A very personal relationship with Robots

You may have noticed that while we try to bring you an insiders guide into the life of museum workers we can be a bit reluctant here to shout about or review exhibitions we have been working on. While we champion the use of social media for museum staff it can be a conflicting relationship to review an exhibition you have put together yourself. So I tend to keeping any reference to that on my own personal accounts.

Nonetheless some of you will probably be aware that I recently moved jobs from Collections Registration Coordinator at the Science Museum to Registrar at the National Army Museum, leaving the Science Museum was an emotional decision especially as I had put over a year of my blood, sweat and tears into one of the best exhibitions ever (yep this is a totally biased review) Robots!

As the Collections Registration Coordinator on the exhibition I was responsible for negotiating the loans of all of the objects in the exhibition on display in London and the subsequent tour, so these objects in all of their humanoid form became my friends that I didn’t get to meet until the opening night – unfortunately I terminated my contract only a couple of months before install started – so my review is going to focus around the many many loans this exhibition offers.

An insight into the history of humanoid robotics the exhibition takes you from the early automata used in churches right up to the lab robots of today. Now, it would be impossible for me to write a short and snappy blog if I was to take a journey through the whole exhibition so a few of my favourites and highlights of the show are:

The Bowes Swan

I mean, a huge silver swan! That’s an automata! This object really is one of a kind, dating from around 1773 the swan is one of the earliest automata’s that is still operating today and its pretty flashy! Back in 1774 the swan was a crowd puller at the Mechanical Museum of James Cox  (a London based dealer) and now the Science Museum is well and truly blessed to get this object down to London for the exhibition so its only there for the first six weeks of the show!

Cygan

Cygan quite definitely is my favourite object in this exhibition, he was my first loan in for the show and holds a very very dear place in my heart.  He has a bad boy past, having spend some time as a showman in strip clubs and has found love in recent years with his owner in the USA, an 8 foot high gentle giant he can walk, talk and dance with the ladies as showcased in this great film. The perfect example of a fifties robot ready to help around the home and be an aluminium beast.

Nexi

The fourth section of the exhibition has some incredible pieces from current roboticists – who are an absolute joy to work with. There’s some robotic legs – saved by curator Ben Russell from underneath a staircase in north London, ROSA a highly intelligent 3D printed skeletal robot and in it and my favourite interactive – the ultimate machine for an exhibition so high tech its so simple. Nexi is a beautiful disproportionate and creepy looking expressive robot developed to work with humans in uncertain environments. Gizmodo call this one an emo robot 

Icub

Icub robots are incredible, you can catch them on youtube dancing to the Arctic monkeys and again this is a personal favourite because it was an interesting one to negotiate and it felt really emotional seeing it on exhibition as the exit piece in the exhibition its placed to make you consider what the future of robotics is  because its so innovative its an open sourced robot and develops in a similar way to a four year old child.

Robots is open at the Science Museum until 3rd September then heading on a UK and international tour - be sure to catch it!

#LoveMW: I love museums because they help with my depression and anxiety

Today is the last day of Twitter’s Museum Week on the topic of Museum Love. Not really knowing whether it is a good idea to post something like this on the Ministry, I thought I would throw together something personal and a little bit difficult to write. Why I love museums is, at least at the moment, slightly more self-centred than their research potential, engagement with history, or inspiring stories. I love museums because they help me deal with my mental health issues.

Museum Week is a huge time for museum bloggers to be busy, and getting likes and retweets for their social media content. You might have noticed the Ministry has been a bit quiet this week, however, and it’s mostly me to blame. In addition to being overwhelmed with work, personal life etc, it has been a particularly rough period in my much longer struggle with anxiety and depression. We talk a lot about mental health in museums, but typically about how this issues are represented in museums. More frequently the industry is becoming interested in how to reach out to different health communities, and how museums might be therapeutic for the public. Well I have to say as a museum professional they are simultaneously therapeutic and incredibly stressful.

How do I always seem to miss all the exhibitions? The grueling cycle of headline grabbing, queue-inducing exhibitions that London museum’s jostle for make loving museums in the city a stressful affair. Personally I have some serious FOMO, and when I do miss exhibitions it can make me very anxious and down. Too much to see in too little time – unless you are doing it as a job it seems inevitable to only scratch the surface of what London’s museums are doing at any one time. Great for tourists with so many amazing opportunities to choose from, anxiety-inducing for those of us who are trying to keep up with the industry.

But on the other hand, I think it’s the slowness of museums, their permanency, which has helped me out in times of trouble. If you can manage to get into a museum on a relatively calm day, there is something incredibly soothing about performing the role of the museum visitor. You enter the hallowed halls, hang up your coat, select a gallery, and slowly wander round, casually pausing at interesting looking pieces of text. You read from start to finish, you follow the story, you listen to the interactives, maybe you take a picture of something you’d like to share. You sit for a while and think. While I most frequently go to museums as a social outing, they are also a place for me to be alone.

When you have depression, doing anything at all is a challenge. When you combine that with anxiety, at least in my case, it typically means that I continued to be busy doing things (hence the FOMO) just more like a zombie inside. Social interactions are particularly difficult, but my brain is not very keen on letting me rest. Museums are such a blissful oasis in this particular combination of issues. I can be alone, I can be quiet but also keep my brain focused on something that is not anxiety. But I think importantly I’m often looking at objects or paintings made decades or centuries ago, probably by people dealing with the exact same things as me. The world is big, time is long, this moment is short and things will, more or less, continue in the same way (with probably a newer more exiting version of a phone).

So I love museums because (and this is not a particularly trendy thing to say, quite unlike what we normally promote via the Ministry), they are sanctuaries – places where anyone can go to see art, history, or whatever they are interested, and take a little break from the world around them. As a museum person, I know how to ‘be’ in a museum, how to interact, how to get the most out of it. I know this is a privilege of the few, but speaking from a selfish place, the knowability of museum has helped me time and time again when I have felt isolated or too introspective. I’m sure there are many people out there similar stories, and personally I would love to hear if and how museums might have helped with your own struggles.

I’m sure we will be back to your regularly programmed Ministry cheerfulness shortly, but thank you for listening. – Kristin