EMP - A celebration of American music

SEATTLE - Cooperation, not competition, is the mantra repeated by representatives of the new Experience Music Project here and the 5-year-old Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland.

"Our missions are pretty much the same," said Robert Santelli, who in August will leave his post as the rock Hall of Fame`s education director to assume a similar post at Experience Music Project. "And that is to preserve and celebrate American music.

"Last year, I created the National Music Museum Alliance, a consortium of museums such as the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, EMP and other music-minded institutions, such as the Smithsonian and the Delta Blues Museum, that came together and realized we all have similar challenges and tasks. So the spirit of partnership, rather than competition, was set up a year ago."

Santelli`s views were seconded by Chris Bruce, EMP`s curatorial director.

"We`re the new kid on the block; we haven`t done it before," Bruce said.

"We`ve learned from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum and the Country Music Hall of Fame, and we work with them and others. I consider us to be part of a national alliance."

Such sentiments disregard the fact that EMP hired Santelli, one of the nation`s foremost rock-music education specialists, away from his position at the rival Cleveland museum.

Also overlooked is the enormous amount of financial resources EMP boasts, courtesy of its founder and sole financial backer, billionaire Paul Allen.

The co-founder of Microsoft, Allen spent $100 million to build EMP. He spent an additional $150 million to make it the most technologically advanced museum anywhere and to acquire the 80,000-plus items in EMP`s growing collection (most are stored in a nearby warehouse).

Allen`s vast fortune has instantly made EMP the biggest kid on the music-museum block. And because he doesn`t have to contend with a corporate board of directors or accountants focused purely on profits, Allen is accountable to no one but himself.

That is why he didn`t blink when he paid $497,500 for EMP to acquire Eric Clapton`s fabled Fender Stratocaster guitar "Brownie" at an auction held last year to raise funds for Clapton`s Caribbean drug-rehabilitation clinic. It was the most ever paid for a single guitar, and equals about two-thirds of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame`s annual net income.

EMP also boasts an extensive array of Jimi Hendrix items - such as guitars, handwritten lyrics and stage clothing - all from Allen, who has the world`s largest collection of Hendrix memorabilia. The museum`s offerings include the white Stratocaster that Hendrix played in 1969 at Woodstock, a guitar for which Allen paid $320,000.

And a single attraction at EMP, the multimedia, carnival-ride-like Funk Blast (which attempts to simultaneously entertain and educate), reportedly cost more than $2 million. No wonder that Santelli, who had been hindered by low budgets for his music-education programs in Cleveland, decided to accept EMP`s offer.

"Obviously, both Paul Allen and his sister, Jody (EMP`s executive director), are committed to the educational mission of this museum and provide the resources to make this a state-of-the-art institution," Santelli said.

"To have that support from the outset is awesome. At the rock hall, I had support, but not to the degree that`s offered up here."

Even so, EMP`s Bruce maintains that more museums are better and that EMP`s emergence will benefit its Cleveland rival, not threaten it.

"Our being here won`t stop people from going to Cleveland," Bruce said. "The better we are, the better they`ll be. We want to be the best. And we will be, at some things. But people don`t ask (executives at) the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art if the Chicago Museum of (Contemporary) Art is competition. Our biggest job is to deliver the goods."

Experience Music Project an Interactive Trip

By George Varga

SEATTLE - Technologically speaking, the new Experience Music Project is especially notable for its array of interactive attractions and its far-reaching Web site (www.emplive.com), which offers even more to explore than the computer-driven museum to which it is linked.

But the EMP Web site almost pales next to the Museum Exhibit Guide, the interactive portable unit provided to each visitor.

Weighing in at about 3 pounds, MEG is worn over the shoulder and rests on your hip (or knee, in the case of small children). It includes three components: lightweight headphones; an oversized, CD-player-shaped brain with 32 megabytes of RAM and a 6-gigabyte hard-drive (equivalent to the processing power of a laptop computer); and a hand-held, Palm Pilot-like device that is connected to the brain by cable and can be stored in a plastic holster.

MEG contains 10 hours of text and audio about EMP exhibits, and will eventually be increased to 40 hours. Since the museum is open daily from 9 a.m. to 11 p.m., it will take nearly three all-day visits to access all 40 hours` worth of MEG`s offerings.

How the device works is simple, at least in theory. EMP visitors simply point the hand unit`s infrared beacon at the headphone icon that appears at every exhibit or punch in the number of any specific item in the exhibit. The hand unit is equipped with a small liquid-crystal-display screen for reading text and has several icons that can be operated with your fingertips.

By using MEG, visitors can call up additional text about each item they view, hear related music or activate narration (provided by everyone from electric-guitar pioneer Les Paul and gangsta rapper Dr. Dre to Ann Wilson of the Seattle rock band Heart). Point MEG at Bo Diddley`s famed box-shaped guitar, Grandmaster Flash`s twin turntable set-up or any other musical device, and you`ll hear music excerpts that were recorded on that specific instrument.

Visitors can gain additional information about exhibits from the electronic kiosks scattered throughout EMP`s three floors and from the computer library on the museum`s main level.

"Every floor of the building has one foot of space under it for electronic cables," said EMP curatorial director Chris Bruce.

"One of the unique things here is the relation of the artifacts and historic media to modern technology," added Bruce.

MEG also enables visitors to bookmark specific exhibits and items, which are subsequently downloaded (by museum employees) into EMP`s database. Visitors can then use their personal computers to call up those bookmarked items via EMP`s Web site, using an identification number from their museum ticket.

Constant upgrades are planned for the device, which was developed for EMP by Vulcan Northwest. The company, based in nearby Bellevue, plans to license MEG to other museums, few of which provide anything more modern than cassette-tape narration.

"Our biggest wild card," said Bruce, "was the way the multimedia would relate to (EMP`s) artifacts. It was a leap of faith, but it worked. We go to great lengths to make (each artifact) come alive, and MEG helps make that happen for everyone who uses it."

(c) Copley News Service

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Author: George Varga