Sunday, June 6, 2010

A Mansion, a Museum and Music

Some placecasts I've seen in the news recently:

The Vanderbilt Breakers Mansion
  • A Seattle Post Intelligencer blogger mentions the audio tour of the famous Breakers Mansion in Newport, Rhode Island this week. A two hour tour sounds too long to me in an old house, but there are 20 bathrooms to get through. The tour sounds like much more than narration. It includes sound effects (which can be a great touch or profoundly cheesy) and oral histories from people who lived at the mansion. The audio producer's description of the tour is actually a great read and includes these details:
"'The push for audio tours grew out of an effort “to become more relevant and engaging for our visitors and to move away from a specifically fact-based guided tour,” said John Tschirch, the preservation society’s architectural historian and director of academic programs....The recording includes narration, sound effects, commentary from architectural experts and past servants, and readings of memoirs of Vanderbilt family members...'You entered the house as a Vanderbilt or guest, now you entering the dining room as a servant' is the new approach of the audio tour, which relies on hallways used by servants that weren’t open for guided tours."
(Speaking of Rhode Island, here's a great short audio story from NPR on Friday about R.I.'s famous weenies. I wonder if the Vanderbilts served these at garden parties...)
  • A National Geographic exhibit currently at The Franklin Institute in Philadelphia is using the voice of Cleopatra to narrate an audio tour if it's exhibit all about...Cleopatra. According to a story in Philly.com: "After a five-minute video introduction, an audio tour delivered as if the queen herself were speaking, fills visitors in on the details of her life." Yikes. The writing and voicing had better be exceptional to pull this sort of thing off. But the audio tour sounds old-school compared to the other features of this high-tech exhibit: "The exhibit includes high definition multimedia, original soundscapes and a mobile-based social media scavenger hunt." National Geographic knows a lot about education and interpretation, so I'm very curious to hear how this exhibit is received.
  • The award-winning Toronto Music Garden is packed with music and dance from now through September. The outdoor garden and performance space is, literally, inspired by Bach (for example, the "Prelude" is a "An undulating river scape with curves & bends", followed by the "Allemand", "A forest grove of wandering trails"...etc.) In a $6 70-minute audio tour now available near the park, cellist Yo-Yo Ma and landscape architect Moir Messervy explain how they turned music into a park. This concept is so well tailored for placecasting that I'd be disappointed if such a tour wasn't available. (via Music Industry Mews Network)
    Toronto Music Garden (via City of Toronto)

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