Tate Modern pioneers Interactive Experience

Using the latest developments in wireless technologies and handheld computing, the project is the first of its kind in any museum in the world, and demonstrates Tate’s interest in pioneering innovative approaches to education and art interpretation. The pilot was developed by Tate and Antenna Audio, with support from Nykris. It is sponsored by Bloomberg, and runs through September 2002.

The multimedia tour brings together the range of digital media – audio, video, still images, text and graphics – onto a lightweight, screen-based, handheld computer. The content of the multimedia tour is delivered to the visitor using wireless technology, powered by PanGo Network’s proximity platform technology. This facilitates ‘intelligent’ content delivery, based on visitor location in the gallery and profile (age, language, interests, etc).

The multimedia tour lasts about 45 minutes and covers selected artworks in the Still Life/Object/ Real Life galleries. For the duration of the pilot, the multimedia tour is offered free to visitors, who are asked to participate in the formation of this new technology by completing evaluation forms and recording their suggestions.

The unique features of the multimedia tour can be summarised as follows:

• Interactivity: The multimedia tour’s applications enable interactivity, allowing the gallery to page visitors both singly and en masse through the wireless network.
• Innovative Content: In addition to providing practical information such as maps and daily announcements, the multimedia tour includes interpretative content in a range of media, including: video, audio, animation, and interactive pages.
• Visitor Profiling: The wireless system gathers visitor feedback on the gallery and the tour experience, as well as a record of which exhibits they’ve visited.
• Visitor email Facility: Visitors are able to email themselves a record of their tour in order to follow up on artists and artworks of interest through the Tate website.

The PanGo Proximity Platform™ that drives this pilot project is unique in that it detects users’ locations in the gallery without the use of infrared or radio beacons, and without the need for a dedicated access point for each content zone - for example, this installation uses just 7 access points to map 16 content zones in the galleries. This proprietary content management system enables the Tate to associate specific audio-visual interpretative content with each gallery or area in the museum. Content is then delivered from a central server via the wireless 802.11b network to visitors according to their locations in the gallery.

The wireless equipment that runs the tour was loaned to the pilot project by HP, and the hand held device used is an iPAQ 3800 series.

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