12/06/2014

On Saturday Billy and I met again to talk about our final assessment. We went over on how well our exhibit when and who was in charge of what in the final assessment. I was put in charge of the changes or adjustment we made to improve our exhibit. We plan to have our part of the final assessment done on Tuesday so we can meet and put everything together. The stressful part of the exhibit project is now over and we just have to finish up the final assessment. 

December 6th

Today was the final meeting between my partner Xiong and I. We discussed the things that we thought went well with the exhibit, but also couldn't help but self criticize certain things that could have gone better. Hind sight is 20/20 I suppose. After discussing what else was required to finish this entire project i.e. the Reaction paper, we came up with an outline of what things we were going to address in our paper, as well as recalled details about the exhibit experience that we could use. We then divided up responsibility in regards to who was going to do which portions in the Reaction paper. This meeting was the shortest one that we had had all semester, only lasting about 30 minutes. Once we had divided up the responsibilities, we decided to try and have all of the components ready to be assembled by Tuesday, so that we both could have a significant amount of time to work on the assignments that finish out the rest of the semester.

December 2nd

Today was the day that my partner and I had been working towards for the past several weeks...implementation day. We had made adjustments to our exhibit according to the critiquing that we received during the in class presentation of our exhibit, and we are both very happy with the results of the adjustments. Mostly what we had done was to make the intended path that the participant is meant to take to perform their interpretation much more clear. Adding a few more arrows, making the individual instruction steps clearer, and other things of that nature. We set our exhibit up at 8:00 in the morning, and took it down at 7:00 at night, and we were present mostly from 11-1, with brief visits during different times throughout the day. Overall, the number of participants that participated in the activity was a bit disappointing, but we were very pleased with the level of interest, and the amount of time spent by the participants at our exhibit. It was very difficult sitting there for those two hours, watching people pass by, look at the exhibit, then keep walking. There were moments when I would have liked to start flagging people down, but due to my reserved nature, thoughts didn't turn into actions. I am glad that the project is now almost at a close, and also glad that the exhibit that Xiong and I had worked so hard at was not a complete flop. In the future, if I were to do something like this again, I have a few adjustments that I would make, but I think it would definitely be easier to create an interactive exhibit that people could enjoy with my newly found creative skills for this type of endeavor.

November 20th

Today was the in class dry run of our exhibits. The experience was very insightful as to things that we could do to improve our exhibit, and make it easier for the participants to get the most worthwhile experience. The primary critiques that we received from the 3 individuals that viewed our exhibit thankfully were not so much on content, they were more directed at making the exhibit easier to understand the progression of events that the user needs to take. There was a lot of good feedback as to putting more instruction as to what steps to take first so that the patron doesn't accidentally start in the wrong place. The individuals who reviewed our exhibit were very interested and intrigued by the premise behind our exhibit, which is the main goal that we were looking for, instilling interest. I have several notes of alterations to make to the exhibit, and with the feedback that was received today, hopefully the final draft of the exhibit will be very successful.




                                                 This is what the first draft looked like

Looking Outside the Museum Field for Inspiration

The first thing that comes to my mind when thinking of non-museum context that encourages active engagement and audience participation is the TV show Dora the Explorer. This came to mind because my little sister is always watching it. The engagement structure is really simple. Dora or the host ask a question and gives the audience a little time to answer the question. Then later praised the audience for doing a great job. I think this is a poor design for the contributor because the contributor doesn’t really know if the audience is really participating. But on the other hand, it’s more for the audience so it works out. Like children TV shows, talks show also encourages audience participation. For example like Jimmy Kimmel Live talk show. One of the engagement is usually they ask the audience to video tape them doing something “horrible” to their love ones and then post it up on YouTube. Unlike the children’s TV show they actually get to see the engagement and then analyze the engagement for entertainment. I don’t see any principles here that applies to my partner and my work but the contextual of our class room could. In our class room we are encourages to participate with each other and then the whole class. How the class room is set up is we usually work together in a small group or by ourselves and then as one big group and go over the context we were assign. Then at the end of class we should have fully understood the context we were assign. This is kind of like our exhibit because we don’t have a rule that the participants can’t work together. After the audience analyze our exhibit they can flip up the sign and see the truth behind the image. This is kind of like our class room engagement because they work together if they chose to and then find out the true importance at the end. 

11/17

Over the pass few weeks Billy and I have been working on our project every Saturday. I haven’t had time to post much stuff as I should have but I found some very interesting Hmong history that I haven’t heard of. They pass week I try to collaborate with Hmong Student Association but they haven’t gotten back to me yet. I know this time of the year is very busy for everyone so if they don’t replay within the next few days then we’re going imply that we try but it just didn’t work out. The Hmong cloth we chose was the history of the Hmong people. The good news was that the cloth was owned by Billy’s wife so there isn’t going to be any copy right issue.  I wanted to get a basic understanding of the Hmong history and went across this video on YouTube that I found really interesting and helpful. The video was by Christian Khang an undergrad at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill at the time. This video gave me a much better understanding of Hmong history and where the Hmong people first from.

Link to video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3t3hNpeRgpA

November 18th- Assignment

When looking outside of the museum context for examples of events or shows that encourage active engagement and audience participation, I immediately think of the workshops that are held at the Beaver Creek Reserve in the Fall Creek Area. These workshops are designed to educate the participants about the different natural resources that are found throughout the area, as well as helping them to learn about the local plant and animal life. The workshops are part instruction, part hands on learning activities, designed so that the participants can get a glimpse at aspects of nature that they may never have known existed. The activities can range from demonstrations of the capabilities of birds and other animals, to an examination of “owl pellets.” The principles that might be applied to my own exhibit are those of guiding the participants on the path that has been set up for them, and then standing back to let them explore on their own. This is very similar to the concept that is at the foundation of our own exhibit. I feel that if people are left to discover things on their own, after a brief amount of education, then they are able to think of things and make discoveries that the director of the activity may never have thought of. They are also much more likely to retain information that they came up with themselves, as opposed to having everything laid out for them, with instructions on what to do, how to do it, and so on.