Thoroughly enjoyed my sojourn into museums and theatre at IMTAL yesterday and especially Chris Cade’s al fresco rendition of Isambard Kingdom Brunel in ‘Brunel’s Billiard Table’, which hooked passersby into performative acts of spectatorship where we had to imagine changing gauges in Gloucester.
Chris Cade / Brunel's Billiard Table
It was good to try and articulate the issues around the mix of drama and oral history in the app, and work through my thoughts around the scripting / characterisation and voicing of the Usherette to an audience attuned to the idea of performance in a museum context (rather than technologists or screen people).
I felt that I wanted to say more about the peformative nature of using the app – the unexpected behaviours of the users testing the second iteration, sitting down in the rear of the cinema, gaffawing outloud whilst listening to memories of snoggers’ corner and the Curzon cat – but hopefully some of that got across. There seemed to be a lot of interest in the potential of locative media in a heritage context and I suspect that Calvium might be getting a few calls as I explained the accessibility of using the App Furnace interface.
