Learning and Socializing
The Bernard Zuckerman Museum of Art (ZMA) audio tour should be a social experience. If virtual learning taught me one thing, it is that staring at a computer and listening to someone talk non-stop can be an unstimulating experience. Although I was learning the material, most of the information did not stick because the experience lacked me applying my knowledge in the form of collaboration and discussion with peers. When I returned to in-person classes, I realized that I could grasp and enjoy material much more when I could easily communicate my comments and questions. I believe that creating an audio tour that gives guests the freedom to discuss with others will have a similar effect on their educational experience. Making the audio tour a social experience is important because it allows for less structured, memorable, and intellectual conversations between students and other visitors that don't always happen in the academic and work environment.
Individual Audio Tours
In Lois H. Silverman's "In the Service of Society: from The Social Work of Museums, it mentions that museums provide opportunities for not only people that know each other but museums can provide a safe space for interaction and discussion between people that don't know each other (18). However, a challenge pertaining to audio tours is the diminished social interaction you have when touring as an individual. Social interaction with other tour members would be particularly scarce for the ZMA tour because of how widespread and intertwined it is within the Kennesaw State University campus. In an audio tour, I listened to called Cashin's Sculpture Garden provided by Chukkar Farm and Polo Club, the artist reading about the 18th piece in the audio tour strongly encouraged people to interact with the stage sculpture they created. In this situation, I most likely would not interact with the sculpture if I was touring as an individual, losing out on the artist's intended purpose and the same would go for the ZMA audio tour's interactive pieces like this one. As a solo attendee, I and others might feel awkward/unsure when it comes to using the interactive pieces resulting in a missed and potentially valuable experience with the artwork.
Ideas
One potential option for single parties is to pair them with a museum staff member or another single party. This way guests can conveniently learn and discuss with someone else and interact with pieces without feeling uncomfortable. Another suggestion is to have large cohorts of people follow the same audio tour route simultaneously. By doing this, people would have an increased likelihood of potentially forming new or building upon discussion groups.
Works Cited
Chukkar Farm and Polo Club. “Cashin's Sculpture Garden.” Izi.TRAVEL https://www.izi.travel/en/4339-cashin-s-sculpture-garden/en.
Silverman, Lois. The Social Work of Museums. Routledge, 2010.
