MuseTrek: a Culture Platform in the Works

By Maria Mortati, Sr. Exhibit Developer

Recently we posted about a gallery experiment out of Paris called Le Laboratoire. Turns out the force behind it (David Edwards) has been busy.  Enter MuseTrek, a web 2.0-plus-iPhone system that seeks to allow people to create their own narratives and tours of museums, public spaces, objects, and ideas:

"MuseTrek is an exciting new company that aims to transform how we explore cultural resources and museums around the world. The company was created by Harvard University students at the Idea Translation Lab at Harvard, and is being developed by TechPoint Ventures, a Boston based business incubator and development firm. MuseTrek has formed a special partnership with Le Laboratoire, an innovative experimental art center in Paris..." -MuseTrek press release

So far, it appears that the project is in the early stages with students and local area folks in Boston and Paris making "tours" and adding content. In other words, there's not a lot there yet. 

However, it's an exciting umbrella to develop. Whether the public is able to make this happen with existing tools, or MuseTrek can expand to become a culture-sharing platform remains to be seen. Yet the drive to share and make sense of what people see in museums remains quite powerful.

For more:
http://www.musetrek.com/
http://www.artscience100k.org/prize/pilot_years.html
http://tedxboston.org/videos/79-musetrek

Update: the San Francisco Chronicle just posted an article about Scenic Route: "...a site that builds custom, on-demand walking routes anywhere in San Francsico". In the UK there is a similar project to MuseTrek and Scenic Route called I Like Museums.