The Future Of Museums - A Sneak Peek
I don't need to tell you this but Museums are amazing places full of history, art, and culture. They are absolute treasures that help us learn about the places we travel to, and better understand the world at large, our past and our surroundings.
Museums also play a particularly important role in education. Schools often take students on field trips to museums -honestly, I wish my school had taken me to more waaay more museums than they did. Does that make me a nerd? Well, you're a nerd too.
As students, we get to see real objects from history, art and science. We get to read, watch and, on rare occasions, interact with these gems, which helps us understand better and engrain in our minds to the point of making quasi-emotional connections with some of those things we read in the books earlier.
At a museum,
In any case, Museums are the absolute GOAT.
This has always been and shall forever remain the mission of every museum. History, science, art, whatever it is: Inspiration, understanding, awe... Sometimes with the help of a knowledgeable guide, sometimes by roaming around watching and reading signs on our own.
But...
With a few notable exceptions, our experiences in museums haven't really changed much in the past 100+ years. Some of those exceptions come in the form of a screen with a video here or there, some (expensive and really time-consuming to create) audio tours, and, if you're lucky and end up in one of the top-funded museums in the country, a VR headset. Museum VR headsets are fun once you get past the "Will I catch the new variant if I put them on?" part.
Note: Kudos to science museums tho, they've gotten really creative at offering fantastic hands-on experiences sometimes with access to very few resources.
For the most part, and I'm talking about history museums in particular here, the experience has been the same for decades. We go, we watch, we buy a cool pin and a t-shirt we will still wear 10 years later as pajamas, we go take care of that tickling belly with a slightly-overpriced sandwich, we go home.
That's all well and good, but what if?...
Some years ago, some really smart people sat down and asked, "What if?". The conversation went something like this:
– "Hey, John..." *Giggles*
[25 seconds later]
– "What is it, Mike?"
– "You see that painting over there?"
– "The one of the cat with the reeeeally long legs?"
– "No, no, the one of the girl with the red face trying to lick the sun"
– "Oh, yeah yeah... What about it"
– "What if you could, like... Talk to it, you know? Like, Ask questions like 'What's the meaning of trying to lick the sun like that?' or... 'What kind of paint is that' or.. I don't know... 'How long did it take to paint that thing'... You know?"
– "I mean, you can ask it..."
– "I know I can John, but... What if it answered? You know? If it told me more about itself"
– "Ooooohhh... Sure, that would be really cool I think...
... Got any more of that brownie left?"[...]
Or at least that's how I imagine it went. It's my article, so I get to write things like that.
Anyhow, some of those really smart people (about 100 of them, in fact) at IBM -yes, that IBM-, worked on John's (not a real person) idea for over 6 months using IBM Watson's artificial intelligence together with Ogilvy -yes, that Ogilvy- to create this absolute masterpiece of a project they called The Voice of Art for the Pinacoteca de S?o Paulo Museum.
Remember, this is like 7 years ago.
领英推荐
MUST WATCH! *Headphones on*
Curious about the results?
That was the concept. And that is a glimpse of what a museum experience will look like veeery soon.
How soon? I'm glad you asked.
July 2024.
Yes.
Now...
Forward to 2023, AI is a thing we all have in our pockets and someone who was involved in The Voice of Art project all those years ago didn't lose the greater vision of that ambitious project in Brazil.
His name is Eduardo (Eduardo is real btw, and so is the rest of this story).
Eduardo met Bayazid during their time at MIT and together founded Tailbox.
Tailbox is an app [launching in July 2024] that, through the sorcery of artificial intelligence, will bring a very similar experience to what IBM tried to do all those years ago to history, art and science museums.
The concept is simple: Bring all those historical pieces to life. Talk to them. Have more fun. Learn more.
All this in a matter of days, if not hours for an entire museum.
How?
Museums store absolutely gargantuan amounts of information about the pieces they display and have very little space to display all of it. Instead, with the Tailbox App you and every visitor of a museum will have access to view, listen and talk to all the knowledge behind the exhibited artifacts.
Basically, museums share all that knowledge with Tailbox and we cast our AI spells to convert it into complete audio tours, stories with images and videos and even immersive audio experiences.
Be one of the first people to check out this early version of one of the immersive audio experiences we prepared for a Museum in the Freedom Trail in Boston.
More fun, more engaging, more immersive, more interactive.
No 100 people from IBM+Ogilvy required.
No 6 months of waiting.
Then another question arises: If it works with museums, will it work for entire destinations?
But that's a topic for another day...
?? Would you like your museum on the Tailbox app? Click here to chat with us.
?? Learn more about Tailbox here.