Jake Barton - Local Projects (NYC)

Local Projects creates media environments (including an aquatically-themed carousel), innovative interfaces, and collaborative storytelling projects.

Barton's background is in performance studies. Talked about The Louvre as an example of overt curatorial control, rather than actually engaging/"speaking out" to people who visit. Then, Barton showed the famous final scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark, where a huge, faux Smithosonian storage facility houses thousands of artifacts that never see the light of day. (He also mentioned the book, Making Museums Matter - Weil.) Barton suggested that there were lots of similarities between the way we navigate the Internet and the way museums work.

Memory Maps - This exihibition was part of the Smithsonian Folkways project. People "triangulated" through the exihibition while pinning their own stories to a map of NYC neighborhoods. On opening day, they had NO CONTENT, which Barton said was very challenging for curators to accept. Typically, there's LOTS of content when an exhibition opens. Local Projects is currently working on a digital archive of this exhibition.

Miners' Story Project - Interviews with actual miners added a significant amount of interest to what had previously amounted to "just a bunch of rocks." Local Projects designed a trailer that housed a recording studio - the graphic on the side of the trailer (a picture of a miner) is actually a really big speaker! He says they're intertwining "getting and telling" - "the getting is part of the telling."

StoryCorps - How do you create a massive archive of American oral history? StoryCorps (and Local Projects) created several booths (one of which is in Grand Central Station) where individuals can conduct interviews. A copy of the CD goes to the interviewer/interviewee and one goes to the Library of Congress. They also have two Airstream trailers outfitted with listening booths that can travel across the US to collect these stories.

Barton noted that there's a very asymmetrical relationship between that which is created in these booths, and that which is actually curated (about 1 in 100 actually are presented to the public via the Web site or Mobile story booths). This may mean that people are creating things that aren't very interesting to anyone but themselves OR it may mean that we need new ways to think about collective curation and reflection of these materials.

There's no actual agenda for the kind of stories that StoryCorps wants to hear, but this makes funding actually difficult. Barton thinks this is the strength of the project.

JetBlue (the yang to StoryCorps yin, Barton notes) - Apparently, people are so impassioned about the airline that people actually use a video booth to tell stories about JetBlue. (Meta note: the architecture of these booths is very cool.) This was not about a one-to-one experience. This was supposed to be fast and playful.

Key interaction design of physical spaces is (1) if people are going to do the experience, you have to make it clear and seamless and fun; and (2) space instructions out over time.

Local Projects actually builds the prototypes for these projects in their studios, and Barton showed a very cool time-lapse film of the booth they created for JetBlue.