Fortunately, says Giersbach, "We got everything up and running for their opening night. It was pretty painless compared to how bad it could have been." The systems performed well, and any imperfections in the videos were subtle enough that the average visitor couldn't detect them, she notes. KIS is still tweaking the system to find the best possible encoding schemes.
Horio agrees that things would have been significantly less nerve-racking if they'd had the opportunity to tinker with the systems a bit more before the museum opened. "I would've liked to have had a little more testing time," he says. "We were still breaking the systems in while visitors were trying to use them."
New videos will continue to be supplied on an ongoing basis. KIS has trained the museum's IT staff to take over operation of the systems and perform tasks such as adding new videos and moving existing videos to different kiosks.
A major indicator of the project's success lay in the reaction of the museum's staff, says Giersbach. In the very subjective world of art, not everyone shares the same outlook on the role of technology. To some, it's a tool for enriching the visitor's experience; to others, it's an incongruous distraction.
"There was a division among the people at the museum who wanted the multimedia technology, and those who were opposed to it," she says. "But once it was up and running, they were excited to see that it was set up in a way that doesn't stand out. It fits into the environment."
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