Digital Interactives at the Art Institute

In our class on Thursday night, we were able to go to the Art Institute of Chicago to try out their new digital interactive ipads that they had installed in one of the gallery. It was really cool that the museum was able to install these devices within a gallery space. You had your choice of picking a piece of art, pushing any of the numberd labels that were on the piece in order to find out more information about that part of the art work. It also gives you a detail summary of the name of the piece, what time period it is from, and where it came from. There was another button that gives you related stories or information about the time period, country, or something else that relates with the art work. For works that were three dimensional, you are given the option to press the "360 degrees" key to rotate the 3D piece all the way around. The only flaws I would have to say about these devices is that the ones that were attached to extended wires to the benchs in that gallery space were not padded with something that can protect it from breaking if it falls. People usually come to the museum with their families, and if they are with little children, they might want to play with the ipads on the bench and they might damage them if they start banging them on the bench or accidently dropping them to the ground. Plus they might try to pull the ipad away from the bench and break the wire. The other negative about this is that there are not too many of these devices around, it is only installed in a few places. Some of the ipads had a holding stand to keep the ipads in place, but I feel like by doing that it can also be in the way of people's spaces, people who bump into anything. So if they came up with a better idea of how they can use and install the digital interactive device in a place or way in which it will not be in the pathway of the people walking around. Another negative about the ipad is that you are not really looking at the real art work that is front of you, instead you are staring continuously at a picture of that same piece and reading the information that is already in there, so it kind of takes you away from paying attention to the actual work. 
    However, it would have be great if they had put a zoom button as one of the choices so that if a person wanted to take a closer look at a piece of work, they can zoom in on it. The only ipad that I saw that can do that was in the Picasso and Chicago exhibit that I went to see with my classmate aftetrwards. The ipad was next to a display case where a book was locked in. On the ipad, it gives you the opportunity to flip through the book, to rotate the book, move the book around, and a zoom button if a person wanted a closer look at a piece of art in the book. Overall it was a good attempt.