With Birds in Art in its third week, many of the visiting artists have returned to their solitary lives in their studios, planning for next year’s entries. Like the artists, Woodson Art Museum staff members also have moved on to other projects as well as planning for next year’s Birds in Art exhibition.
For me, one of the most pressing tasks following the Birds in Art opening weekend was editing fifteen artist interviews recorded during the artists’ visits. Using Final Cut Pro, Museum educator Catie Anderson and I pared down artists’ comments about their artwork for the Museum’s audio tour.
While we were selecting artists’ sound bites, our high school Apple X-Code wiz kid, Alan Raff, continued building the app to include edited interviews for the audio tour launch.
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| Alan Raff sharing the audio tour with his mother, Debbie |
On Monday, September 17, the app and new iPod Touch devices were shared with Museum staff in one meeting, Museum guards in a second, and greeters in a third. The app was launched on schedule the following day to rave reviews.
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| Museum guard training |
Visitors commented on how easily they were able to move through the audio tour program and how professional the audio tour was. With the push of an on-screen button, you can watch a video of Owen Gromme in his studio or switch to the Birds in Art portion of the app and listen to one of fifteen artists discuss their work in this year’s exhibition, Robert Bateman talks about his seagull painting, for example, and Jan Martin McGuire describes how she came to paint two agitated hippos going at each other while three ox peckers make a hasty retreat away from the chaos.
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| Docent audio tour introduction and training |
Visitors are giving the Museum’s new audio tour two thumbs up, appropriate, because iPod typing uses those thumbs! The next time you visit the Museum, be sure to check it out, literally.
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PS If you’ve taken the opportunity to try the new audio tour, what do you think?
