Concept
"Word-of-Mouth" is a configuration of the museum environment that allows the viewer of a museum exhibit to overhear previous spectators of the same exhibit. We suggest that conversations and comments of the pass-by visitor, recorded inside the museum without the commentator's awareness, will be added to the information that refers to and defines an exhibit and will confront the following spectator. We believe such a confrontation to be a stimulating and creative disruption of certain preconceptions of the visitor and a provocation of the idea of the museum as a neutral and protected environment.
Implementation
For the implementation, both a recording and a playback mechanism need to be defined. To facilitate comment capturing, we introduce the notion of the "social audio tour" with integrated recording capabilities: pairs of visitors record themselves (without awareness of it) via a mobile recording facility particularly promoted as an audio tour for pairs. Collected comments are played back to the following visitor by means of the "extended audio tour", instances of audio tours that bring together the official museum text and the visitors comments.
Case Study
(click image to enlarge)
We produced a prototype of the "Word-of-Mouth" that consists of a "social audio tour" unit and an "extended audio tour". A recording and a playback session were possible thanks to the aid of Naturalis, the National Museum of Natural History in Leiden.
Naturalis is not affiliated with the project but they kindly provided us with the museum space for our research. In fact, this case study would not have been possible without the help and cooperation of Mr. H.J. Ahrens, Naturalis. The authors are also grateful to the testers of the "social audio tour" whose comments have been -literally- the heart of this project. Also, to the testers of the "extended audio tour" and to the "voice" of the audio tour, Chanoeck den Adel.
Some conclusions
Some of the most encouraging results of this study are the extent and quality of the captured comments, rich in both content and emotion, and the acceptance and appreciation of this material by the (following) visitors.
Ourselves, we are impressed by the collected expressions and strongly believe that they deserve a place in the exhibition discourse. In addition, the listeners' responses demonstrate plenty of interest on the comments, also as a counterbalance to the museum expert talk. But we do not wish the visitors to "prove" us right: we are pleased with the variety in comments and in personal encounters that "Word-of-Mouth" triggered.
The authors would be happy to work towards an improved interface or a better technology to facilitate this concept. Also, we are very fond of the idea and practice of the "social audio tour". Now an intermediate component of this project, we would be extremely interested to further explore this concept on its own.