Art on Call has been up and running now for almost two weeks! I’m super pleased with the outcome and the fact that people seem to be using the app - for my part it was great on opening day to be able to stand in front of the artwork and listen to the artist or curator talk about what you’re seeing, all without the hassle and overhead of checking out an audio tour device. Very cool.
How did it go getting it finished? Busy. The biggest drama came just before the launch, and involved the text to speech (TTS) engine — when we turned on the high quality TTS it was taking almost a minute(!) to render the text for event descriptions. A user would hit a key and the app would just drift into silence… (details on the problem and solution - it’s solved - can be found on the nmi wiki). So between that and the mad rush to produce content for the opening, it was busy all around - I think the team did a great job getting it launched on time..
Now we’re proceeding (Brent and I) with a website for the project including an interface to the audio clips for each “stop” or artwork id. Not quite the same as standing in front of the art, but I think it will be a good experience for people who can’t make it to the Walker galleries, or who didn’t have their cell phone with them at the time…
Keep watching the blog and wiki for updates as phase two commences - hopefully adding a “browse by artist” function, possibly event reminder callbacks, a set of downloadable MP3 files to put on your iPod to take into the galleries, and more…