Spencer Kiser

Spencer Kiser

Head of Software Development at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Posts by Collection

portfolio

Sonictroller

Sonictroller is an interface that allows the user to control video games with acoustic musical instruments.

Fermata

Auditory calendar for the visually impaired.

Forest Hills Sound Map

Forest Hills Sound Map is a sound map consisting of field recordings made in 2005 in my former neighborhood, Forest Hills.

spinCycle

spinCycle is a synesthetic turntable that allows you to arrange and play colors visually and musically.

Sonic Body Pong

Sonic Body Pong is based on Atari’s classic video game Pong, and takes place in real space, with the players using their bodies as paddles. The ball is experienced by the players purely through spatialized sound piped to the players via headphones.

MoMA Mobile

The first version of the MoMA mobile platform.

Random Poem Player

Custom telephony application and web audio player to support artwork “Dial-A-Poem”, by John Adorno, in the exhibition, Ecstatic Alphabets at the Museum of Modern Art.

MoMA Studio: Common Senses Sound Map

A sound map for exploring field recordings made around the world as part of a multisensory environment called Common Senses in conjunction with the exhibition Century of the Child.

Mermaid <-> Manatee app

Software for the Mermaid / Manatee installation in the Mythic Creatures exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History.

Tetris interface

A button interface for the arcade game Tetris, in the Applied Design Exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art.

Photo-taking Necklace

Visitors to Olafur Eliasson’s Take Your Time exhibition at MoMA and PS1 wear cell phone necklaces that record their experience. Selected images are displayed as background on MoMA’s Take Your Time exhibition subsite.​

publications

talks

Building a Map for the Met App

Way-finding is a common challenge for museums, often thought to require significant time and resources to solve. The Met’s complex floor plan made developing a useful mobile map for the Met App particularly challenging, especially given our small team and tight timeline. Rather than building an elaborate solution based on assumptions, we quickly developed an MVP that worked on both native platforms. Using a build-measure-learn feedback loop, we iteratively improved the Map based on visitor feedback, enhancing the overall visitor experience.

Artwork Collection Data at The Met

Addresses the history of the Met’s collection in digital form and what makes it unique. Explores the quirks in the data, the categorization challenges, and proposes use cases for machine learning.

teaching

Soundwalk Studio: Making Environmental Sound Art

Workshop, Museum of Modern Art, 2008

By focusing on the soundscape in which we are immersed, we can find new appreciation of our surroundings, as well as discover a pallette of material from which to create art. The soundwalk is an excellent method for exploring a space and collecting material for sound-based works. Students will learn audio fundamentals and recording and editing techniques, and will participate in listening and field recording exercises. We will also create a digital sound map using the recordings from our field trips.

Communications Lab

Masters course, Interactive Telecommunications Program, Tisch School of the Arts, New York University, 2008

An introductory course designed to provide students with hands-on experience using various technologies (online communities, digital imaging, audio, video, animation, authoring environments and the World Wide Web.) The forms and uses of new communications technologies are explored in a laboratory context of experimentation and discussion. The technologies are examined as tools that can be employed in a variety of situations and experiences. Principles of interpersonal communications, media theory, and human factors are introduced. Weekly assignments, team and independent projects, and project reports are required.