MediaLab at the Met : Open Call for Internship Applications
Deadline for submission: August 27th.
Send resumes and letter of interest to
The MediaLab at the Metropolitan Museum of Art is a small team dedicated to exploring the intersections of art, technology, and the museum experience. We do this by partnering with talented students and professionals to develop prototypes and artistic provocations that fuel conversation and new ideas. We are currently accepting internship applications for the Fall 2014 Semester.
Because our internships are unpaid, great emphasis is put on supporting our student partners in realizing their vision, providing them with access to training, content, and museum expertise. Interns will have ample opportunities to present to, receive feedback from and pursue partnerships with Met staff and industry professionals. All internships conclude with a public expo of projects, and a blog post on the Met’s Digital Underground blog:
Past projects have dealt with such diverse topics as: Projection mapping; 3D scanning, printing, modeling and animation; accessible wayfinding and path generation; iBeacon; Kinect; Arduino and robotics; digital art copyism and Nintendo hacking; Oculus Rift and virtual reality; augmented reality; and so much more!
Code developed in this program will be open-sourced, with ownership retained by the interns.
Selected interns will be encouraged to pursue their own interests as long as they in some way address art and/or the museum experience (interpret that as broadly as you like). However, here are some topics and technologies that the museum has been thinking about lately, and may prove especially fruitful:
Creative Reuse of Met Content : How can study and use of objects in the Met’s collection expand or refine your own creative process?
Accessible Wayfinding : Previous MediaLab projects have led to an algorithm that provides paths through the museum to see your favorite objects, while respecting the users access preferences: avoiding stairs, dimly lit rooms, etc. This work, functioning as a web service, is ready for a UI layer to make it truly valuable to our visitors.
Crowdsourced Audio Descriptions of Art : our work with blind-and low-vision visitors has revealed a need for testing various approaches for capturing verbal descriptions of art objects. Both UI, UX, and mobile development work in this area would reap dividends.
Computer Vision and Image Analysis : What secrets are lurking in our collection that can be revealed through the gaze of the artificial eye?
Virtual Reality, and the Museum Model : Previous MediaLab projects have leveraged the Oculus Rift and our architectural models to develop fantastical virtual environments. With the new Oculus on the way, we’re looking to expand our virtual universe, for both practical and artistic purposes.
Projection Mapping: Sculptural and architectural forms in our collection lend themselves to very challenging and interesting possibilities for projection mapping. Previous work has involved re-creating the original colors on the Temple of Dendur, but more person, artistic opportunities abound as well.
Micro-Location Tracking : With iBeacon technology seeing more widespread use in retail and cultural environments, what types of experiences can we enable in our own space that make use of location-awareness and personal identification?
Natural Language Processing, Sentiment Analysis, Collective Intelligence, and the Semantic Web : There’s vast amounts of didactic content about our objects and their context. What connections can we uncover using modern text analysis and concept modeling technologies?
3D Scanning, Animation, Modeling, Printing and Casting : The MediaLab has 4 3D printers, and access to more advanced scanning and modeling technologies. We’ve also been enthusiastic supporters of artists using Met objects in their creative work. Let’s push the envelope even further.
Brain Scanning : A new area for us, we see brain-scanning technology as having interesting connections to accessibility, visitor research, and the museum’s role as a place of meditation and reflection. We’re exploring partnerships in this area, and are looking for someone who shares our enthusiasm to learn more.
Wild Card! : What connections do you want to explore between your favorite technology and the world’s greatest museum? Let’s talk!
Hardware to play with:
– Google Glass
– 3D printers
– 3D Scanners
– Kinect
– Leap Motion
– Oculus Rift
– Arduino and Assorted Eletronics
– Raspberry Pi
– Touchscreens
– Projectors
– iBeacons
– Brain Scanners
– and more fun stuff on the way!
Send resumes and letter of interest to
Deadline for submission: August 27th.
