Brick by Brick (stone by stone) Sara Huws, 20 April 2012 Fans of craftspeople, rejoice!Our very own Haverfordwest House has been given a TV special: 'Brick by Brick' with Dan Cruickshank, which plays out on BBC2 at 9pm tonight (9.30 on BBC2 Wales). The project has been a slow-burner, not least because the building, when removed from its original location in Haverfordwest, lacked a fourth retaining wall. If you've ever wondered how on earth we do what we do at St Fagans, then this is the programme for you. Follow the link below for a flavour of what's to come: 'Brick by Brick' - Charlie builds a vault. Some of the crew who saved the building, and some of the crew who will be looking after it from now on! The building is in the last stages of drying out, which means we'll have to wait a little while longer to furnish it permanently. To satisfy your curiosity, however, we're holding a preview opening this weekend, between 10 and 5. I'll keep you posted about our progress - in the meantime, if you've got any questions about the building, or the show, leave 'em here for me in the comments! Some of the crew who saved the building, and some of the crew who will be looking after it from now on!
Skis from Scott's British Antarctic (Terra Nova) Expedition 1910-13 19 April 2012 Skis from Scott's British Antarctic (Terra Nova) Expedition 1910-13 The mark of L.H. Hagen & Co., Christiania, on the base of each ski. The initials of Raymond Edward Priestley are carved into each ski. The leather binding used on the skis. Amgueddfa Cymru has in its collections a pair of long wooden skis. Each bears the mark 'L.H. Hagen & Co Christiania' on the base and the initials 'R.E.P' carved into the top. These skis were used by Raymond Edward Priestley (1886-1974), a geologist on Scott's British Antarctic expedition of 1910-13 While preparing for his second expedition to the Antarctic, Captain Robert Falcon Scott visited Norway in March 1910 for the field trials of his motorized sledges. In Oslo, then called Christiania, Scott purchased fifty pairs of skis from L.H. Hagen & Co and, through the famous Arctic explorer Fridtjof Nansen, he was introduced to Tryggve Gran, a young Norwegian ski expert. At the trials of the motor sledges at Fefor, a ski resort north of Oslo, Scott was impressed by Gran's skiing and invited him to join the expedition as ski instructor. The colour and grain pattern of the wood suggest that the skis are made from hickory. Each ski is a single piece of wood which has been steam-bent into shape with the tip of the ski hand-carved. Several different types of ski and ski binding were used by members of Scott's expedition. Priestley's skis have a simple leather lap thong binding. The footplate of the binding is made of reindeer skin, with many of the hairs of the fur still surviving. This footplate was originally a rectangular piece of fur which has shrunk and distorted to its present shape. The shrinkage and dehydration of the leather and fur on the skis will have been accelerated by the salty environments to which the skis have been exposed, such as on the voyage from Norway to Cardiff and eventually to Antarctica and back. Dissolved salts in the Antarctic sea ice are also likely to have been absorbed by the leather. On the base of each ski is a black residue. This is the remains of the wax applied to the base to improve the glide of the ski on the snow. Applying a wax to the skis was something Gran brought to the expedition and probably contributed to the more successful use of skis on the Terra Nova expedition compared with their use on Scott's earlier Discovery expedition. Article by: Tom Sharpe, and Megan deSilva. Acknowledgements: Heather Lane, Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge; Lizzie Meek, Antarctic Heritage Trust.
Art Gallery VADU David Thorpe, 17 April 2012 VADU: Visual Audio Display UnitMy last blog entry was back in April 2009, so this is a hesitant return.BackgroundIn July 2011 the refurbished Contemporary & Modern Art galleries were re-opened at the National Museum Cardiff, the following VADU would be included in the initial exhibition. The specification was mainly to showcase video shorts: recorded, interviewed and edited by a few of my colleagues (Art and New Media), the videos would have subtitles and also there would be a visitor comments page.The iPad 2 was about to be launched when I started work on the VADU. Magic was in the air, queues were forming.Note: it has been used for two exhibitions, so far: Contemporary & Modern Art (July 2011 – January 2012) The Queen: Art and Image (January 2012 – April 2012) Project EthosAlthough there is an 'App Store', it seemed like overkill to write and release an application simply for four machines in an art gallery - I used 'Kiosk Pro' instead, an application which basically removed all the usual iPad functionality and locked it down to a fullscreen Safari browser.In terms of creating the backend mechanisms for providing/collecting content, one shouldn't reinvent the wheel. Therefore, I used the trusty Museum‘s web CMS (Amgueddfa CMS) to control things - the Amgueddfa CMS controls the museum websites and intranet for all seven nation museums. Built in-house over several years, it has evolved with the requirements of the organisation. It's built with open source PHP, MySQL and Javascript. Succinct and effective, even if we say so.In regards to the actual design aspect of the VADU interface: the only two constraints were museum brand guidelines and a particular colour had to be used to unify it with the surrounding new gallery signage.Around May 2011, Braun's designer Dieter Rams design ideas entered my world (I can't repeat his mantra here, but only because it is copyrighted). Anyhow, I tried to create an interface that was simple, intuitive, consistent, and didn't distract the user from the actual content: Only two colours No drop-shadows or gradients 10px borders I did allow myself one curvy corner (bottom-right), one guilty pleasure User navigation: horizontal gestures only Page transitions: vertical only Building BlocksIf you haven't already looked at the photograph 1 and 1b, I would take a look now; so we have a shared reference images in mind.The top section displays the title of the exhibition, followed by page buttons (Art, Comments and What's On). All exciting stuff - the tip of an arrow indicates which page the user is on (hopefully in a subtle fashion).The language button starts the most convoluted process on the VADU, in terms of animating a page change. I didn't want the change to be instant, instead I gave it a more graceful flow. The actual result of changing the language only swaps the domain name from English to Welsh or visa-versa (museumwales.ac.uk, amgueddfacymru.ac.uk), but the time it takes to do that is over four seconds. It should become clearer later, if you watch the video below.I used the Javascript Mootools framework, it has served us well - lightweight and fast. I chained the transitions and effects to create the smooth transitional actions throughout the VADU. It was also necessary to chain things because I would describe the Safari browser on the iPad as OK, in regard to the power of Javascript, rather than excellent if used on a desktop (there is reduced access to the normal power you find in apps wrapped up in objective C; no WebGL access).The middle section displays the video in focus at the time, large screen print from the video is shown in the background - title, summary and extraneous information such as video length are shown on the information panel. In large font the word: 'Play', indicating the user can start a video. Left and right arrows also allow the user to shuffle through the videos. The information panel can be moved from the right or left of the background image - something that resulted from the fact artists don't like their work flipped [in a digital sense] i.e. if the focus of the background is to the left, the information panel can be positioned to the right by indicating such in the CMS metadata entry.The bottom section can be dragged with a finger left and right, selecting any one of the sixteen videos. It was quite important to have draggable areas, because it is simply expected by iPad users (thus, making it intuitive). The same draggable feature is used for the what's on page (photograph 6).If the user selects a video, the screen removes all navigation features so they are only left with the title of the video, a video time indicator (so the user knows the video is only short), the video itself in the center of the screen, the subtitles at the base of the screen and a 'back' button. The user can pause and un-pause the video by tapping of the video in the center (see photograph 3). The video's themselves use the same colour as the VADU, so it all fits together neatly.Finally the comments page is simple too: optional name input, text input and the last three comments are displayed on the right-hand side (hopefully encouraging the user to write something). The comments are fed into the usual website comments system, approved (or not) by a staff member (photograph 5) – there has been over 2000 comments left of the gallery VADU since July 2011, which is quite a lot considering no one was forcing these people to write something.SubtitlesThe subtitles are again displayed using javascript, they are not integrated into the video. I built a subtitles tool within the Amgueddfa CMS using Javascript and Flash, which creates a XML file that could be dropped into the caption of the video. The idea being that the majority of videos need to be available to two languages and if the videos were published on the main website at anytime, a transcript could be displayed too. Hopefully the task of transcribing the video in the first place is easier because of it. There you go, a little of the behind the scenes work (photograph 7).Past PerformanceThe gallery VADUs have been very reliable; once every few months one of them may freeze, but considering they are always on (one weakness of iOS software is you can‘t boot-up into a single application), that's not too bad. I darken the screen after the galleries close – simply using a whole–screen black div.We had a brief problem when changing the local network settings in January, so I added a check before the VADU changes language to see if there is a network available (an AJAX query: onSuccess or onFailure).Future DevelopmentIf it continues to be used, I would like to develop a local version of the VADU, providing a fallback if the network goes down, or maybe a hybrid version (storing the videos on the VADU). This would mean a update of the iOS (from 4.3 to 5.1+), but I‘m sure there would be some associated browser performance improvements.Other major changes shouldn't be required, as the video shorts are meant to be the star of the show.Final WordObviously it helps to have a pleasant environment to place the VADUs (photograph 9).Video DemoI've included a short demo video for posterity: Art Gallery VADU (demo video)
Roman Mosaics at Easter Grace Todd, 17 April 2012 So during this very busy Easter holiday our visitors have been taking inspiration from the Roman building materials we have in the Clore Discovery Centre to make their own Roman mosaics. The results have been oustanding with adults getting as absorbed as children. Here are some of the results but for more come and see the big screen in The Clore Discovery Centre
Every object tells a story Grace Todd, 6 April 2012 Inspired by the most inquisitive visitor ever who came and really tested my knowledge yesterday (perfect mental warm up for all the questions we'll get about the collections over the holidays) I thought it would be useful to give some suggestions for things to consider when exploring objects.All objects have some kind of a story, and objects are all evidence of somewhere, something, or somebody ans as such all have stories to tell.So when you're looking at an object for the very first time, thinking about some of these will guide your exploration:Is it real or a model?How old is it?Is it man made or natural?What might it have been used for/by whom/when/for what?Does it remind you of anything you've seen before? Some of our busy school visitors investigated and explored objects in the gallery, through careful questioning and research they discovered lots about their objects. Here is a selection of the labels they wrote
