Make Your Media Bad on YouTube

Our visitors are surrounded by media that is better-funded than anything we will ever do.

In a fair fight, we lose.

Make it unfair. Capitalize on what makes exhibition media unique.

It’s exhibition media.

First, it can be site-specific. You can make it aware of what will be around it. Narrator mentions pteranodon suspended above projection? Check. Interactive wall turns kids into cacti next to real cacti? Check. Can't do that on YouTube.

Second, it’s in a space we control. We can make it special-format. 100 tiny screens in a DNA spiral? Sure. Projected onto Winged Victory of Samothrace? Sure. We don't require a universal format. We control both production and playback. Can't do that on YouTube.

And you don’t need interactive cacti (interacti?) or a Louvre treasure. Your media just has to be site-specific enough to be site-specific. And/or special-format enough to be special-format.

Just enough that it doesn't work on YouTube.

And that's how you know it's good.

Here’s the thing:
Visitors will compare your exhibition media to an infinite supply of better-funded stuff by others. But you have what those others never will: site-specific media in whatever format you want.

Make your media bad on YouTube.

Warmly,
Jonathan