Experience and Evaluation in the Collective Creation of a Public Digital Exhibition

Abstract

This chapter describes the collaborative creation of a public digital media exhibition located outdoors in the Garden of Australian Dreams at the National Museum of Australia. The exhibition was created on the ABC Pool site where people share media and work on projects. Over 100 collaborators produced in excess of 700 images, texts and sounds for the exhibition within two weeks. The rapid production of so much content raised the need to scale formative evaluation to match production. Crowd curation was undertaken through online comments, and through nominating or flagging items as favourites on the ABC Pool site. The location of the exhibition outdoors raised usability and technical issues, that included visibility, distraction, GPS accuracy and download delays. The project was analysed using the Experience and Evaluation Framework proposed in this volume. This analysis led to the identification of additional elements that further generalise the framework to projects that involve collective creativity, outdoor exhibitions, mobile media, and public digital art.