Page 251 - AC/E's Digital Culture Annual Report 2015

AC/E Digital Culture Annual Report 2015251An example of transparency is the Brooklyn Museum in its blog.88 In a post dated October 2014, it tells of the experience of the tests carried out for iBeacons and the use of the ASK application. The aim was to obtain information on visitors’ positioning in the museum rooms. The results were not very precise, but research is being continued with the aim of making this technology work for the museum and visitors.3.5 Sensors and facial recognitionAs we have seen, in addition to providing visitors to the museum with extra valuable digitised information, beacons can also supply cultural organisations with highly valuable information on users’ habits to help them make future decisions with a view to organising events and exhibitions.This type of monitoring was carried out some years ago using other types of technology, such as mats to detect the number of visitors, their age, the rooms they most visit and, more recent- ly, a more advanced type of technology based on facial recognition. This sensory and/or affective technology – depending on the focus given to the information gathered – makes it possible to ascertain the reactions, tastes and even emotions of visitors to exhibitions in order to gather data for future improvements and also make custom- ised recommendations.Readers of this annual report may well remember the case of the so-called “magic carpets” used as tools to monitor visitors to museums and exhibi- tions. We may recall that this technology is used in the exhibitions staged by the Promotion of FineArt department of the Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport in the new Tabacalera venue.When these mats fitted with various sensors and placed under carpeting or doormats are trodden on, they count the number of people who entera particular room or exhibition. They can also calculate from a person’s weight whether they are an adult or child. This technology is based on an intelligent counting algorithm with an accuracy rate of more than 95%. The results are presented as immediate traffic statistics that are updated every three minutes and the system has the capa- bility to carry out an analysis every fifteen minutes.The data gathered by the sensor mat are sent to the application of the company that owns the technology, in this specific case Eco-Compteur,89 and the results, trends, times with more or fewer visitors, reliable traffic date, data on variationsin visitor flows, number of entries and exitsper area, gauging the success of a temporary exhibition, are displayed on the website and peak visitor times are identified. All this is conducted discreetly, without installation or wires.The Musée du Louvre and the Musée D’ Orsay in Paris work with this same real-time mon- itoring technology, which is an essential toolfor obtaining information on visitors to places where some kind of cultural event takes place.The Denver Museum of Nature & Science is the most popular science museum in the Rocky Mountain region. In the past this popularity resulted in queues and people often havingto wait a long time to get into the exhibition rooms. This was a concern for the museum, which sought a way of managing visitor traffic3. Technology associated with the actual visit