Tuesday 09/10/2012

5:00 PM

Registration and Welcome Cocktail

Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA)
1920 Baile Street, Montreal, Québec (Map)
(514) 939-7000
Photo : Nat Gorry

Wednesday 10/10/2012

8:00 AM

Registration at the CCA

9:00 AM

Welcome from Manon Blanchette, AVICOM President

9:10 AM

Inauguration of the Conference by Julien Anfruns, the Director General of ICOM

9:30 AM

Opening Keynote Speaker

Jon Ippolito, University of Maine, USA

Re-Collection: New Media and Social Memory

As defined by the International Council of Museums in 2007, a museum is a “permanent institution” that safeguards tangible and intangible heritage. Given the pace at which new media, from 3D printing to Pinterest, are transforming contemporary culture, however, museums will soon have to decide which is more important: a permanent institution or permanent heritage? The 20th century was rife with examples of sculptures, installations, performances and databanks that suffered Death By Institution. Hidebound curators and their staff will find it hard to give up paper trails in favour of oral histories, or fixed measurements in favour of fluid metadata, or territorial collections in favour of joint ownership. Drawing on themes from Re-Collection, his forthcoming book with Richard Rinehart, Ippolito argues that museums face a fork in the road. On one side lies storage, which attempts to keep an artefact as unchanged as possible; on the other memory, which is constantly rewritten, and hence transformative. (presentation in English)

10:00 AM

SESSION 1

On-line collections: Who are they for and why?

Moderator: Jean-François Leclerc, Centre d'histoire de Montréal, Canada

Simona Caraceni, Università di Bologna, Italy

Augmented Heritage: Some Thoughts on Museum Professionals

Administering a Twitter account for a large museum or updating a Flickr page? Creating a historical videogame for an important centenary or building or updating a digital collection with metadata and interoperability with other on-line resources? Creating a museum with the participation of an entire city with a social network and Web 2.0 techniques? All of these activities for present-day museums are radically different from those of ten to fifteen years ago. They require knowledge of computer science and communications in the era of Web 2.0. Museums thus need to update their organization chart, and surround themselves with professionals with the necessary training and skills to meet today’s challenges of developing and showcasing our heritage. (presentation in English)

Anne-Marie Zeppetelli, Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, Canada

The Documentation of New Media Collections

Artworks incorporating new technologies require additional care, time and attention. Museological institutions have therefore had to adapt their policies, broaden their domain of expertise, and redefine the roles and responsibilities of professionals working in their new media collections. This presentation will examine, in particular, how the archivist’s role has changed as a result of widespread technological developments in contemporary artistic production. (presentation in French)

János Tari, Museum of Ethnography, Hungary

The New System of Digital Access to Moving Images in the Hungarian Museum of Ethnography

In 2002 the Museum of Ethnography was awarded funds for the acquisition of high-quality digital equipment to facilitate academic and museum research in Hungary. The museum’s entire film archives are now preserved on a server unit with a capacity of 2,560 gigabytes, consisting of 32 hard disks. This server is able to store 130 hours of film footage on native DV format, but this may be extended by three to four times in the future. The database allows a simple and rapid search with key words for all digitalized film segments. The key words are linked to the pictorial and content data of the film collection, a subject-based indexing system that will eventually form a complete ethnographic thesaurus. The digitalization of the 268 items (approximately 40 gigabytes of DV in AVI format) was completed in 2009. Lower resolution copies of the digitized films may be viewed in the reading room and hall of the museum, and on-line by the end of 2012. (www.neprajz.hu) (presentation in English)

11:00 AM

Break

11:15 AM

SESSION 2

Swapping knowledge and expertise

Moderator: Manon Blanchette, AVICOM & Pointe-à-Callière, Canada

Carole Pauzé, Montréal Science Centre, Canada

Wi-Fi, Microchips and Co. at the Montreal Science Centre

One of the unconfessed dreams of many museologists and museographers is to be able to present different levels of information in several languages at the same exhibition, in seamless fashion. An exhibition in which the objects and staging speak for themselves, in which texts are almost non-existent. To this end, mobile technologies seem highly promising. Minicomputers, smartphones, codes and chips are all ways of storing and disseminating impressive quantities of information. But how are visitors reacting to these new tools? This paper outlines the observations made by the Science Centre team during presentations of recent temporary exhibitions. (presentation in French)

Marco Del Monte, Università Ca'Foscari Venezia, Italy

The Wealth of Short Films. Videos on Giovanni Bellini’s Presentazione di Gesù al Tempio at the Querini Stampalia Foundation

This paper presents a project for the creation of multimedia works on Giovanni Bellini’s painting Presentazione di Gesù al tempio (Presentation of Jesus at the Temple) at the Querini Stampalia Foundation in Venice. It will examine the kinds of camerawork that could be used in the production of short films for a museum itinerary and for new multimedia products, and will address the methodology, narrative strategies and technical solutions used to produce a series of accessible scientific videos, their critical and historical relevance, and their utility in a museum context. The series consists of three videos, each treating a different aspect: the context of the collection to which the painting belongs; the history of its attribution; the cinematographic interpretation of the artwork. These three separate videos will be presented as a whole, through a montage whose aim is to reflect their actual presentation in the context of the museum. To conclude, potential collaborations between museums and universities will be examined. (presentation in English)

Marie-Paule Jean-Louis, Musée des cultures guyanaises, Guiana

Musée des cultures guyanaises: Developing the Internet as a Way of Opening up French Guiana

[Please note that this presentation has been cancelled.]

French Guiana, an overseas department of France in South America, suffers from isolation despite the presence of the world-renowned Guiana Space Centre. Counting on a digital linking of the territory, local authorities have hoped for years to provide remote areas with access to the same knowledge, health, and education as that enjoyed by coastal residents. Heritage institutions have been encouraged to support this initiative, which is strongly supported by the French Government and the European Union. The Musée des cultures guyanaises has thus launched a multimedia project called Le Musée virtuel, which is now available to teachers. In addition, the museum is coordinating a joint program with the Surinaams Museum (Paramaribo) and the Museu Paraense Emilio Goeldi (Belem), which aims to create an on-line catalogue in French, Dutch and Portuguese of the Amerindian and Maroon collections of the three museums. This tool will result in long-lasting exchanges between the museums and the Amerindians and Maroons from the Guiana Shield, a territory that is culturally quite homogeneous. (presentation in French)

12:15 PM

Debate following morning sessions

12:30 PM

Lunch break

2:00 PM

SESSION 3

To surpass oneself… or lag behind?

Moderator: Manon Blanchette, AVICOM & Pointe-à-Callière, Canada

Agnès Alfandari, Musée du Louvre, France

The Digital Strategy of the Musée du Louvre

[Please note that this presentation has been cancelled.]

For several years now, the Louvre has been developing multimedia strategies to better welcome and inform its audiences—before, during, and even outside of museum visits. Numerous programs have been formulated: on-line with its new website; interactive and educational programs on art history and the collections of the Louvre; on-site with digital displays in the galleries; the creation of mobile applications; and the launch of a new audio guide on the Nintendo 3DS game console. Since 2006, the Louvre has also been developing an original project: Museum Lab, in partnership with the Japanese firm Dai Nippon Printing, whose aim is to design and test innovative media displays using new technologies, which were first presented to the public in Tokyo and at the Louvre since 2011. This paper will provide an overview of the Louvre’s digital development strategies or focus on a specific project (Internet, mobile, Museum Lab, etc.). (presentation in French)

Mirko Zardini, Canadian Centre for Architecture, Canada

Two Buildings

Digital technologies are forcing museums to confront and reorganize their traditional mission, structure, and ways of working. On one hand, museums are increasingly required to provide high-quality digital content while, on the other, they still need to focus on the collection and care of significant artifacts in a specific location; the very fundamental assumption on which they were created. Furthermore, today, the museum’s public is not only geographically determined but also constituted by a network of dispersed online interactions, communities, and individuals.

To reconcile these two conditions, museums can imagine themselves as owning, or constructing, two buildings; the physical one, anchored to a specific place, and the digital, accessed online from any place at any time. Both can be conceived as particular laboratories that address very diverse publics and, while both still share the mandate of the original museum, each one can articulate it in a very different way. The two buildings have the potential to benefit from their divergent character and influence one another in a dialogue animated by the constant flux of critique.

Stephen Inglis, Aanischaaukamikw Cree Cultural Institute, Canada

Remote and Connected: Small Museum/Big Country

Aanischaaukamikw Cree Cultural Institute opened to the public in November of last year. It is the cultural centre of the James Bay Cree, a people whose traditional territory, almost the size of France, constitutes much of northern Quebec. Several of the nine communities served by the centre are over 1,000 kilometres north of the big cities of Canada. This presentation describes some of the challenges of connecting a centre in a remote subarctic location to a constituency that includes the other Cree communities, other First Nations, and the museum world at large. It relates some of the unexpected issues of ethnicity, expertise, imagination and technology that emerge when a hands-on tradition meets a wired world. (presentation in English)

3:00 PM

Break

3:15 PM

SESSION 4

An expert public

Moderator: Monique Tairraz, Communications Consultant, Canada

Erik Hekman, Hogeschool Utrecht, Netherlands

The Commons on Flickr: What Do 51 Million Community Members Actually Do?

In January 2008 the online photo-hosting site Flickr introduced a new section entitled The Commons. Its two key goals were to show the hidden treasures in the world’s public photography archives to the general public and to give Flickr community members the opportunity to contribute and describe these photos in order to enrich these collections. Surprisingly enough, little empirical research has been done on the actual usage of The Commons by the institutes and Flickr members. In our research we harvested a rich data sample over a 14-week period: 196,822 photos with user-generated content of 1.3 million tags, almost 130,000 comments and more than 22,000 notes. In total, 165,401 members from 188 different countries actively “did something” with the photos. This presentation will analyze this large data sample. In addition to the quantitative findings, we will discuss the qualitative findings regarding the content analysis of tags and comments. (presentation in English)

Gonzague Gauthier, Centre Pompidou, France

Which tools for expert audiences?

The French cultural domain is being shaped by formative debates on cultural mediation and democratization. At a time when the country’s economy is in a state of total transformation, the emergence of digital tools and Web cultures and practices allows us to finally tackle these issues with innovative solutions based on a public reappropriation of content. But at what price? From the perspective of a large multidisciplinary institute like the Centre Pompidou—but without neglecting the diversity of structures elsewhere in France—this presentation will attempt to provide an overview of the needs and pressures that digital technology bring to the cultural industry. The question of the public’s active reception of information will also be touched on: what decentralisation of exchanges and power linked to knowledge is required? What models of collaborative creation, and for what purposes? (presentation in French)

Jean-François Léger, Canadian Museum of Civilization, Canada

God(s): A User’s Guide 2.0

The exhibition God(s): A User’s Guide, presented at the Canadian Museum of Civilization until December 2012, depicts the diversity and singularity of contemporary religious practices. “According to your beliefs, what will happen to you after you die?” was the question put to young and old, believers and non-believers, practising and non-practising followers. The responses were collected in text or video form at a kiosk inside the exhibition. A wider range of questions was also posed to website visitors, whose answers were then posted on the Internet. The answers, as diverse as the visitors’ beliefs, were surprising in terms of both number and candour. This presentation will describe the process that led to the choice of questions and the manner in which they were put to visitors in the exhibition gallery, and compare its success with that of the questions asked on the website. In addition, with regard to these answers and their archiving, the notion of intangible heritage will be broached. (presentation in French)

4:15 PM

Debate following afternoon sessions

6:00 PM

Museum visit and welcome by Nathalie Bondil, Director

Cocktail
Montreal Museum of Fine Arts
1380 Crescent Street, Montreal, Québec (Map)
(514) 285-1600
Photo: Provencher & Roy

Thursday 11/10/2012

9:00 AM

Opening Keynote Speaker

Sebastian Chan, Smithsonian Museum, NY, USA, Australia

Default=Abundance

There are profound changes afoot for museums. On the one hand, museum visitors now regularly carry access to the entirety of the Internet in their pockets, and on the other, cross-institutional detailed views of collections available through Google Art Project, Europeana and others are transforming visitors’ expectations of exhibitions and their interactions with objects. How are museums dealing with this tectonic shift from scarcity to abundance? And how should digital strategies and production methodologies adjust to make the best of this slippery terrain? (presentation in English)

10:00 AM

SESSION 5

Clear, short and simple!

Moderator: Antonio Hilario, Idéeclic, Canada

Daniel Pletinckx, Visual Dimension BVBA, Belgium

Sustainability and Portability of Digital Museum Applications

Digital technologies—and especially 3D technologies—have certainly the potential, when used properly, to make cultural heritage more attractive, enjoyable and understandable, so they are being introduced in our museums. However, how many of these museum applications are operational for more than five years? How many of them can be updated, exchanged with other museums or re-used in other exhibitions? The European Network of Excellence V-MusT.net on digital museum technology (v-must.net) is solving these issues, providing the methodology and tools to make such “virtual museums” stable, maintainable, updateable and re-usable. This means that not only are the financial and intellectual investment in such applications being much better preserved, but that these virtual museums can reach a much wider audience by re-use and re-integration in other museums and other exhibitions. Several test projects, implemented for high end museums, will be shown as example of this new approach. (presentation in English)

Catherine Guillou, Musée du Louvre, France

Simplifying without Being Simplistic: The Louvre’s Difficult Challenge

Although the Louvre is one of the most visited museums in the world, it is an intimidating institution, not easily accessible to all, inexhaustible to experts, dizzying to novices. Compounding this situation is the widening gulf between the so-called “legitimate” culture and another, difficult to describe, more popular, more cross-disciplinary, hybrid. Which raises a number of questions. Who will be the visitors of the next fifteen to twenty years? What type of relationship will they have with the museum? How will they be received? Naturally, the Louvre has no definitive answers to these questions, but has tried to anticipate them, re-examining its basic principles of mediation and communication, putting to one side the logic and constraints of its support mechanisms and focusing on one simple question: What do visitors need to know, first and foremost, at the time and place they find themselves? This is part of the “movement forward” principle that was the object of an editorial charter whose aim was to propose a new concept of visitor reception and hospitality, together with new relationship models. (presentation in French) 

Marie-Claude Larouche, Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières, Canada
Hugues Boily, McCord Museum, Montreal, Canada

Mobile Technologies and School Visits: Contributions and Limitations

The educational use of museum and heritage resources through mobile technologies, for a high school clientele, will be discussed. How can the tools of communication and entertainment become tools of learning in museums, exhibitions and sites of recognized heritage value? The development and educational use of mobile technologies in the context of non-formal education drive us to better understand the contributions they can make to the visitor’s experience. The discussion will also address the limitations of these technologies in relation to the needs and realities of school groups. Our presentation is based on two experiments: the first, a formative evaluation of the prototype application for iPod touch “McCord Museum” for on-site school visits; the second, the educational programs developed in relation to the new permanent exhibition at the McCord Museum, Montreal—Points of View, which offers two applications for mobile technologies. We will attempt to outline how the operation of these applications can contribute to the experience and understanding of the collections and sites, and to the development of historical thinking in high school students. (presentation in French)

11:00 AM

Break

11:15 AM

SESSION 6

In-gallery support

Moderator: Véronique Marino, L'INIS, Canada

Christian Nana Tchuisseu, Musée camerounais de la Blackitude & the Fo Nab Ngo Foundation, Cameroon

The Use of Information and Communication Technologies for the Conservation and Dissemination of Museum Collections: an Opportunity for Africa

The techniques and procedures of data conservation are improving at the speed of technological progress, specifically in the field of information and communication techniques (ICT). Owing to new technological applications that are proving to be valuable tools for cultural professionals, the conservation of data, knowledge and models is being carried out on a wider scale within often limited areas, with maximum efficiency. The gradual use of ICT has thus profoundly transformed the cultural industries. It is only through the full adoption of these light, reliable and accessible applications that Africa will succeed in reducing the digital gulf that separates it from the other continents, and become a full participant in the global processes of exchange, dissemination and conservation of artworks. Focusing on Cameroon and other central African countries, this paper will deal with the digital management of museum collections (conservation and protection), as well as the digital dissemination of our heritage via the Internet. (presentation in French)

Katy Tari, Orange Kiwi, Canada

Explora and Wave on the Lachine Canal

Explora is a GPS-based tour launched for the first time at various Parks Canada sites in 2008, playable on a PDA (personal digital assistant). In 2011, the Lachine Canal national historic site launched Explora in an iPhone Windows mobile app. This application represents an innovative way to reach a wired public, be they history and heritage enthusiasts or simply curious to discover the canal’s industrial past. This program offers the possibility of discovering, through seven tours, the historical, sociological, economic and cultural evolution of the site. To these itineraries, we added the experimental project Wave, a podcast created with the Audiotopie artist collective, which offers a sound-and-music tour of the Lachine Canal playable on an MP3 player or PDA. (presentation in French)

Christophe Courtin, Castle of the Dukes of Britanny, France

How to Combine Scientific Requirements and Innovation in Cultural Projects

When a museum designs an innovative device, it has to deal with seemingly contradictory elements: scientific precision, cultural mediation, public accessibility and upgradeability. Taking into account these different parameters, the Musée d’histoire de Nantes launched a project based on a model of the Nantes harbour made for the 1900 World Fair. It set up a multidisciplinary program in research and development in conjunction with the Centre François Viète d’histoire des sciences et des techniques (Université de Nantes) and the École Centrale de Nantes (engineering school). What resulted was a multi-touch/multi-user device that allows visitors to consult documents and instructions pertaining to the model. The program is based on four principles: dynamic content; 3D models; advanced-level research on information access; and painstaking, documented methodology, the link between the real object and the screens. (presentation in French)

12:15 PM

Debate following morning sessions

12:30 PM 

Lunch break

Museum visit and welcome by Mirko Zardini, Executive Director

Canadian Centre for Architecture
1920 Baile Street, Montreal, Québec (Map)
(514) 939-7000
Photo : Nat Gorry

2:00 PM

PHI Centre visit and welcome by Myriam Achard, Director PR and Development

The PHI Centre
407 St-Pierre Street, Montréal, Québec (Map)
(514) 225-0525
Photo: George Fok
Note: As we can only accept 25 people at a time, you will need to sign-up for this gallery visit when you register for the conference.

2:00 PM

DHC/ART visit and welcome by John Zeppetelli, Curator

DHC/ART Foundation for Contemporary Art
451 St-Jean Street, Montréal, Québec H2Y 2R5 (Map)
(514) 849-3742
Photo: Jean Gagnon
Note: As we can only accept 25 people at a time, you will need to sign-up for this gallery visit when you register for the conference.

Thursday 11/10/2012

5:30 PM 

Award Ceremony at the Paul Desmarais Theatre (CCA)

Awarders

New Museology Award

Helen Fotopulos, City of Montréal

Web'Art Award

Louise Poissant,  UQAM

Special Web'Art Award

Representant from CRÉ (Conférence régionale des élus)

Multimédi'Art Award

Manfred Stoffl, Goethe Institute

Medium-Length Film Award

Sylvie Cordeau, QUEBECOR

Short Film Award

Madeleine Juneau, Board of Montréal Museums Directors (BMMD)

Claude-Nicole Hocquard Award

Julien Anfruns, ICOM International  

Friday 12/10/2012

9:00 AM

The AVICOM Annual Meeting will take place at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal

10:30 AM

Museum visit and welcome by Danielle Legentil, Communications Director
Meeting with the artist Pierre Dorion and Mark Lanctôt, curator

Coffee & pastries in the Atrium
Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal
185 Sainte Catherine Street, Montreal, Québec (Map)
(514) 847-6226
Photo: Nat Gorry

12:00 PM

Lunch Break

2:00 PM

Museum visit and welcome by Suzanne Sauvage, President & CEO

Coffee & pastries in the Atrium
McCord Museum
690 Sherbrooke Street West, Montreal, Québec (Map)
(514) 398-7100
Photo: Musée McCord

3:30 PM

Museum visit and welcome by Francine Lelièvre, Executive Director

Coffee, water, biscuits in the Hall de l'Éperon, main building
Pointe-à-Callière, Montréal Museum of Archaeology and History
350 Place Royale, Montreal, Québec (Map)
(514) 872-9150
Photo: Michel Brunelle

5:00 PM 

Museum visit and welcome by Claude Benoit, Director

Closing cocktail in the Mission Gaia Room
Montréal Science Centre
2 de la Commune Street West, Montreal, Québec (Map)
(514) 496-4724
Photo: CDSM