(To readers: I am Director of Education here and the
development of audiotours is in my bailiwick. We do them
occasionally, no more than one special exhibition annually,
but are working on permanent-collection tours with the
production company called Antenna):
We at The Saint Louis Art Museum have used only the cassette
format to date, and find it just fine for special
exhibitions: the cassettes are relatively cheap to produce;
also, we often want to tell a particular tale or make
particular comparisons among the SPX objects, so the linear
forced-march format of cassettes is OK there. Also, they're
a format that we can send out to teachers for their own
pre-visit orientation, though that can be done with the
script of any audiotour format.
We've looked at a couple of other formats, however, and are
eager to move to a more random-access technology for our
long-term permanent-collection tours: random-access would
allow us to remove objects from the list without disrupting
the flow of the tour since there IS no flow. It's a lot
more flexible.
We're hoping to go with the Gallery Guide CD-ROM technology
that Antenna Audiotours has produced. It's expensive but
it offers many layers of interpretation, the sound quality
is excellent (uses headsets, for one thing), Antenna's sound
design is superb, and Antenna does a great job in
general...We've also looked at the POETS system, which
involves signals sent from a gismo installed next to the
artwork, and decided against it: requires wall wiring,
seemed to allow a max of 7 people at a time in front of any
object, sound quality was tinny, and my arm got tired
holding the thing up to my ear...That last feature is a
potential drawback of Acoustiguide's INFORM, though they do
offer a headset option. INFORM seems to be the most
flexible of the formats: record it yourself on the spot and
charge the units overnight and Presto. I've talked to
people at the National Gallery of Art (D.C.) who report that
the public loves it. I find the sound quality pretty tinny,
again, and the record-it-yourself feature may not allow for
the brilliant sound design and sound effects that are
appropriate for some works. It's worth
exploring...Antenna's Gallery Guide seems to combine the
best of multiple layers of interpretation (gallery, group,
single object), flexibility, beautiful sound, and the good
writing & production that Antenna offers: but it's also the
most expensive, I believe...Our visitors have never had the
choice of anything but cassette tours and so don't really
know the difference, and they love the cassette tours that
we've offered. We'll surely keep the cassette format for
temporary SPXs, but are still deciding about which
random-access to do for the permanent collection...Remember
too that random-access audiotours really function very much
like object labels and wall text: good info, in varying
quantities and levels of detail, but each autonomous, very
difficult to build a theme or a story line...I'll be eager
to read others' research and critiques of these
technologies. Thanks for starting the discussion.
Elizabeth Vallance
Director of Education
The Saint Louis Art Museum
(314) 721-0072
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Susan Patterson
Manager of Information Services
The Saint Louis Art Museum
1 Fine Arts Drive
St. Louis, MO 63110-1380
(314) 721-0072 x278
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