'Artcasting' at SFMOMA: First-Year Lessons, Future Challenges for Museum Podcasters
Peter Samis, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, USA
Stephanie Pau, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, USA
http://www.sfmoma.org
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art's monthly series SFMOMA Artcasts, coproduced with Bay Area audio experts Antenna Audio, Inc., explores current issues and ideas in modern and contemporary art. While we are still honing the program, we have learned quite a bit over the last six months about what makes a successful podcast. We have preliminary answers to some questions. What is the best use of this new medium? Is a podcast just a traditional audio tour in a new guise? If not, how is it different? How does its distribution model facilitate communication? How can it be used to initiate dialogue with younger audiences? What are the institution-wide challenges of launching a new -- and, for some, completely unfamiliar -- means of delivering content? Using SFMOMA's experience as a case study, this paper offers insights into the challenges of producing content in-house versus outsourcing the task to professionals. It also examines the Museum's use of podcasts as a way of inviting artists, musicians, writers, and the general public to submit their own content, addressing the hurdles associated with bringing what was initially considered a "guerrilla" medium into a curatorially sanctioned space.
Session: Blogs, Pods, and Mobiles [Technology]
Keywords: podcast, MP3, audio tour, 2-way communication, cell phone, PDA
