Tag: forum not temple (Page 8 of 8)

Namco Museum Megamix is a new compilation of classic video and arcade games. All well and good – companies try to re-release and cash in on their older products in the name of nostalgia all the time. (King’s Quest, anyone?)

Namco is calling this release a “museum.” Maybe they’re trying to give Super Pac-Man a veneer of high culture. Maybe they just wanted to be alliterative.

Maybe they’re doing a very interesting, very creative, very groundbreaking thing and expanding the definition of a museum far beyond what I personally have ever seen before.

What do you think? Is this a museum?

Watch this YouTube video.

The first time I watched it, I thought: oh, how lovely. What a joyful experience in the middle of the stress of holiday shopping and the cold sterility of a shopping mall food court.

The second time I watched it, I watched the crowd. The mother reaching for her son’s hand at 3:06 touched me especially. Whoever organized this accomplished exactly what many museums are trying to: they brought a moment of sublime culture into everyday life, they formed a spontaneous emotional community, and they may have even created some new Handel fans.

What lessons can we draw from the way this experience was conceived, structured, and carried through?

If that’s too intellectual – who’s with me on creating a museum flash mob?