From Vox Magazine: Audible artwork

Published in 10/30 print issue of Vox Magazine and published on voxmagazine.com

Picture Cloud Gate, colloquially known as “The Bean,” in downtown Chicago. The fun of taking a reflective selfie with the skyline behind you wouldn’t be possible if the sculpture were stuffed into an austere museum or gallery. Public artworks are fun and accessible, and they belong to the community at large. They stand for collective aesthetic value as much as they enhance a commuter’s morning walk to work.

Columbia is a perfect example of these values, as Sarah Dresser will tell you. She could also tell you there’s an app for that.

Dresser, a program specialist at the Columbia Office of Cultural Affairs, had been mulling over the idea of how to better promote Columbia’s public art digitally. The brochure and online guides to the statues, screens, plazas and artsy traffic boxes at intersections around town include descriptions and photos, but there had to be something more. She wanted to revamp the guide into an interactive, handheld concierge, but she had neither the platform nor the tools to do it. Her answer came in a phone call from Eric Feinstein, the creator of a multimedia tour guide app called Otocast.

Otocast combines photographs and descriptions of public art with audio from artists or local experts describing the history or context of various pieces, all oriented on a city map for easy navigating. The app was born out of Feinstein’s experience with public art in Dallas.

He was wandering through the downtown area before a conference and found his curiosity getting the better of him. “I kept bumping into things and thinking, ‘That looks like a building that probably has a lot of history; I wish I knew what it was,’ or, “That sculpture is really neat,’” he says. “I wished there were some local expert or tour guide that I could sort of tap into.”

The app aims to sate that curious-traveler’s yearning. Currently, the platform offers tours of New York, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, New Brunswick and — after a coordinated effort with Dresser — Columbia.

The city’s iteration of the tour highlights 38 different pieces around town, each with its own audio accompaniment. Dresser says obtaining those audio pieces from the artists was the most time-consuming aspect. But she maintains that the explanations of creative process and context enhance the experience for the individual listener, and that the tour as a whole elevates the cultural landscape in town.

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