Tuesday, December 05, 2006
Tim O'Reilly wrote an excellent commentary on the "economics of disaggregation"--basically, the idea that new technologies (digital cameras, iTunes store) are allowing users to unbundle content (like an image or song) from traditional packaging (roll of film, album) so that they get just the content they want. And, surprise! People prefer purchasing unbundled content to the more traditional alternative.
Seb Chan of fresh + new, the blog from the Powerhouse Museum in Australia, ran with this idea to comment on the impact of disaggregation on the way that visitors use museum collections available on the web. He discusses the fact that many online museum collections are set up in ways that impede this kind of personalization, because the content is embedded in Flash or other "locked" applications. There are positives and negatives to disaggregating collections content--you lose the opportunity to develop rich "expert narrative" experiences that weave everything together, but gain the opportunity for users to plug in wherever works best for them.
I'd like to approach this concept from a physical, in-museum perspective. All museums are models of aggregated content; heck, we're the boxed music sets of physical content. You wade through the galleries, hunting down your favorite objects/experiences/tracks. In museums like mine, the flow is narrative, and you have no choice but to follow our path through the objects. Imagine if you had a CD player that only allowed you to play an album from start to finish. Some music purists would applaud such efforts--but most of us would go out and buy a new player.
The question of whether or not to aggregate is closely linked to the most exciting--and most complex--element of exhibit design: the creation and dissemination of the meta-structure, the story, of the exhibit. There's a difference between organization and aggregation; libraries organize their content, museums aggregate. Some museums are breaking down this barrier by allowing visitors behind the scenes to explore their collection storage facilities--organized, but not aggregated.
At its best, the meta-structure gives the content in an exhibit a soul. It connects the dots. Think of the difference between Disneyland and other theme parks; Disney creates much more than a collection of rides by layering on the story. There are many exhibits--and museums--that would devolve into reductive, context-less spaces without the meta-structure.
I'm not advocating for total disaggregation, but the model of meta-structure development most museums pursue--aggregation by one individual/company--represents a particularly arrogant view about the ownership of meaning. I'd like to see more museums move towards more flexible aggregation. Let people make their own "mix CDs" of museum content. Take the bubble project to the next step and put two objects near each other with a blank space in-between for the two objects to "have a conversation." Create a physical version of like better and spit out a story about visitors based on which objects they prefer.
The real question is how to do this affordably and practically in a physical space. The inclination of objects at rest is to stay at rest, and few museums can do anything approximating the shuffling and mash-ups possible on the web. The inclination, if one chooses to go in this direction, is to move towards disaggregation, which is simple, as opposed to re-aggregation, which is complex.
Aggregation is often a very personal thing. When you make a mix CD for someone, you are stamping your meaning and connections onto that content. When you buy into someone else's powers of aggregation as a user, you are accepting that inconvenience with the expectation that you will receive some value from the particular slant of that person's meta-structure. It's important for exhibit developers to examine what parts of the meta-structure around objects/ideas are valuable, and what parts are wasteful, confusing, or self-serving. And now, perhaps, to also ask which parts are flexible enough for re-interpretation by others.