Do you know “tagging”?
Few days ago I spent my afternoon in a museum of contemporary art. In a poster I saw stuck on a wall were printed words meant to explain some concepts concerning the exhibition inside the museum Different words of different sizes were printed at random in the middle of the poster: they strictly related to the subjects of the artworks. A couple of these words were also explained at the top and at the bottom.
A visitor I overheard made a loud comment in a haughty tone while she was watching this poster: “This is nonsense!”
Therefore, I could not but get involved: “Do you mind my intrusion, madam? I would not call this nonsense… it is just ‘tagging’. Maybe you never heard about it, but everyday millions of people use this system to archive or search terabytes of information.”
Tagging is organizing content organically, without a pre-determined structure. It does not imply starting with a long list of categories to choose but just ‘to tag’ the object with relevant keywords. There is no list to choose from, you simply tag the information in a way which is meaningful to you. And be sure that when a lot of people tag masses of content, patterns emerge. At present the “tag cloud” is almost well-known on the web: it means a visual depiction of content tags used on a website . More frequently used tags are often depicted in a larger font or otherwise emphasized.
“Well, madam…. no nonsense, just tagging! Got the meaning now? Oh, incidentally, ever heard of Steve: the art museum social tagging project?”
The lady was flooded with my remarks, so she stepped away mumbling :“It’s nonsense, complete nonsense!”
NOTE: “Steve” is a collaborative research project exploring the potential for user-generated descriptions of the subjects of works of art to improve access to museum collections and encourage engagement with cultural content.
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
Thursday, October 18th, 2007