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As Head of Digital Media at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) Sydney, Australia, Jean-Pierre leads the team re-crafting the MCA’s web-presence, interpretive material, and in-house media, to create a powerful platform to share stories and ideas, engage audiences, celebrate contemporary art and artists, and reach out to art lovers.
The new approach has involved the full redesign of the front-end and Enterprise Architecture of the MCA main website, the creation of a rich and innovate mobile museum guide (mca.art), and the development of microsites for keynote exhibitions.
One such microsite presenting the works of major Australian aboriginal artist John Mawurndjul was recently recognised internationally:
Prior to taking up the role at the MCA, Jean-Pierre was a member of the team that relaunched the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV), Melbourne, Australia, in 2002. He was responsible for leading the development, artistic direction and integration of the NGV’s multimedia content.
A graduate of the National Cinematography and Photography school in Paris (Ecole Nationale Louis Lumière), Jean-Pierre produced multimedia products to support hundreds of the Gallery’s exhibitions. In his eleven years at the NGV, Jean-Pierre became experienced working with cultural, aesthetic and political sensitivities, negotiating filming in situations as diverse as Indigenous sacred sites, artists’ studios and cultural institutions.
Prior to working in Australia, Jean-pierre worked in Europe, producing award-winning educational and cultural multimedia products in Europe, including winning the Prix Moebius – Best Scientific CD-Rom – Paris.
Contemporary art can inspire, surprise, empower, challenge and make us think. But often these emotions are internalised and not expressed.
What if visitors were able to express how artworks make them feel – and find out how others reacted too – using the universal language of emojis? We could create a new layer of audience engagement as well as generate data, data that could be used to reach new audiences and give them compelling reasons to enter the museum.
It’s what we – MCA Australia – have set out to achieve with Your Feelings Welcome, a new and distinctive brand campaign at the collision of digital and physical museum experience.
Using the mca.art webApp on their device, the Museum invited visitors to express their feelings for artworks from the permanent exhibition in a fun and accessible way.
This has allowed to increase the number of users, engagement and time spent in the museum in a COVID environment.