No Revolution

This article from the NYTimes presenting yet another reason why Podcasting (or Radio On Demand/ROD as it will inevitably become known ... even Adam Curry doesn't really like the moniker "Podcasting" per se) is changing, well, everything. And why the shift in marketing from power of the brand to power of the consumer continues to show us how the best ideas often come from enterprising DIYers who just wanna have some fun.

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May 28, 2005
With Irreverence and an iPod, Recreating the Museum Tour
By RANDY KENNEDY

If you soak up the Jackson Pollocks at the Museum of Modern Art while listening to the museum's official rented $5 audio guide, you will hear informative but slightly dry quotations from the artist and commentary from a renowned curator. ("The grand scale and apparently reckless approach seem wholly American.")

But the other day, a college student, Malena Negrao, stood in front of Pollock's "Echo Number 25," and her audio guide featured something a little more lively. "Now, let's talk about this painting sexually," a man's deep voice said. "What do you see in this painting?"

A woman, giggling, responded on the audio track: "Oh my God! You're such a pervert. I can't even say what that - am I allowed to say what that looks like?"

The exchange sounded a lot more like MTV than Modern Art 101, but for Ms. Negrao it had a few things to recommend it. It was free. It didn't involve the museum's audio device, which resembles a cellphone crossed with a nightstick. And best of all, it was slightly subversive: an unofficial, homemade and thoroughly irreverent audio guide to MoMA, downloaded onto her own iPod .