By Susie Anderson

At Science Gallery Melbourne exhibitions, each piece in the show is flanked by a stand featuring an ipad with key information about the art and artists. On first glance it looks just like a standard exhibition didactic. But look closer and you’ll notice that each ipad has a question and answer at the bottom with a QR code, prompting you to engage with an AI.

Ah, AI in a gallery context. Groundbreaking.

But this is your sign to pull out your phone to scan the QR code and launch FIELDS. Your phone displays a graphic with dots spiralling outwards from the centre, opening up a dialogue between past and present visitors, all moderated by an AI.

The idea of interactive wall labels in Science Gallery Melbourne exhibitions dates back to 2018, when Science Gallery was in pop-up exhibition mode across The University of Melbourne campus. For example, at PERFECTION, each exhibit had a digital wall label with an emoji-filtered ranking system, where visitors could add their reactions to the artwork. Inviting people to leave an impression of the work creates a sense of community, as audiences become more than just passive visitors to the space.

The point of Science Gallery exhibitions, after all, is engaging further with ideas and opening a dialogue. Science Gallery goes beyond the typical approach to curating, installing and talking about art or scientific exhibits. The champions of this are our Mediators, excellent young humans often with a background in science communication, who share their curiosity and knowledge with visitors to the exhibitions.

So as a project got underway to build Science Gallery Melbourne a permanent home at University of Melbourne campus, this idea of dismantling tropes of museum and gallery experience was a crucial part of the building project. Interactive digital wall labels were always factored into the building design.

In early 2020, I joined the team. Having worked at art organisations and galleries in Sydney for around 5 years, I had some idea of the ways that visitors engage within gallery spaces. But, as the team kept telling me, Science Gallery audiences were not quite the same as audiences I’d seen before in contemporary art galleries.

Over the pandemic years we conducted research with Science Gallery Melbourne staff and audiences and asked what could this digital offering contribute to our visitors? How could it honour our Mediators, rather than replace them?

Key aspects of our brief were:

- We are not making an app. (If I had to hear about ‘The O’ one more time…)

- Leverage the fact that everybody has their phone on hand always.

- Take advantage of new literacy around QR codes

- Offer an opt-in experience

- It can’t detract from what the Mediators do

- It adds a conversational element for visitors to discuss or leave impressions of the artworks

- We know that not every visitor will be up for another layer to their visit (some people want passive gallery time)

After developing a brief and putting it out to tender, we worked with AKQA on a digital experience we came to call FIELDS. They understood we wanted to go beyond a simple rating system on our wall labels and take an experimental approach to create a platform where visitors could express their thoughts and ideas about exhibits in the gallery..

Through more audience research and focus groups, the idea of an AI-generated conversation started to come together. As per usual, more questions than answers started to come up. What if there was an AI trained on each theme, each exhibit? What if you could see questions and answers from other visitors on your mobile? What kinds of questions would an AI ask you? With the help of AKQA’s team of creative technologists and UX designers, FIELDS was born.

Like any piece of technology, aspects of FIELDS went out of date almost instantly. We’ve already made minor updates to the version of Chat-GPT running the AI and have made minor updates to the CMS. We created a data visualisation to display on the entrance screen at the gallery to draw more attention to the product. We’ve done social media to prompt people to engage with it during our exhibition campaigns. We’ve added a section on FIELDS to Mediator training.

After two years in its permanent home, Science Gallery Melbourne has found a regular, dedicated audience of university and high school students as well as general public. For some, we know FIELDS is an interesting added layer to their visit. Yet we know that others are completely unaware of it and its powers.

Some observations, two years in

- Our audiences think deeply about our exhibitions

- Humans and AI make good conversation partners

- However, this isn’t an experience for everybody.

- But there are some people who it really appeals to. AI nerds, introverts, etc.

- We need to do more to raise awareness of this through content or staff training.

- It adds a fun interactive element to exhibition campaigns during launch phase.

There’s still so much more we can do with FIELDS. We have always wanted to share the question and answer pairs with the artists for their own research. But if nothing else, this particular use of AI interacting with visitors gives us hope for the future of relationships between humans and artificial intelligence.

https://melbourne.sciencegallery.com/fields

The Story of FIELDS, our interactive wall label chatbot AI multi-hyphenate