Story: Mug Punter
For hundreds of years museums have rightly been dim and dusty places, protectors of our heritage filled with tattered books and moth-eaten, stuffed animals; our precious history safeguarded behind glass cabinets with little name plaques written in Latin. Admittedly, not a place for the academically faint-hearted. Usually, you could pick up a sort of mud-map at the front door, then you followed lines and arrows marked on the floor through the building’s maze, dutifully pausing at various displays because the instruction booklets insisted these are somehow really interesting (no, we’re still talking about museums, not Ikea) until you eventually emerged into the sunlight again and feeling somewhat bewildered about it all. With a bit of luck, you might have seen an ostrich egg.
You might agree it can be hard to get excited over much of this historical stuff. A lot of it is just… well, stuff. Even a piece of moon rock looks like something the curator picked up in the museum car park for a laugh. Tutankhamen’s sarcophagus? Meh — I’ve seen it on the telly a million times. In fact, it was much more exciting on television, because then it had this angry dude wrapped in bandages lying inside. He’d jump out and chase people with his arms out-stretched, eventually killing them somehow even though King Tut was obviously not in good physical nick under all those wrappings.
It’d be cool to visit that museum in the movies that comes to life at midnight and everybody goes crazy, trashing the joint. You probably think that it’s all make-believe, but seriously — a film script like that is going to send anyone bananas. I reckon it’s real.
Technology and digital signage have been trying to make museums real and more relevant in the modern world, bringing them to life with animations and interactive displays. Touchscreens have played a big part in this and it’s kind of bizarre that for centuries we’ve been slapping children on the back of the head for putting their sticky fingers on the glass — and now that’s exactly what we want them to do… at least, if they could do it properly. One of the new social problems associated with interactive displays is that people are now expected to wait their turn. There are few things more frustrating than standing back, waiting for your turn, watching some over-zealous parent intent on educating their hyperactive rug-rat by encouraging them to operate a touchscreen themselves — and the gumby little sod keeps hitting the wrong buttons. It’s worse than queuing up behind an ATM-illiterate, who reads every word on the screen, can’t decide what they want to do — and drags out one card after another.
Okay, settle down, nothing is as bad as waiting for someone who can’t work an ATM, but you know what I mean about folks hogging interactive displays. There should be a law against it, or maybe an automated announcement built in, something like, “Your idiot child has exceeded the time limit required for proving any meaningful intelligence or hand-eye co-ordination. It’s annoying. Please move on”.
I’m not joking. Otherwise we’re in danger of spawning a whole new 21st century phenomenon called “Rage-quitting the museum”.
Here’s a weird thing — many visitors in a museum can feel strangely obligated to stand and watch an entire audiovisual presentation, even though they’re not particularly interested, because they don’t want to somehow offend the electronic gizmo behind the black curtain. Museums can be sneaky, triggering these displays by using infra-red beams and motion detectors (hmm… I wonder if Tom Cruise in his black Mission Impossible ninja suit could walk through an entire museum without tripping any hidden automated displays?). Trapped by a voiceover, the audience stands like a deer in the headlights enduring an AV show on something they couldn’t give a hoot about. It’s a bit like going to the cinema in Hollywood. Apparently it’s a cardinal sin to leave the picture theatre before all the credits have rolled in case someone sitting next to you is mentioned in them and gets their feelings hurt. We’ve possibly caused a whole new condition we’ll call “digital content congestion”. When three of more people refuse to move out the way, because they’re watching an AV presentation they don’t like, but don’t want to offend anything.
Modernised museums… I’m not convinced. By the time your overloaded senses have seen the final PowerPoint presentation, heard the last voiceover from a mannequin, pressed every button and touched all the screens setting off a million bells and whistles— maybe that smelly, dusty museum of yore might not seem such a bad place after all. They were kind of quiet, right? Full of stuff that might be unremarkable, but at least it’s real and not virtual. Most of the time you had the joint all to yourself, too.
I’d want to be chased around by Tutankhamen’s mummy, though. Only for a little while, long enough to work up a thirst for a warm beer and stale egg sandwich in the cafe. That can be the interactive bit, being chased by a homicidal bloke wrapped in bandages.
That’s not too much to ask for given what they can do nowadays.
Mug Punter’s curmudgeonly carping does not necessarily reflect the views of DigitalSignage. If you have a differing view contact the editor Chris Holder on chris@dsmag.com.au