Buzz
Museums are treasure troves of knowledge, but they’re not always within reach for everyone. A museum visit requires time, money, and opportunity. Even when you do visit, only a small portion of the collection is typically on display. However, a new project seeks to make museum content more accessible to schools and communities far from traditional galleries.
Museum in a Box is essentially a compact, interactive exhibit that can be sent to schools and other child-focused organizations. Each box contains a Raspberry Pi computer, a speaker, an amplifier, and an NFC reader—similar to the technology used for mobile payments. Museums and cultural institutions can add their own items for children to explore using the box, such as 3D-printed statues, postcards, puzzles, and anything else curators believe will engage students. Placing these items on the box activates the NFC reader, triggering an audio recording related to the object.
How it works from Museum in a Box on Vimeo.
While much of the content that museums might want to include in a box may already exist in digital form on their websites or within their collections, the box offers a physical, curated method for presenting it. For example, a prototype created for the Smithsonian Institution, called Frogs in a Box, combined photographs of North American frogs from the Smithsonian collection with a narrated set of frog sound recordings made by Smithsonian Folkways in 1958. Tapping a postcard with an image of a frog species on the box triggers audio from Sounds of North American Frogs, including expert commentary from a herpetologist and various frog calls.
Although the project is still in its early stages, the Museum in a Box team has already been commissioned to create boxes for institutions such as Barnsley Museums in the UK, the University of Melbourne, and the Swedish National Heritage Board.
A Museum in a Box created for the Jewish Museum London | Museum in a BoxThe technology isn’t just limited to museum collections. One prototype, aimed at language learners, lets users place flash cards with different words on top of the box to activate recordings of native speakers pronouncing those words. Additionally, the team is working on a DIY box pilot that would allow kids to design their own themes and content. You can currently support this project on Crowdfunder.
