Over three recent blockbuster shows, the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) in London has pioneered a way of putting recorded music and other audio content at the heart of the visitor experience.
The approach was first used for the David Bowie Is retrospective in 2013. The museum worked with the German audio company Sennheiser, which was a co-sponsor and provided its equipment and expertise for free.
Visitors were given headphones attached to a sensor worn on a lanyard around the neck (the system also fed the sound directly to hearing aids via a wire worn around the neck).
When they walked into different parts of the gallery this triggered audio content, which included Bowie’s music as well as interviews with him and his collaborators. The sound was co-ordinated with the objects and videos on display.
Victoria Broackes, who co-curated the exhibition, says that this technology is more immersive than a traditional audio tour, where visitors typically have to press buttons.
“It’s a seamless experience, so that once you put the headset on you’re on your own journey, with sound that delivers the right thing to you at the right time,” she says.
The exhibition used open headphones with foam on the outside, which allowed visitors to speak to each other at the same time. But many visitors became absorbed in their own world, Broackes says. Despite concern that this would make the exhibition an isolating experience, feedback suggested that many felt it enhanced their visit.
“It seemed to allow people to take their personal journey on the road with them, without chatting to their friends,” Broackes says. “Some people spent hours going around.”
The museum used a similar format for You Say You Want a Revolution? Records and Rebels 1966-1970 exhibition (September 2016 – February 2017), and its current show Pink Floyd: Their Mortal Remains (until October).
All three exhibitions have ended with a more communal experience by evoking the spirit of a live performance, using video footage and speakers placed around the gallery. “We had people laughing, crying, singing, dancing and hugging,” Broackes says.
The format offered an enjoyable way for people to learn about the exhibition subjects, and respond emotionally to the content. And this has helped bring in new audiences: more than 30% of people attending the Bowie exhibition were visiting the museum for the first time.
The V&A is licensed by PRS for Music, which collects licence fees on behalf of composers and publishers, and PPL, which collects and distributes licence fees on behalf of record companies and performers. These cover playing recorded tracks on its premises.
But when the museum released a CD and LP of the soundtrack for its Records and Rebels exhibition, there was a complex negotiation process to license the music.
The V&A plans to further develop its use of recorded music in exhibitions and is working with sound designer David Sheppard to create an immersive experience for the exhibition Opera: Passion, Power and Politics, which opens this month.
According to Geoffrey Marsh, who co-curated the David Bowie Is and Records and Rebels at the V&A, the technology that delivers sound will be revolutionised in the next five to 10 years. Speaking at the Museums Association’s one-day conference, Grand Designs: New Thinking on Exhibition Design, earlier this year, he said that this progress would provide “an enormous asset in visitor engagement.”
Natural sounds
Another museum that has used recorded sound as part of the visitor experience is Derby Museum and Art Gallery.
The museum’s Nature gallery, which opened in 2015, was created with visitors through co-curation. The process showed that people wanted to experience sound, with birdsong being a particularly popular suggestion. Someone also donated a 1949 shellac recording of a nightingale to the museum.
Andrea Hadley-Johnson, the co-production manager at Derby Museums, says that the institution decided to commission a piece from composer Richard Birkin. His work blended a string ensemble with the nightingale sample, sounds recorded in local parks with museum visitors, and other recordings people made on their phones and emailed in.
The seven-minute piece now plays in full twice a day in the nature gallery, with fragments interjected at other points. A Raspberry Pi computer was programmed to make the sound move across the gallery, using six speakers.
The recording supports the gallery’s key aim of encouraging people to notice nature in their lives. Hadley-Johnson says that it adds a layer of texture to visitors’ experience and that they typically stop talking to listen to it.
“People sometimes dance in the space to it and someone recently requested it to be played at their daughter’s wedding,” she says.
The museum also experimented with using sound in an exhibition on drawing, Finding Lines, which closed at the start of this month.
The show featured a 10-foot wide drawing and sound compositions by artist and musician Stephen Carley. The sounds were played periodically in the gallery where the drawing was displayed.
Hadley-Johnson says that in future she would like to involve visitors in the process of presenting sound in the gallery – for example, by recording sounds played on musical instruments in its collection.
“If we can co-produce the noises that people hear in the gallery so they’re part of constructing and shaping them, that’s a much more exciting way of engaging visitors,” she says.
The approach was first used for the David Bowie Is retrospective in 2013. The museum worked with the German audio company Sennheiser, which was a co-sponsor and provided its equipment and expertise for free.
Visitors were given headphones attached to a sensor worn on a lanyard around the neck (the system also fed the sound directly to hearing aids via a wire worn around the neck).
When they walked into different parts of the gallery this triggered audio content, which included Bowie’s music as well as interviews with him and his collaborators. The sound was co-ordinated with the objects and videos on display.
Victoria Broackes, who co-curated the exhibition, says that this technology is more immersive than a traditional audio tour, where visitors typically have to press buttons.
“It’s a seamless experience, so that once you put the headset on you’re on your own journey, with sound that delivers the right thing to you at the right time,” she says.
The exhibition used open headphones with foam on the outside, which allowed visitors to speak to each other at the same time. But many visitors became absorbed in their own world, Broackes says. Despite concern that this would make the exhibition an isolating experience, feedback suggested that many felt it enhanced their visit.
“It seemed to allow people to take their personal journey on the road with them, without chatting to their friends,” Broackes says. “Some people spent hours going around.”
The museum used a similar format for You Say You Want a Revolution? Records and Rebels 1966-1970 exhibition (September 2016 – February 2017), and its current show Pink Floyd: Their Mortal Remains (until October).
All three exhibitions have ended with a more communal experience by evoking the spirit of a live performance, using video footage and speakers placed around the gallery. “We had people laughing, crying, singing, dancing and hugging,” Broackes says.
The format offered an enjoyable way for people to learn about the exhibition subjects, and respond emotionally to the content. And this has helped bring in new audiences: more than 30% of people attending the Bowie exhibition were visiting the museum for the first time.
The V&A is licensed by PRS for Music, which collects licence fees on behalf of composers and publishers, and PPL, which collects and distributes licence fees on behalf of record companies and performers. These cover playing recorded tracks on its premises.
But when the museum released a CD and LP of the soundtrack for its Records and Rebels exhibition, there was a complex negotiation process to license the music.
The V&A plans to further develop its use of recorded music in exhibitions and is working with sound designer David Sheppard to create an immersive experience for the exhibition Opera: Passion, Power and Politics, which opens this month.
According to Geoffrey Marsh, who co-curated the David Bowie Is and Records and Rebels at the V&A, the technology that delivers sound will be revolutionised in the next five to 10 years. Speaking at the Museums Association’s one-day conference, Grand Designs: New Thinking on Exhibition Design, earlier this year, he said that this progress would provide “an enormous asset in visitor engagement.”
Natural sounds
Another museum that has used recorded sound as part of the visitor experience is Derby Museum and Art Gallery.
The museum’s Nature gallery, which opened in 2015, was created with visitors through co-curation. The process showed that people wanted to experience sound, with birdsong being a particularly popular suggestion. Someone also donated a 1949 shellac recording of a nightingale to the museum.
Andrea Hadley-Johnson, the co-production manager at Derby Museums, says that the institution decided to commission a piece from composer Richard Birkin. His work blended a string ensemble with the nightingale sample, sounds recorded in local parks with museum visitors, and other recordings people made on their phones and emailed in.
The seven-minute piece now plays in full twice a day in the nature gallery, with fragments interjected at other points. A Raspberry Pi computer was programmed to make the sound move across the gallery, using six speakers.
The recording supports the gallery’s key aim of encouraging people to notice nature in their lives. Hadley-Johnson says that it adds a layer of texture to visitors’ experience and that they typically stop talking to listen to it.
“People sometimes dance in the space to it and someone recently requested it to be played at their daughter’s wedding,” she says.
The museum also experimented with using sound in an exhibition on drawing, Finding Lines, which closed at the start of this month.
The show featured a 10-foot wide drawing and sound compositions by artist and musician Stephen Carley. The sounds were played periodically in the gallery where the drawing was displayed.
Hadley-Johnson says that in future she would like to involve visitors in the process of presenting sound in the gallery – for example, by recording sounds played on musical instruments in its collection.
“If we can co-produce the noises that people hear in the gallery so they’re part of constructing and shaping them, that’s a much more exciting way of engaging visitors,” she says.