Proprietary technology that runs museum interactives—everything from buttons to proximity sensors—tends to be expensive to purchase and maintain.
But Rianne Trujillo (http://www.riannetrujillo.com), lead developer of the Cultural Technology Development Lab (http://www.cctnewmexico.org/ctdl/) at New Mexico Highlands University (NMHU), realized that one way museums can avoid expensive, proprietary solutions to their technology needs is by choosing open source alternatives. She is part of the team behind Museduino (https://museduino.org), an open-source system for exhibits and installations.
On this episode, Rianne Trujillo and fellow NMHU instructor of Software Systems Design Jonathan Lee (https://www.nmhu.edu/department-of-media-arts-technology/) describe the huge potential to applying the open source model to museum hardware.
Topics and Links
00:00 Intro
00:15 Proprietary Technology in Museums
01:04 Rianne Trujillo (http://www.riannetrujillo.com)
01:24 The Cultural Technology Development Lab (http://www.cctnewmexico.org/ctdl/)
02:04 Museduino (https://museduino.org)
02:35 Jonathan Lee (https://www.nmhu.edu/department-of-media-arts-technology/)
02:50 Open Source Software and Hardware
04:09 Arduino
06:35 Hardware Lock-In
07:02 Where Museduino is Already Installed
07:24 Museduino Workshops
08:55 Archipelago At the Movies ?️: Lisa the Iconoclast (https://www.patreon.com/museumarchipelago)
09:44 Outro/Join Club Archipelago (https://www.patreon.com/museumarchipelago)
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Transcript
Below is a transcript of Museum Archipelago episode 75. Museum Archipelago is produced for the ear, and only the audio of the episode is canonical. For more information on the people and ideas in the episode, refer to the links above.


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On Museum Archipelago, we focus on power in museums. On how cultural institutions have a tremendous amount of unchecked power.

But power takes many forms and one of these forms is control over the technology that delivers museum content to visitors.

From a button that plays a bird call when you touch it, to a projection screen that plays a story about the Battle of Gettysburg when you get close to it, every museum interactive requires a technological solution.


Rianne Trujillo: Oftentimes, museums will purchase proprietary solutions. Oftentimes they're very expensive, especially to maintain them, and if they break you are sort of forced to rehire the same company or rebuy new equipment, and that can be fairly costly really quickly.


This is Rianne Trujillo, lead developer of the Cultural Technology Development Lab at New Mexico Highlands University.


Rianne Trujillo: My name is Rianne Trujillo. I'm the lead developer of the Cultural Technology Development Lab at New Mexico Highlands University, and I’m also an instructor of Sof