What are the ingredients of a good audio guide? Henrietta Bredin investigates
These days you’re more than likely, at any museum, gallery, exhibition or public building of interest, to be offered an audio (or even a multimedia) guide with which to ‘enhance your visitor experience’. There will probably be a small cost involved and you will then find yourself with a pair of headphones and an attached box to sling around your neck — or something known in the trade as a wand, which looks like a large telephone with a selection of buttons to choose from.
Many people find these guides extremely useful but there will always be some (and I have frequently been among their number) who would rather find their own way around without being prompted by a small voice in their ear. That choice unfortunately puts you at risk of being overwhelmed by a shoal of guided goldfish who have just been instructed to move from exhibit no. 18 to exhibit no. 23 and have all decided to do so simultaneously. There are few things more infuriating and I think that all guides should include, as did one I listened to at the Royal Academy recently, a polite warning to watch out for other visitors.
Loïc Tallon decided to look at this subject in detail while writing his graduate thesis at the Courtauld Institute of Art, becoming something of an expert in the process, to the extent that he has now published a book, Digital Technologies and the Museum Experience, and is much sought after as a consultant. He feels that a good guide can be revelatory and should be included as part of the entry price (where there is one) and never charged for as an extra.
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