Magpie: The Art of Noticing

Art is for everyone. But not everyone feels that. Magpie is a Green Raven R&D project to create a curiosity companion for our cultural experiences that opens art to all.

Magpie began as a way for me to dive deeper into where we spend our attention, how we notice, and what builds our taste over time. And now it’s becoming an even deeper dive into what we need from our experiences and cultural lives.

This is a product development process at heart. But my approach is always to allow for changes in direction, pivots, and simplification wherever possible. Something that rigid scoping docs and tight delivery timelines don’t allow for.

Being R&D, it’s surfacing tensions between technology, hardware, the in-person experience, cultural capital, visitor experience, availability of data, and what really constitutes a frictionless interaction.

So, where is Magpie up to? So far I’ve focused on these areas:

A Taxonomy of Noticing

How do we describe what has caught our attention? Noticing is immediate and often unconscious. It doesn't bring a judgement. It's not based on status. It's instinctive but it has value. Noticing is an invisible connection between you and something you like, you're intrigued by, you recognise, you don't understand... it's a reaction and in my opinion it means something.

So how do we define noticing without over-intellectualising it? How do we retain that spark of curiosity whilst providing meaningful value worth repeating consciously? Can noticing our noticing bring us closer to art beyond the barriers  to access we impose on it?

For Magpie, I have developed 16 facets of noticing in four categories. They sit in the gap between what a visitor guide would describe and what we feel as visitors, no matter our background or cultural capital. They aim to create a new way to engage with visual arts that can lean into our instinctive abilities as viewers and explorers.

I’ll be testing these against artworks in galleries very soon to see what holds up. These will feed a personalised attention map in Magpie that gives you a snapshot of your attention. I’ll be sharing more detail on this soon.

Frictionless Interactions

How much do we need to interact with technology to be meaningful but not get in the way?

In a museum or gallery, the idea is as little as possible. Preserving the experience of seeing and feeling things in real life is key, but also providing a way for asynchronous engagement to happen

We want to experience first, understand later. That requires different design choices, behaviours, and architecture than your usual gallery guide, tour, or piece of interpretation.

I’m actively exploring contactless tapping, room-level logging, post-visit logging, and even an all-analogue paper version of the concept. Restraint and focus are key to keeping interaction to a minimum to maximise impact.

Exploring Connections

We are all different and come to our moments in front of art from vastly different routes. So when you have a snapshot of your attention over time it enables new routes to discovery that are personal to you.

This is a cumulative effect. Our habits as visitors are a web of experiences over time, not an isolated bubble.

And second, what should I explore next? What links can I make? Where should I go? What should I see, read, watch, do based on my attention and noticing?

A crucial part of this is intent. Not everything we engage with fits our interest map. So can we separate our intentional attention from the tsunami of content in our lives?

What's Next?

I'm enjoying approaching Magpie as an end-to-end product development process. It really surfaces the needs of users and venues, of where you sit philosophically, and how and when technology can and should be used to support the aims of the project

I've already tested the taxonomy in several art galleries, aiming to push the set against different collections and find where it needs sharpening or amending. The good thing is the tests are already giving me insights into my own taste snapshot that I didn't realise myself. Turns out I really have a thing for dark and sparse art.

My next steps are to partner more closely with some art galleries and cultural venues to test in a ore rigorous way. If you are one and have a collection or several galleries, I'd love to hear from you (ian@greenraven.co.uk)

I'm also speaking with interested parties about taking Magpie to audiences in an integrated way. I'm being purposely vague, so watch this space.

In the meantime, I'd highly recommend trying to notice your noticing. What grabs you? What are you drawn to? What can you do with that spark? Where could it take you?

Magpie is your companion on that journey.