The One

Advertising vs Museology

A new project has just begun, an open-topic, individual project this time. For a long time now I've been seeking for my area of interest; From the huge field of new media what is it, that I love the most? <3

Firstly, I thought it was "the use of the new media for advertising", and I went after it, with my Literature Review project for the Research Class about The use of the New Media by Nike. It suited to me as I always appreciated advertising with smart concepts. But then, I visited the National History Museum and I was shocked! They had transformed the dull concept of a museum into an experience using media to educate the visitors about physics, geology and all! Learning is (most of the times) deadly boring, but it's our wealth! And NHM achieves education in such a pleasant way.

And then this period of time came when I was balancing between: "New Media and Advertising?" or "New Media in the Museums"? I had my issues to figure this out, I also had a talk with Dr. Mark and he was really helpful.. But still I felt like I was back where I began that I like the New Media.

A day to remember the 25th of November
I knew that I had to find my theme the soonest possible as after the Digital Greenwich we should say to our tutors what's the subject we would like to follow. On Wednesday we had a couple of free hours between two presentations of MA projects, so most of the students we hung around in the MA Space. We started talking and I asked them about the museums concept etc. Naekyoung told me about an iPhone application I could do for the museums and then I thought that I could also do installations for museums, with Arduino and maybe multi-touch screens.

I felt that "This was it!" and so it was proved:
 1  Education is much more ethical than Advertising
 2  Museums have an aesthetic level while in advertising it's almost an exception to meet an aesthetically correct advertisement or campaign.
 3  Fits in the concept of taking advantage of high-level technology and using it the benefit of people who don't have any (or very low) technological background.
 4  New Media into the Museums have endless possibilities, from iPhone applications to 3D projections and VR.
 5  The use of the New Media for the museums is a much more narrow field than the use of the New Media for Advertising, and this is probably good, as we live in the era of specialization.

The Project
The new project in the PG02 unit is to find a technology and experiment with. According to my concept I wanted to practise with the iPhone, Arduino (LED-boards in particular) and multi-touch screens. Martin suggested I choose to investigate only one of these technologies because the period of time I have is very short - true. I chose to do something with the multi-touch screens and I'm so excited with it.. Now I have to do a research on it, about the existing technologies etc. I hope it goes well this time.. the individual factor might help to it.