Here at Penn Museum, I will be conducting my own participant observer research by traversing the many galleries in a wheelchair. Tomorrow should offer a different perspective of a building I have already grown accustomed to, and help me to identify issues that may have previously overlooked.

Simon Martin attended The Royal College of Art and continues to help decipher and reproduce Mayan artifacts.  Martin is affiliated with the Institute of Archaeology, London UK, and University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archeology and Anthropology, Philadelphia PA.

The Media Department is working in conjunction with Exhibits to create this added interactive experience due out late fall.

We just finished taping the American Sign Language (ASL) Tours for the Deaf and Hearing Impaired with SignWorld TV.

The video tour features actor and comedian CJ Jones signing in the galleries. The Highlights of the Galleries in ASL tour will be available on iPods as well as a video download on the website in Fall 2010.

Our crew of five, and at times six (when we were lucky enough to borrow Jessica, our wonderful intern from Development) included actor/comedian CJ Jones, producer/director Catherine MacKinnon, director of photography Jhett Bond, and gaffer Kevin Tobin, who did an amazing job with the lighting.

I filled the ever important role of holding the laptop as the teleprompter. CJ expertly and instantaneously translated the script to ASL as we dragged our equipment from object to object and outlet to outlet.

It was a remarkable process to witness as he had to finger-spell many of the proper nouns like “Merenptah” and “Kebensenuef.” Occassionally, his hand would wilt after a particularly challenging word, kind of like a manual stutter. He’d look at his hand as if it were a naked muppet and give it a friendly smack to get it working again. This process has really made me appreciate sign language and those who use it fluently — the way a physical language twines your whole body into expressing something that can’t fit into the trappings of plain old words and letters. Watching him sign the script that I’d become so familiar with breathed new life into it. It was like he was acting out history, becoming the people who made and used these objects.

My knowledge of sign language was limited to what I’d learned in a high school rendition of Godspell. I’m not sure if all versions of this musical have sign language in them, but ours did: “Day by day, day by day… Oh dear lord, three things I pray….” Kind of like those dialogues you’re forced to memorize in foreign language classes about picking up a side of beef at the carniceria, these are not the most employable words to have in my vocabulary. As the hours wore on, I found myself coming up with my own version of sign language, approximating what I thought might be the right sign for certain things. Sometimes, I actually managed to communicate something relatively accurately and CJ and Catherine clapped and nodded emphatically. Or one of our hearing crew members would pick up a sign and repeat it, and CJ and Catherine would make a knocking gesture which meant “Yes!”

We filmed the last tour stop in the Islamic Gallery at 2am. We deflated happily around the mosaic fountain half delirious and reiterated how important this project was for the Museum and for making our collections accessible to the deaf audience.

I also expect that most hearing visitors will choose to watch CJ sign the tour over the regular audio tour. He is so animated and expressive, it’s as if he activates both sides of your brain when you watch him sign and hear or read the script at the same time.

It was exhausting and exciting for everyone. At moments, I had to remind myself why we were doing the ASL tours in the first place, but I will save that for a blog post of its own.

Amy Ellsworth – July 12, 2010

iTunes University
Download archival footage, illustrated lectures, videos, podcasts and more on Penn’s iTunes University site.

• Travel the World in a Day
  Rome the Eternal City
  From its founding more than 2,800 years ago, Rome has become known as an “eternal city” world-renowned for its architecture. A panel of speakers explore four time periods of this astounding city: Classical Rome, one of history’s most powerful civilizations; Medieval Rome; Renaissance Rome; and Modern Rome, a bustling cosmopolitan metropolis.
• 4 Part Podcast Series.

“Gaining insight into overlooked, intuitive design successes and failures starts with Anthropometric data:”

Anthropometry (Greek άνθρωπος, man, and μέτρον, measure, meaning “measurement of humans”), in physical anthropology, refers to the measurement of the human individual for the purposes of understanding human physical variation.

The task: 

In one of the eleven galleries, record the Anthropometric data concerning:

• • Signage
  • Displays
  • Movement
  • Accessibility

Diagram and Analyze findings.
Use Dreyfuss figures and must analyze a minimum of one display
Establish if it is appropriately designed for the 5th-95th percentiles

Dreyfuss, Henry. The Measure of Man and Woman. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2002.  – Introduction by Stephan Wilcox

The task: 

Describe through photography and text the experience of multiple users, mapping their journey with precision, identifying decision points or confusion points, and making conclusions from key observations.

Field Work:

Conclusions:

The red-tailed hawk quickly drew attention from visitors, staff, and security. A few photos taken by visitors, featuring cameos with Mr Hawky, were shot before Visitor Services closed the Public Garden. I went out to snap a few photos, but scared Mr Hawky away before I was able to ask him any questions.

His inability to fly out of the inner courtyard mixed with the dense heat-wave alarmed the staff and a phone call was made to The Philadelphia Zoo. Mr Hawky refused water refreshments and any human contact. A second attempt to fly out ended in a crash around the 2nd floor Cafe windows.

Zoo sources speculated that a possible “window strike” paired with the heat could have caused the adolescent hawk to land in the public gardens “He’s a teenager and probably just got confused. hung around here to stay cool,” said the Zoo Rescuer. At the end of the day Mr Hawky was escorted from the building and the Garden was re-opened.

_tim passarella

Penn Museum is located at 3260 South St. Philadelphia, PA. Part of the Univeristy of Pennsylvania, Penn Museum founded in 1887, has conducted more than 400 archaeological and anthropological expeditions around the world. Three gallery floors feature materials from Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Bible Lands, Mesoamerica, Asia and the ancient Mediterranean World, as well as artifacts from native peoples of the Americas, Africa and Polynesia.

Only with visiting the museum can you comprehend how much there is much to learn here. Be sure to check back as I will be posting new behind the scenes findings, as well as projects i will be working on.

Quote of the day: “What do you sphinx you’re looking at…”