Peter Samis, who works for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SF MoMA), delighted the audience in Thursday morning’s Theoretical Frameworks session at mw2008. Peter’s overview of Take Your Time, a recent exhibition at SF MoMA of Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson, was dazzling. I especially appreciated Peter's honesty about the good and bad news surrounding the museum’s attempt to mash up its voice with those of visitors. Clips of the exhibition offered some “visual Velcro” while a quote from the artist provided some food for thought: “Objecthood does not have a place in the world if there isn’t an individual person making use of that object.” What do you think?

Fiona Cameron, from the Centre for Cultural Research, University of Western Sydney, and Aaron Straup Cope, from Flickr, bookended Peter’s presentation nicely. Fiona discussed museums and collections as “complex systems” with the aid of Bruno Latour’s ideas about object-orientated democracies. Aaron, an artist turned computer programmer, used an engaging conversational style to promote the importance of teaching programming in schools. Why? Aaron believes that computer programming knowledge and skills will help people understand the details that govern the Internet and thus could enable better creative and collaborative opportunities, something that many museums are trying to tap into for a variety of reasons, including audience development, for example. What do you think?