Our audience is the Sound Bite Society, one that  demands rudimentary snippets of information delivered by their individual choice of media.

The average American watches 5 hours of television a day. African-Americans? 7.12 hours a day. An average American kid spends about 900 hours in school per year, and watches around 1200 hours of television. Kids ages 6-11 spend about 28 hours a week in front of the TV.  As Rousseau said, “the apparent ease with which children learn is their ruin.” What could be easier than television?

Sheila Murphy (How Television Invented the New Media) declares that “literally and figuratively, television informs how New Media is used.” An argument could just as easily be made that television separates the old from the new, the timeless from the dated, the current from the outdated. If any medium is the message, it’s television.

Attention spans have become abbreviated, reduced to a length only sufficient to snatch a few of the staccato messages being sprayed toward the viewer. Television information is fractured into ephemeral sound bites; once broadcast, the content, consumed or not, evaporates.

• On average, readers spend 15-20 seconds on each email they open.
• Within 0.3 seconds, a consumer can decide whether an advertisement is relevant or not.
• On average, readers only spend about 2 seconds looking at a print ad.
• One in every three visitors spends less than 15 seconds reading [web site] articles they land on.
• On the average web page, users have time to read at most 28% of the words during an average visit; 20% is more likely.
• Most visitors spend ten seconds in front of a [museum] object—seven to read the label, three to examine the thing itself.
• According to one study, there was a general decrease in attracting power of [interpretive] signs as the number of words increased. Signs of 30 words resulted in 15.15% readers; 60-word signs had 14.88% readers; 120-word signs, 11.33%; and 240-word signs, 9.73%.
• 50 percent of American adults are unable to read an eighth grade level book.

Jeffrey Scheuer, in The Sound Bite Society: Television and the American Mind, states that,

• Television inherently simplifies complex ideas into emotional, self-oriented moral and political impulses;
• Television therefore impedes public consideration of complexity, ambiguity and connectedness in political and social issues…

Television has shaped recent generations of visitors to our parks, refuges, and museums. As Marshall McLuhan said, “we shape our tools and afterwards our tools shape us.” Whether or not we care for this transformation is irrelevant.

Find more statistics at Statista

One way that visitors manifest this transformation is through the devices they choose to access information. The chart above shows the trends in digital media and the various platforms that are currently available. Of equal importance are the programs that are chosen, such as Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, WhatsApp, Viber, etc.

A guerrilla interpreter is media agnostic. These media are not your children. If they no longer suit the need, they are thrown away and replaced. Traditional media, such as printed guides and interpretive signs, are of no less inherent or intrinsic value than an iPad or an app. Each has a role. Each has a specific user demographic, a specific set of interpretive attributes, and specific instances when the medium is the one of choice.

We are habituated to certain media, limited in our imaginations by the sideboards of convention and tradition. A tombstone label, for example, has its place in a collection. But is “artist-date-medium” the limit of what we wish to communicate to a visitor?

We are habituated to certain media, limited in our imaginations by the sideboards of convention and tradition.

This is not to say that a traditional medium such as a tombstone label doesn’t have its place. A low tech application such as an interpretive panel, for example, is required in locations where connectivity is nonexistent. The same panel in an urban setting may be ignored by those bringing their own devices. The retooling of traditional media may well add contrast value to an installation, heightening public awareness and a sense of familiarity and convention. Tradition by choice (rather than by habit or ritual) has a place in guerrilla interpretation.

Tradition by choice (rather than by habit or ritual) has a place in guerrilla interpretation.

The devices visitors choose to bring is in constant flux, as seen in the chart below. The current trend is toward phablets, devices such as the iPhone 6 Plus that merge phone and tablet into a single device. By next Christmas, the trends may veer off in a new direction that no one can currently see.

Integrate a specific strategy for reaching the BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) audience into your interpretive plans. Be sure that content can be easily distributed across multiple interpretive platforms. Torn between mobile web and a mobile app? Have one program feed both. Remember that text written for a website isn’t the same as text for an app. Each medium demands a tailored approach to content development. The messages remain the same, but the form changes with each medium and application. As Bryan Garner said, “the best writers match substance with form. They use language precisely, evocatively, even daringly.” The language of the guerrilla interpreter is provocative and revelatory, as well.

The messages remain the same, but the form changes with each medium and application.

A guerrilla interpreter must keep a finger on these trends. While the messages may  be timeless, the interpretive platforms are transitory. You must be able to nimbly hop from one platform to another, staying focused on the content of the work rather than the platforms that are used to deliver that content. There is no medium that cannot be adapted to an interpreter’s uses.

The interpreter must decide which media best deliver the content to the audience quickly and efficiently. Interpretation is still all about content and the ability to craft the words and imagery that engage a  visitor. The technology is ubiquitous, usually off the shelf, and today’s proprietary approach will be emancipated by tomorrow. The brand of the particular technology or medium is irrelevant.

What does a guerrilla interpreter ask of those developing these media (digital and analog)? Keep the variables low, and band width narrow. Make customization simple. Keep your digital design out of the way of our interpretive content. Interpretive design has a function, and that function is to communicate the message for which the interpretation was conceived. The same is true for your technology.

Most importantly, a guerrilla interpreter wants to pick a product that is already on the shelf.  Development time is dead time. The audience is waiting.

Development time is dead time. The audience is waiting.