The 2010 Urban Garden Party: Pics or It Didn't Happen.

And like that, it's over. The 2010 Urban Garden Party was a smashing success. Our sincerest thanks go out to everyone who attended and to everyone who helped get the word out. For the first time ever, the event sold out! Everyone here is absolutely blown away by the support. Through ticket sales, silent auction purchases, individual donations and event sponsorships, we raised just about $200,000 for the museum. This is money that will be used to support upcoming exhibitions, educational & community programming, and museum operations. We can't say it enough. Thank you.

There has been a lot of media coverage and web activity surrounding the event (most of which is aggregated below), but perhaps my favorite quote comes from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's Marylynn Uricchio:

What's most interesting about this popular event is the way it cuts across the borders of age and economics to attract a lively, diverse and always colorful crowd. The installation art museum has done a wonderful job of appealing to a mass audience while it continues to stay on the edge, thanks to co-directors Barbara Luderowski and Michael Olijnyk.

Right on. The photos in the slide show embedded below were taken by John Altdorfer. We've posted the high-resolution images on Flickr and they are available for FREE download. Non-commercial use only please.



The MF Twitter Posse and local press were out in full force Friday night as well. Here are some links to photos, articles and blogs that have been popping up around the interwebs. If I've missed any, all apologies. Post a link in the comments or shoot a message to us via email or Twitter and we'll update our list.

Marylynn Uricchio's piece for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
An awesome photoset from Jo Ellen Smith
MF Twitter Posse member Rob de la Cretaz's photos. [ Follow Rob on Twitter ]
Unbelievable shots from Twitter Posse Member Rima Campbell. [ Follow Rima on Twitter ]
MF Green & Twitter Posse Member Andrea Shockling's blog recap of the event. [ Follow Andrea on Twitter ]
Kate Guerriero's FANFARE column for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.
WPXI-TV was here covering the event for SEE & BE SEEN.
A cool photo set from Flickr user jtkennedy.
Whirl Magazine's coverage of the 2010 Urban Garden Party.
A nice blog recap from Twitter Posse Member Andrea Disaster. [ Follow Andrea on Twitter ]
The Northside Chronicle posted some photos from the event.
A bunch of great shots over at Yinzer Party. Login required (:-/)

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Ten Days and Counting

Each year, on one special night in mid-June, we throw a fundraising event called the Urban Garden Party. And each year, we are overwhelmed by the outpouring of support for the museum expressed by the 1,000+ event attendees. It truly is an amazing evening filled with artistic energy, tasty food & beverages from more than 50 of Pittsburgh's top restaurants & bars, top-notch performances, and secret surprises.

This year's event is shaping up to be the best Garden Party to date. For a good sense of the vibe this year, check out this event trailer our awesome video production volunteer (!!) Abby Vanim created with a little soundtrack help from headliners Eclectic Method:



Without giving away too many details, the decor for the evening is taking shape as well. We have amassed a collection of more than 100 hubcaps and rumor has it there will be skateboard ramps and a fire hydrant involved. Check out these shots of MF Danny and MF Karla making tons of large scale origami that will accent the ceiling for the VIP Pre-Party:









If you'd like to attend the party, we'd love to see you there. We're running contests over on Twitter and Facebook from now through the event, so make sure you're keeping an eye on those streams. Of course, you can find out more information and purchase tickets HERE or by calling the museum at 412-231-3169. More updates to come!

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Gestures 14 & David Beattie Open This Saturday

It's only May, but things are really starting to heat up here at the Mattress Factory. For example, we're opening two exhibitions this coming Saturday evening at 7:00 PM. The first is the 14th installment of the Gestures Exhibition Series. Guest-curated again by the incomparable Katherine Talcott, Gestures 14 features new work from Danny Bracken, Dee Briggs, Matthew Conboy & Heather Pinson, Ryder Henry, Mary Mazziotti, Connie Merriman, Ben Schachter, Paul Schifino, Tugboat Printshop: Paul Roden & Valerie Lueth, Robert Villamagna and Larkin Werner. It's looking great in the galleries and if you plan to attend the opening reception, you can RSVP and keep tabs on who else will be there over on FaceBook.

In case you'd like to help spread the word to your own online network, I've embedded an electronic flyer (complete with corresponding HTML code) below. Feel free to share this awesome Brett Yasko-designed flyer with your online community. You can also email it to the art-loving friends in your contact book. As always, thanks so much for your online support.

EMBED THIS 550 x 800 E-FLYER:
Copy and paste this HTML code:

<a href="http://bit.ly/Gestures14"><img src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4044/4493876893_097719d871_o.jpg" border="0" ></a>

Also opening on Saturday is Old Light, New Darkness, a collection of new works by David Beattie. Born in Northern Ireland in 1979, Beattie earned his B.A. in Fine Art from Dublin’s National College of Art and Design, and his M.A. in Visual Art Practices from Dun Loaghaire Institute of Art, Design & Technology, also in Dublin. He has received a number of awards including an Arts Council Artists Bursary in 2009 and a grant from the Harpo Foundation whose mission is to support artists who are under-recognized by the field.

Beattie is currently the subject of a solo exhibition at the Mercer Union Centre For Contemporary Visual Art in Toronto, Canada. Other solo shows include Butler Gallery (Kilkenny, 2009); Oonagh Young Gallery (Dublin, 2009); Mermaid Arts Centre (Bray, Co. Wicklow, 2008) and Temple Bar Gallery & Studios (Dublin, 2006).

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Wheels Down Havana

We're here. Our flight arrived on time at the Havana airport to beautiful weather. Low 80s and blue, sunny skies. We scooted through customs after a moderate amount of questioning and jumped in a taxi to make our way to the hotel.

The landscape immediately surrounding the airport is rural and open. But we soon found the population growing more dense and the buildings growing taller. The next thing we know, we're in the heart of Havana passing monuments to the revolution and the Capitol. A few minutes later, we arrived at our hotel, located in the Habana Viejas (Old Havana). This is a very interesting neighborhood -- a unique mix of circa 1500s and modern architecture, residential and commercial, wealth and poverty...


(Keep reading on the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's community blog page. You know you want to.)

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Gas Gloves, Queen Street and Dim Sum

The drive to Toronto was great. As we got on 279 North toward Erie, all three of us basically said in unison, "Wow. What a day for a road trip." The sun was shining brilliantly and the road was almost ours alone.

Conversation centered around to-do items on the Cuba check-list (museums and art, the Hemingway House, a trip to the beach to name a few), a discussion of the popular attraction to outlet mall shopping, and observances of nature as we passed through the western Pennsylvania and New York countryside...


(Keep reading on the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's community blog page. You know you want to.)

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Nothing is Impossible: Embeddable E-Flyers

It's that time again. We're less than two weeks out from the opening of Nothing is Impossible, the first in a series of exhibitions from our Curators-in-Residence Mark Garry and Georgina Jackson! Featuring Dublin- and London-based artists Karl Burke, Rhona Byrne, Brian Griffiths, Bea McMahon and Dennis McNulty, Nothing is Impossible will open with a public reception on Friday, March 19, from 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM. If you plan to attend, you can RSVP and keep tabs on who else will be there over on FaceBook.

With each new exhibition and event, we are consistently blown away by the support from our online community. And we could really use your help again! I've embedded two sizes of electronic flyers (complete with corresponding HTML code) below. Feel free to help spread the word by posting these awesome MF Shannon-designed flyers within your social networks and emailing to the art-loving friends in your contact book. Anything you can do is greatly appreciated by the artists and all of us here at the MF! I hope to see you at the opening next Friday.

EMBED THIS 550 x 800 E-FLYER:
Copy and paste this HTML code:

<a href="http://bit.ly/amtE4G"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2753/4420900048_ef2996669f_o.jpg" border="0" ></a>

--------

EMBED THIS 344 x 500 E-FLYER:
Copy and paste this HTML code:

<a href="http://bit.ly/amtE4G"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2753/4420900048_b00852fe6a.jpg" border="0" ></a>

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Is This Art? -- The Backstory

You may have heard through the grapevine of the interwebs yesterday that we released an iPhone application called "Is This Art?". Within minutes of going public on Twitter, and with the help of some awesome people like MoMA, the Walker Art Center, the Warhol, David Carr and Paddy Johnson among a tidal wave of others, it was easy to tell that people were excited about it. For the general scoop, check out this piece by WNYC Culture or this post by our collaborator on this project, C-Monster.

But what I'd like to do here, is discuss in deeper detail the why behind this project. As a museum of contemporary installation art with an artist residency program that exhibits mostly new site-specific works, the Mattress Factory has earned a reputation for pushing artistic boundaries by allowing the artists we work with to explore complete artistic freedom during their time here at the museum. Our goal as an organization is to make the artists' vision a reality. Period.

And with that comes artwork that provokes thought and poses questions. Damien Hirst grew flies in our gallery for several months. Yumi Kori flooded our basement with water. Sarah Oppenheimer cut a large hole through our 4th floor gallery floor. If I had a nickel for every time I've heard someone say, "This is art? My kid could do that," I'd be a rich guy. But if I also had a nickel for every time someone has said that our James Turrell pieces have influenced the way they perceive the world or how Greer Lankton's It's all about ME, Not You has brought them to tears, I'd also have some pretty heavy pockets. And back in November an exchange on Twitter with Nina Simon got us thinking about how we, as a small art space in Pittsburgh, could start a wider dialog about the concept of art itself.

So shortly after Nina's tweet, I started chatting with Carolina Miranda (a.k.a. C-Monster) about the idea of an "Is This Art?" iPhone app. We knew if this project was going to be effective it would have to be funny, and Carolina is one of the wittiest, most on-point art & culture bloggers out there. When she agreed to write the art crit for the app, we knew we were onto something. All that was left was to develop the app, but again, as a small art space in Pittsburgh, we have no software developers on staff.

Enter Deeplocal. I can't say enough about these guys and gals. We've worked with them in the past on some things and our organizations have a similar worldview about art & technology. I truly believe Deeplocal is a special kind of company. They just make things happen. From my initial text message to David Evans pitching the project they were 100% up for it. The rest is history. We hope you enjoy the app and the website, but more than that, we hope this project gets people talking about art -- what art is, what art can be, how art influences people and why art is important. As always, if you have questions or comments, feel free to hit up the comments below or track me down on Twitter.

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Eclectic Method to Throw Down at the 2010 Urban Garden Party

It's been extremely hard keeping quiet about this the past few days, but the time has come and I'm really excited to share this tidbit of information with you. As you know, each year in June the Mattress Factory hosts our biggest and most important annual fundraiser, the Urban Garden Party. Every year becomes bigger and more over-the-top than the previous party, and 2010 is no different. This year marks the first time we've booked a headlining musical performer. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Eclectic Method.



Featuring London natives Jonny Wilson, Ian Edgar and Geoff Gamlen, Eclectic Method helped pioneer the emerging art of audio-visual mixing since first cutting U2’s Mysterious Ways music video with the Beastie Boys’ Intergalactic as an experiment back in 2002. The trio’s audio-visual mash-ups feature television, film, music and video game footage sliced and diced into blistering, post-modern dance floor events. It’s a cyclone of music and images mashed together in a world where Kill Bill fight scenes and Dave Chappelle’s Rick James rants are ingeniously cut and looped over bootleg samples, DVD scratches and pumped-up dance anthems. The trio was also recently featured in the documentary, Copyright Criminals.

SUMMER IN THE CITY: The 2010 Urban Garden Party will take place on Friday, June 18th. We're extremely fortunate to have an amazing Event Chair this year in Christine Astorino, a Mattress Factory Board Member and Founder & CEO of fathom.

Tickets to the Urban Garden Party are now on sale! Through March 1, you can get two tickets for only $140 (a savings of $40). And the best part? 100% of your ticket purchase goes back into the artistic programming here at the museum to help us continue to push artistic boundaries and produce cutting-edge exhibitions. Thanks in advance for your continued support.

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Weather Closings

Due to inclement weather, and the declaration of an emergency by Allegheny County, the Mattress Factory will be CLOSED on Tuesday, February 9, 2010 and Wednesday, February 10, 2010.

Please check back here or follow our Twitter stream for the latest museum closing news.


Mattress Factory staff dig out after the storm.


The Winifred Lutz Garden under two feet of snow.

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Catch You on the Flip-Side.

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You're In The Jungle, Baby.

As 2009 comes to a close, many arts organizations take this time to reflect on the projects and programs of the past year as well as visualize organizational goals for the coming year. We here at the MF are no different, but I'd like to take this time to touch on a key performance and motivation metric pertaining to my department, which is loosely defined as Development, but more affectionately referred to simply as The 3rd Floor.

The 3rd Floor houses the Membership, Development, Grant Writing, Marketing, Public Relations, New Media and Graphic Design departments. Sounds huge, but it's essentially just me, Lindsay, Shannon, Emily, Claudia and our wonderfully overworked/underpaid interns. As you can imagine, there is an amazing amount of work to be done by all of us and therefore time management, the ability to multi-task and an überly fast-paced work environment are key to pushing projects out the door. Enter one of the greatest rock bands of all time, Guns 'N Roses (pictured to the right).

In 2009, The 3rd Floor played Appetite for Destruction by Guns 'N Roses in its entirety every Friday at 4:00 PM. You're probably asking yourself how this relates to producing world-class contemporary art, but bear with me for a moment, there are several reasons for our weekly ritual. First and foremost, the motivational nature of the songs on this particular record are extremely conducive to work output. The pace is perfect; the highs & lows and peaks & valleys are perfectly in their right places. It's also almost exactly 1 hour long and like an olympic long distance runner it consistently brought us rocking into 5:00 PM, a reliable and energetic close to each week in 2009. Some of our best ideas and execution came between the opening guitar lick of Welcome to the Jungle and the final breakdown in Rocket Queen.

So, having said all of this, we all feel we're due for a change in 2010. This is where you can help us. Much like we did with choosing the name for the MF softball team last Spring, we're going to leave it up to our blog readers, MF Twitter Posse and MF Facebook Mob to crowdsource our 2010 "Friday at 4:00 PM" listening ritual.

Here's the deal. Through this Friday, we'll take any and all album suggestions in the comments below, or via Twitter & Facebook. The 3rd Floor will then meet to select a cross-section of 5 potential albums, which we'll post here on the MF Blog next week as a reader poll. The album with the most votes by 12/31/2009 will be the winner and the person who submitted the winning record will receive their choice of three awesome MF prizes.

So have fun suggesting albums and be creative with your recommendations. We're looking forward to hearing your submissions.

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LIKENESS Video Series: Jonn Herschend

Today's installment in the LIKENESS Video Series (produced with love by MF Danny) comes from Jonn Herschend, an interdisciplinary artist, curator and experimental publisher preoccupied with how emotional confusion, absurdity and veracity play out in the realm of the everyday. He lives and works in San Francisco, and is the co-founder and co-editor, along with Will Rogan, of the experimental publication THE THING. Jonn was raised in a mid-western theme park in the Ozarks that his grandfather started. Later it was run by his father and uncle. Both of his parents were street performers and when Jonn was born, a sign was placed in his parents’ front yard that read, “Home of Jonn Herschend, future train robber.” According to Jonn that sign is still around.



JONN HERSCHEND
Self Portrait as a PowerPoint Proposal for an Amusement Park Ride (2009)
projector, DVD player, self-running PowerPoint presentation, projection screen, leak in ceiling, buckets, plastic sheets, janitor closet, custodial items, 16 mm. projector with looper, portable projection screen
LIKENESS Exhibition - Through March 21, 2010

Herschend’s many-sided conceptual, Self Portrait as a PowerPoint Proposal for an Amusement Park Ride, is characterized by a strong sense of narrative, not strictly limited to straightforward vignettes or mimetic representation. In his complex self-portrait one finds a narrative that resembles fantasy, role-playing, fiction and a touch of reality. Jonn’s choice of subjects and materials contribute to the kind of story he opts to tell and show his audience. Jonn says about this piece:

The entire installation is a self-portrait...not one part. It’s both sides of the entertainment experience... the fantasy of the gallery and the hidden reality. It goes from the conceptual notion of a museum installation, to a disruption with the physical space (the leak in the ceiling), to a hidden and nostalgic projection of a true moment of complete innocence.

This is the first time I’ve ever really worked on a piece that referenced my affiliation with the amusement park of my past. For me, museums and galleries are very similar to amusement parks. They are where we come to experience a diversion from the real world. And we expect things to be a certain way.

From a formal aspect, the PowerPoint projection (an application used to supposedly make confusing issues clear) becomes bogged down and sidetracked with the introduction of an illicit affair and car wreck.

The black and white slides are spilling over with emotion, just as the physical building is failing and starting to leak. But in the Janitor’s closet, a place that is not formally on the map of a museum or gallery, the 16 mm projection is a translation of a moment (a true moment) where I recorded my daughter experiencing an amusement park ride with full and complete innocent joy (at the amusement park where I grew up). I wanted to transfer and translate the moment to a medium associated with memory and nostalgia.”

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LIKENESS Video Series: Paul DeMarinis

Today's installment in the LIKENESS Video Series (produced with love by MF Danny) comes from Paul DeMarinis, an artist who has been working in electronic media since 1971. Much of his work involves speech processed and synthesized by computers. In his LIKENESS piece, Dust, Paul utilizes a diverse selection of materials to create a unique and moving experience.



PAUL DeMARINIS
Dust, 2009 (4th Floor)
computer, video projector, photoluminescent powder, bass speaker
LIKENESS Exhibition - Through March 21, 2010

Paul DeMarinis has been working in the arts for several decades and subsequently has produced numerous performance works, sound and computer installations, as well as interactive electronic inventions. DeMarinis’s subtle and magical works display an intersection of tradition and progress, often motivated to cover an expanse of subjects and themes. Today we hear the term multidisciplinary! It is indeed an accurate one to describe Paul DeMarinis. Although the majority of his productions fall within the realm of art, he is also a historian, an experimenter, a chemist, a physicist, an engineer, a programmer, an inventor, a computer scientist and an archaeologist. His cross-disciplinary approach affords him an aptitude to condense the many facets of technology into his art constructions that aspire to be concurrently comprehensible and philosophical.

In his new work, Dust, DeMarinis explores facial similarities, pairs of faces, and the abstraction of images into the dust. DeMarinis presents a fragment of this collection of likeness-pairs, scanned sequentially into the light-memory of phosphorescent powder. After a few minutes of exposure to the projected image, the powder retains a faint green image of the two faces on its surface, something akin to the ‘latent image’ of photographic film or the veil of memory. Unlike photographic film, though, the image starts to distort. Propelled by low frequency sound vibrations, the powder starts to flow and dance, first distorting the faces and erasing their likeness, then distorting them into patterns of abstract light in motion, with form and beauty all its own. (Excerpt from Elaine A. King's gallery guide for LIKENESS)

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LIKENESS Video Series: Jim Campbell

Today's installment in the LIKENESS Video Series (produced with love by MF Danny) comes from artist Jim Campbell. Jim has two pieces showing in the LIKENESS exhibition, one of which you see below (Liz Walking: A Distillation Portrait) and the other will be posted here on the MF blog later in the week. Both make use of custom electronics and LED lighting. In Liz Walking, Jim has transformed an entire gallery into a lo-fi projection screen. To shine a bit more light on Jim's creative process, I've included some text from curator Elaine A. King's gallery guide below the embedded video.



JIM CAMPBELL
Liz Walking: A Distillation Portrait, 2009 (4th Floor)
custom electronics, LEDs
LIKENESS Exhibition - Through March 21, 2010

Liz Walking: A Distillation Portrait develops out of Jim Campbell's earlier Motion and Rest series that depicts six studies of people with disabilities walking. The idea underlying this series was that the low-resolution process inherently eliminates everything about the walking figures except for their gait. According to Campbell, "the works (or medium) distill the movement of the figures eliminating all of the other information from the moving images (age, clothes, gender, hair style etc. cannot be determined from the representations)."

This work goes further, when at times it eliminates the entire image including the movement such that only the rhythm of the movement is left leaving an even simpler representation. The installation is set up so that at the front of the room is a low-resolution image of the figure, but concurrently the two side walls (on either side of the viewer as they are looking at the front wall) have the same moving image presented in a great deal, lower resolution to the point of being almost totally abstract. However since the sidewalls are taken in with peripheral vision (which is also inherently movement based and more unconscious based) the rhythm of the figure is felt from the viewer’s peripheral vision as it is seen on the front wall with the observer’s direct vision. A unique situation is presented since the viewer’s peripheral vision is actually observing the same thing that the straight-ahead vision is seeing. Lastly, as a type of facilitation process for the viewer to leave their analytical seeing process behind, this installation goes through a cycle where the higher resolution image on the front wall gradually fades to nothing (a flat field) leaving only the peripheral image rhythm to be felt for a few moments before the front image gradually fades up again—what remains is a movement portrait or signature. (Excerpt from Elaine A. King's gallery guide for LIKENESS)

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LIKENESS Video Series: Tony Oursler

On Friday, October 9th, nearly 300 people packed into the galleries for the concurrent openings of LIKENESS, a group show guest-curated by Elaine A. King, and It's all about ME, Not You by Greer Lankton, which has been added to the museum's permanent collection. Big thanks to all who attended. I'm always amazed at the consistent outpouring of support at MF openings.

In anticipation of receiving and posting the official LIKENESS documentation images from our photographer, I'll be uploading short videos produced by Danny Bracken, multi-instrumentalist extraordinaire and MF Exhibitions Team member. First up in the series is Tony Oursler's Vampiric Battle.



On deck for tomorrow: Jim Campbell's Liz Walking (A Distillation Portrait)

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PodCamp Pittsburgh 4

One of the most unfortunate occurances for me last year was being out of town during PodCamp Pittsburgh 3, which took place in October of 2008. Well, lucky for me (and hopefully you!) PodCamp Pittsburgh 4 is coming up in a just few short weeks (October 10 + 11). For those of you thinking, "Pod-what?," PodCamp is a FREE community UnConference, run by and for people who create, enjoy, or are interested in learning more about social media.

This year’s PodCamp Pittsburgh is bringing an exciting crew of social and new media makers to our city. Topics range from beginner-level to advanced, and cover a wide variety of learning sessions for writers, bloggers, vloggers, web developers, web designers, podcasters, business owners, job seekers and anyone interested in learning more.

And what a great surprise to learn a few weeks ago that I'll be presenting two sessions, "myG20: Bringing Anarchists and Business Professionals Together Since 2009" on Day 1 and "Friendship 2.0: Community Building for Non-Profits" on Day 2. Check out the amazingly awesome two-day schedule in its entirety HERE.

Also, big props to @Sorgatron and @allthingsnoisy for coming over and shooting this video spotlight highlighting some of the new media projects we have cooking here at the MF:



So what are you waiting for? Hop to it. Registration is FREE and easy. I hope to see you there!

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Do-It-Yourself QR Codes: A 4-Step Guide

Approximately one year ago, the Mattress Factory began experimenting with QR (or Quick Response) codes and this past April the museum became the first in the United States to utilize the technology on-site as a visitor engagement tool. More on that HERE. Our use of QR Codes in the galleries has been getting some attention (1,2), and I've fielded numerous inquiries from artists and arts organizations wishing to utilize this technology in their practice or operations.

One can only presume that, as 2D barcode technology continues to evolve and becomes more accessible to more people, more artists and arts orgs will want to utilize it. And on the heels of that interest comes people and companies that will attempt to capitalize from providing clients with an essentially open (read: FREE) technology. So, in an attempt to save our fellow artists a boat-load of money, we decided to publish a step-by-step guide for those who wish to experiment with QR code technology. No consulting firm needed. Please keep in mind that this is only how we here at the MF implemented the codes. If you think there are better ways, or workarounds, please share in the comments to the post.

STEP 1: Upload Killer Content (IMPORTANT!!)
Give people or visitors a reason to open the codes. The codes we place throughout the galleries contain link to mobile browser optimized (JI - 9/15/09) rich multi-media content that provides context or backstory to the artworks we exhibit. We upload video files to YouTube, behind-the-scenes still images to Flickr, and informative text-based PDF files, all of which are supported by QR code technology accessible via most mobile platforms (JI - 9/15/09). Universal codes that access a stagnant website may prove to be less interesting to your audience.

STEP 2: Generate the Codes
Once you have developed the content you wish to share with your audience, it's time to make the codes. We use a very simple web generator provided by Kaywa. This generator is nice because it provides output & resolution options. If you're creating a print piece, you can select the extra large file output which optimizes quite nicely for signage.

Because the density of information contained within a code can effect its readability, we shorten all URLs with http://bit.ly. This may seem like a frivolous extra step, but it greatly impacts the ease with which our codes are read. Below are two codes that open the same URL. The URL embedded in the less dense code on the right has been shortened making this code easier and more consistently read.



STEP 3: Place or Hang Codes In Desired Locations
Once we generate our codes, we design the signage and collateral materials that will hold them. Codes can be displayed and read in hardcopy or electronic (screen) format. The only obstacle we've experienced has been customizing the size of the codes. Ideally, we'd like the codes to be smaller (i.e. 3/4" x 3/4"), but the smallest we've been able to go with consistent readability has been 1.5" x 1.5". As QR technology and hardware progresses, I anticipate the ability to reduce code sizes will emerge in the near future.


Mattress Factory gallery card containing a QR code.

STEP 4: Introduce the QR Codes to Users in a Non-Intimidating Way
Let's face it. The unknown scares people. And new technology has a way of intimidating potential users. We knew going into this that it was imperative to present the codes to visitors through technology they were already familiar with. We started by hanging several "This is a QR Code" signs in the museum lobby and elevator. These signs contain a short description about what the codes are.

We knew visitors would have more questions about the codes that would be impossible to answer through signage, so we created a simple text message (SMS) info relay. Through TextMarks, an inexpensive and easy SMS shortcode provider, visitors who send the keyword QRCODE to TextMarks' shortcode receive an immediate reply containing two links. The first link directs the user's mobile phone browser to a site that detects what type of phone they're using, provides more information, and a FREE download of the appropriate code reading application.

The 2nd link directs iPhone users to App Store, where they can download the most current FREE version of the BeeTagg Multicode Reader. There are numerous barcode reading applications available on most mobile platforms, but we recommend BeeTagg because of it's universality across the spectrum. In fact, factory-installed readers are now common on many phones including Nokia devices and the G1 Android. This SMS information relay has proved to be a vital piece to our QR code puzzle and has served those visitors curious about the technology greatly.

QR CODE WRAP-UP
So this is what worked for us. I'm interested to hear if other organizations find this information useful and beneficial. For further reading about QR codes in a museum setting, check out how the Powerhouse Museum in Australia has been using them. If you have further questions or a tip that might help others to implement innovative use of QR codes, feel free to leave a comment. If you'd like to hit me up off-line, shoot over an email or track me down on Twitter.

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