If M+ were a computer, what type of data would it process? What would it output? In July 2022, M+ Hackathon: Museum as a Tool brought together students, designers, artists, and technologists during a two-week series of online and offline lectures, workshops, and group activities to rethink the role of a museum and its data as tools to unfold new insights.

Contemporary museums provide the means for reflecting on our time and space, allowing us to draw connections within historical and comprehensive narratives. As organisations advocate open access, data has become foundational to knowledge building and tool development. The hackathon event, facilitated by designers Jackson Lam and Hochi Lau, explored how analysing and interpreting freely available data leads to new perspectives on our environment.

Facilitators

Jackson Lam is a digital experience designer with background in interactive graphic design, data visualisation, mixed reality, and education. Upon receiving his BA in Graphic Design from Central Saint Martins, University of The Arts London, Lam co-founded HATO, an international design studio that frequently collaborates with cultural organisations in digital development and interactive tools. Lam specializes in community-centric design through processes that incorporate play, design thinking, and digital innovation.

Hochi Lau is an interdisciplinary artist and the co-founder of interactive multimedia design company IOIO. Lau has spearheaded projects ranging from exhibition design for educational purposes to commissioned artworks. Lau’s Learn to be a Machine received the New Face Award at the 2014 Japan Media Art Festival. His work was shown at Ars Electronica Festival, Sónar Festival, and Miller Institute for Contemporary Art. Lau received his MFA in Art from Carnegie Mellon University and BA in Creative Media from City University of Hong Kong.

Winning Projects

First place: Map + by Team Map + (Lee Hong-muk Hugh, Poon Sheung-yin Esther, Shiu Ka-heng, Wong Ting-tse Queenie)

Map + is a machine learning algorithm that studies the relationships between M+ Collections objects based on various data attributes and maps them onto a virtual globe. Visitors are asked to select preferred features of artworks, and the algorithm can zoom in on clusters of objects that are similar or dissimilar to their choices. Essentially, Map + is a magnifier that reveals the unknown commonalities between objects as well as the unchartered territories of the M+ Collections.

Second place: M+ You by Team M+ You (Leung Sai-yin, Ong Shiu-jern, Szeto Sze-ka, Wong Ka-miu)

M+ You seamlessly connects M+ Collections, M+ Facade, and the audience experience. It starts by asking visitors to select their favourite pieces on display based on their emotions and analyses the data attributes of the selected artworks. M+ You then aggregates their aesthetic features and generates amorphous graphics that are live fed to the M+ Facade, transforming it into a canvas co-created by visitors as a reflection of the city’s psyche.

M+’s third hackathon in August 2020 explored the concept of objects through different lenses—everyday life, personal and cultural identities, and virtuality.

The event took place as a two-week online design thinking workshop, where facilitators Chun-wo Pat and Christian Marc Schmidt invited participants to create projects in a visual culture context. Participants applied design practices to engage with a wide range of materials, including photographs and data sets.

Facilitators

Chun-wo Pat is a New York-based designer, educator, and researcher with an MFA in Graphic Design from the Yale School of Art. He is the founder and owner of Whitespace Integrated Design (est. 1996) and is a highly regarded cross-cultural designer, typographer, and data visualisation designer who has taught and lectured at universities around the world.

Christian Marc Schmidt is Founder and Principal of Schema, a research and design firm based in Seattle, and holds a BFA from Parsons School of Design in New York and an MFA from the Yale School of Art. His work has received widespread recognition from leading institutions and numerous design awards. Schmidt has taught in the Interactive Telecommunications Programme at New York University, the Visual Communication Design programme at the University of Washington, and the Cornish College of the Arts.

➔ See the winners and their hackathon projects

➔ Read the roundtable discussion: Physical Objects and Pandemic Anxiety

➔ Read the roundtable discussion: Personal Museums and Creativity Community

Imagine if you could host an emoji poetry slam using data processed through translation tools, create an exquisite corpse drawing based on the M+ Collections, or create an educational game matching creators to objects. In today’s world, this creative technology is already at our doorstep.

Supported by Eaton House, M+ hosted designers, artists, technologists, and cultural enthusiasts at its second two-day hackathon in March 2019. Using the museum’s available open data as raw material, participants examined, interpreted, and activated the M+ Collections through design, code, or other mediums.

Facilitators

George Oates is an award-winning interaction designer based in London who runs the design firm Good, Form & Spectacle. She was also the lead designer of Flickr, created Flickr Commons, and founded Museum in a Box.

Dan Catt is a creative technologist and coder, formerly of Flickr and the Guardian. He was part of the development team at Micah Walter Studio, a New York-based digital studio that built products for cultural organisations, as the lead engineer of the M+ API project.

➔ See the winners and their hackathon projects

As a part of ‘M+ Matters: Art and Design in the Digital Realm’, M+ presented its first data design hackathon in August to September 2018. During this two-day event, designers, artists, technologists, and others were invited to examine how content from the M+ Collections could meaningfully add to open-source knowledge bases and be activated through new research and creative projects. Participants used data visualisation techniques to study the state of visual culture in Asia, defining opportunities for modern connections and conversations across materials and disciplines.

Facilitators

Micah Walter is a creative technologist and the founder of Micah Walter Studio, which helped cultural organisations build digital into their DNA. Prior to starting the New York-based studio, he served as Director of Digital & Emerging Media at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. Walter now works at Amazon Web Services.

Jane Pong is a data visualisation designer who specialises in information graphics. Her professional experience encompasses Bloomberg, Reuters, The Financial Times, and South China Morning Post.

➔ See the winners and their hackathon projects