therefore, the iBeacons would be placed underneath the chairs outside the gallery space, so that after people visit Witness, they can step out and see this, and be encouraged to take part in it.

Inspired by the idea that after watching an interesting movie, many would go on the Internet to read more about it, I decided to create a project that helps the gallery viewers gain a multiple-perspective and multi-disciplinary understanding of the exhibition after seeing it for themselves.

To better understand my project, I will explain my thought processes behind this project, by answering the important questions of ‘What, why, who and how’

• WHAT: a project in response to Witness exhibition
  What’s Witness Exhibition about? This exhibition contemplates ‘the seeing machine’. There are five works of art in this exhibition. Each sets up an interplay between the perceiving machine, the world that is perceived by the machine and us humans, who are both the perceiving + perceived bodies. A symbiotic relationship is formed between organic and non-organic systems. Bearing in mind that the theme of the exhibition determines the content of the iBeacons, I have done a lot of research on what topics would be valuable in enriching the visitors’ experience, and have decided that each iBeacon will contain a different theme that I pick from the exhibition. The point of them is to enhance people’s gallery viewing experience so that they walk away from the exhibition with a more comprehensive understanding of what they’ve just seen.
• WHY:  Why is this important? for the gallery visitors to gain more perspectives into the artworks that they have seen inside the gallery space, and to help people who are unfamiliar with the arts to better understand contemporary art through introducing them to popular modern art concepts that they’ve come across in the exhibition.
• WHO: Who is this directed towards? all the gallery visitors of the Witness exhibition (people of all ages, with a different understanding of the arts)
• HOW: How to make this work? I set up a comfortable, inviting setting that all viewers would like to take part in and take their time to enjoy. And I thought chairs would be a good way to allow this to happen
  Each iBeacon will contain info about different professionals talking about a certain theme, in the following order: a psychoanalyst’s point of view, a scientific point of view, an artist’s’ point of view and another one that is to be decided. Originally, I planned to interview different groups of people, but due to time restraints, I will not be able to do so and hence will carefully select information from the Internet instead. After discussing with Sarah, I have finalized the fields in which the people in my iBeacons will be presented:

1. An orthoptist- a certified allied health professional who works under the supervision of an ophthalmologist to evaluate and treat disorders of the visual system with an emphasis on binocular vision (using both eyes to see) and eye movement problems. This field is closely related to the work Surface Tension by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer
2. Artist Ai Weiwei talking about his work relating to Surveillance Camera, relating to the works Vision Machine #3 and The Agency at the End of Civilization 2014
3. A government authority person talking about the importance of surveillance to the safety of the nation’s people – relating to The Agency at the End of Civilization 2014
4. A psychologist talking about the theory of desire and ‘lack’ by Lacan, relating to the work Do Robotic Cats Dream of Electric Fish?

Evaluation:

During my researching and prototyping process, here are some of the issues that arose:

• It takes some time to download the app and to download the content onto one’s phone/ tablet. The solution: iPad would be downloaded already, there are issues with the building as well→ many factors need to be considered
• Certain beacons’ batteries (was 2-year and now moving towards 5-year) might not work.  Solution: check on them every day.
• People whose English is not their first language might still not understand basic words. The solution is to use different languages and a lot of images.

In conclusion, this experience has taught me many things, including the ability to do research about a project and present it. However, what I’ve found most valuable is the ability to apply design thinking to my future projects, which is a creative process based around the ‘building up’ of ideas, to solve a problem. There are no judgments in design thinking, but empathy is a critical element that needs to be considered so that a user-friendly solution is created. The four steps involve:

1. Empathy: Learn about the audience for whom I am designing
2. Define: define the problems based on the insights from the empathy stage
3. Ideate: Brainstorm and come up with creative solutions
4. Prototype: Build a representation of one or more ideas I have
5. Test: see the usability and effectiveness of my design in solving the problem

And in the process, I learned that the ability to empathize with the users is one of the most important things, and research needs to be carried out to reduce the assumptions make. In other words, we need to stay away from the tendency to create something that we think people need and move towards designing things that people need.

The resume lines:

New Media Gallery

Title: iBeacon App Intern

Key Skills: Research, Design, User Interface Design, Analyze, Video Editing, Photo Editing

During my four-month internship at the New Media Gallery, I worked on a project called Response to Witness, which takes the form of an app from Neartuit Technology. The app utilizes iBeacon technology and was designed with the aim of enriching the gallery visiting experience for the New Media Gallery visitors. By incorporating the content of the iBeacon to the exhibition named Witness, I aimed to give the gallery visitors a multi-disciplinary understanding of the works in the exhibition. This process involved researching, designing the app’s interface so that it’s user-friendly and improving the design based on the feedback from the users. In addition, video editing and photo editing were also part of the process, which was important because visually-appealing appearance would make the experience more enjoyable for the viewers.

Today, I got to talk to Judy- the founder of Neartuit organization today. She walked me through the ways that iBeacons could be used and showed me some prototypes of the app at different galleries throughout Vancouver. Judy also helped me solving issues that the iBeacons had, which was important since the device plays a large role in the final presentation of my project.

I did further research on the project and used Adobe Premiere to put the videos online together in order to create one coherent video. Here are some screenshots and photos of the prototype that I have been working on:

Sarah and I discussed the strengths and weaknesses of the interface designs as a starting point, as well as choosing the keywords to be used for each design. The take away key points for today is to always try to put myself in the gallery viewers’ shoes since they are the ones for whom I designed this app. Sympathy, is then, not just relevant to the design of an app’s layouts, but also to the curatorial process as a whole. I learned this from Sarah, as she was teaching me that Gordon and her always bear in mind that the intended audience of the New Media Gallery is the general public, and hence everything that is presented there has to be simple enough so that someone without any background in the arts understand what is said, while someone in the academics world do not find it too patronizing or over-simplified.

One of my main goals with the Chat.The Mng project is to find a way to maximize the efficiency of iBeacon technology, in a way that can enhance the gallery visitors’ viewing experience beyond the gallery space. At the same time, I aim to learn more about the curatorial process of shows like Witness.

During my time at New Media Gallery, I aim to improve my research skills, particularly in learning more about the ways in which galleries engage with their visitors. Bearing in mind that this process will consist of interaction between humans and technologies, I will learn to test different methods of interacting and evaluate them to see which works best. At the end of the process, I hope to gain an increased understanding of the curatorial process, particularly with new media artwork, as well as the way in which technology can make our gallery viewing experience more interactive.

In order to attain my goals, I will need excellent research skills, as well as the ability to continuously re-evaluate and readjust in the process. These are particularly important in the prototyping period when I conduct user-centered research and use the insight gathered from the data to revise my method of interaction with the viewer.

To achieve these goals, I will first create a survey in order to find out what kind of experience people look for when they visit an exhibition, particularly with ones that display new media works like Witness. Do they want some kind of technology to guide them along their way? Would this intervention take place before, during, or after the main exhibition? This survey is important because many people believe that technology, such as a smartphone, could interfere with the relationship between an artwork and the viewer. Most often, artists whose works are being shown would not like this interference either, since they’d prefer having their works installed and viewed in a certain way.

After the survey process, I plan to reach out to different professionals whose careers have a connection with the theme of the exhibition, in order to give the audience an insight into the exhibition from different perspectives. For instance, the work Surface Tension by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer relates to the theme of science, particularly optometry. As such, I might contact an optometrist and ask for a short interview to find out their opinion on the role of the eyes in shaping our perception of the world. Alternatively, I could reach out to an artist whose works revolve around the theme of the eyes and discuss their connection to it.

Finally, I will insert these data into the iBeacons and experiment to see how they can best connect to the visitors’ personal device. This process will require technical support from Neartuit- the startup that provided the iBeacons for New Media Gallery. At this point, many new challenges might arise but I will actively communicate with different groups of people to overcome them. On the last day of the project, I will provide a presentation to showcase my progress and the final outcome. I look forward to this presentation, as it will receive many constructive criticisms that would be highly valuable to me.

[IMPORTANT DATES]

Oct.6- First meeting

Oct.20- Technical demonstration (using iBeacons) given by Judy (CEO of Neartuit)

Oct.27- Project research- refine different groups of professionals to be included in the program

Nov. 3- Program research- show the first set of prototype of the program interface

A date TBD between Nov. 4th and 16th – Technical run through and set up the stage

Nov. 17- Analyze the data collected from the project and make adjustments accordingly

Dec. 1- Final presentation of program

*Schedule subject to change*