Rachel
Kuniansky Varon
ArtRemix:
Making Podcasts for the Blanton
Introduction
A museum visitor typically only engages with a museum’s audio
tour as a passive participant. Visitors may select the order in which they listen
to the audio recordings, but they cannot give their own feedback and reactions to the works of art. Podcasting offers the opportunity for the public to speak to and be heard by others. By uploading content to the Internet, visitors actively participate in a discussion about a work of art,
instead of simply being a consumer of media. Podcasting offers museums an opportunity to provide different perspectives, ranging
from those of laypeople and children to art historians and curators, and to put forth alternative interpretations to the traditional
curatorial commentary. Expanding the types of voices heard in the museum and
finding new ways to bring in visitor voices to the discourse may make museum exhibitions more relevant to the lives of its
visitors.
In order to experiment with the production of podcasts by young
adult museum visitors, I conducted a research project in the winter of 2006 at the Blanton Museum of Art at the University
of Texas at Austin (UT). Members of the Blanton Student Guild, a UT undergraduate
student organization, created podcasts about works of art in the Blanton’s collection.
Blanton Podcasting Program
Description
The primary goal of this research was to examine ways that
university students engage with works of art though a digital medium. The research
began with an hour-long presentation and discussion with eight university students from the Blanton Student Guild about audio
tours and podcasting in museums. First, we discussed the participants’
prior experience with audio tours in museums. The group was then introduced to
podcasting. We listened to an array of examples of traditional and progressive
audio materials provided by museums online, including audio guide clips from the Frick Collection, Museum of Modern Art in
New York City, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s Artcasts, and the Art Mobs renegade tours. We discussed the approach taken by each museum and commented on the
participants’ reactions to the appealing nature of the information provided. The
group discussed the point of view presented, the intended audience, the type of language used, and the overall mood in each
recording.
Next, subjects were given wands with the audio tour produced by the
Blanton Museum of Art and encouraged to roam the galleries and listen to a few stops on the tour. Students reconvened after a brief time, and were asked to critique the audio tour. At the end of the session, I introduced the podcasting project to the students, where they were asked to
create their own podcast about a work of art in the Blanton’s collection. The group brainstormed ways to improve the
audio tours in order to make them more interesting and relevant to young audiences.
Prior to recording sessions, each student chose a work of art
at the Blanton to discuss in a podcast. Once they chose the work, they also were
free to create any type of content they desired, as long as they felt that the commentary was relevant to the artwork. For example, they had the option to choose music or include images to enhance the
experience of looking at the work. The sole stipulation required that the podcast
be between one and four minutes long and that they support any judgmental claims with concrete evidence.
Over the course of the following week, participants attended
individual recording sessions to record their podcasts on a laptop with a inexpensive microphone. Together, the student and I edited the flaws from the podcasts and added additional sound tracks, if desired. A few weeks later, the podcasts created by the participants were presented to the
rest of the Blanton Student Guild at a listening party.
Results of the Study
Each of the eight subjects in the study created an exciting and unique
podcast. However, after listening to the audio files, I noticed some similarities
between the approaches taken by the eight students. First, and most obviously,
three of the students played the role of a curator in their podcasts. They imitated
the style, art historical jargon, and artist biographical information typically included in traditional audio materials. After one student in this category finished recording, he said, “Now that I
got that out of my system, I want to make another one that is more creative.”
Interestingly, all three of these students majored in art history, and were therefore more entrenched in the methods
and conventions of the field of art history.
A second common characteristic emerged in three of the podcasts,
in which the participants reacted to a work of art by relaying individual experiences and personal stories that were stimulated
by some aspect of the work. One student read journal entries about her experiences
working at a museum summer camp, which was set to the student’s favorite music; another recounted her internship experience
abroad; and another described the work of art she likes least in the museum. In
each case the speaker used a work of art as a jumping-off point to tell a personal story.
These subjective narratives deliver a distinctive perspective rarely heard in museum audio materials.
The remaining two participants took a different approach to
the task and creatively interpreted of the chosen artwork. One student created
a dialogue between two voices, one that cracked jokes about the work and another that gave textbook answers to the issues
brought up by the joker. The other student read a piece of creative writing inspired
by the work and added thematically relevant music to the background. The chosen
work, El Guitarrista by Pablo Curatella Manes, is a sculpture of a guitar player,
so the guitar solo music tied directly to her interpretation of the work.
All the podcasts created for this study exceeded my expectations
in their quality, interest, and ingenuity. The various ways subjects approached
the same assignment reveals interesting possibilities for creative engagements with works of art in a museum. Hearing how the students related to artworks of their choice inspired students from the Guild who did not
participate in the study to create more podcasts.
A few of the Guild’s podcasts were selected to be placed on the Blanton’s
website and are available for download through iTunes at http://blantonmuseum.org/experience_the_blanton/elounge/podcasts.cfm.
Conclusions
By creating
their own podcasts for the museum, University of Texas at Austin students connected with art objects in a format that is familiar
to them, through digital technologies prevalent in their lives. These students
were given control of their learning and were therefore highly motivated to do outside research. By uploading their broadcasts onto the Internet, the audio files became available to other visitors; inverting
traditional exchange in museums, the participants become a guide or authority on a work of art. Additionally, through this exercise, participants listened to their peers’ opinions about art and
understood that there is more than one interpretation for a given artwork. By
playing the role of a producer of content for museums, or at minimum an active participant in the dialogue about art, the
participants became more critical and aware of museum interpretations as well as the sources of information for other digital
media. The listener must think critically about the source of the information. By mixing in a variety of voices, listeners began to question and engage more deeply
with their sources.
Technology offers museums an innovative channel for reaching
out to emerging adults, giving them new outlets to relate to the artworks in their collections. More importantly, today’s youth require choices in their learning experiences because they have grown
up accustomed to a digital world that offers a myriad of options and opportunities for expression. Teaching about and through technology, educators can increase visual literacy in the lives of learners
while participants find their voice and express their own ideas.
