When places reopened after the first wave of the pandemic they tried to brute force it into existence. It's faded a bit since then but I still come across it now and then. So not quite (*latest fad), but fad enough.
There are also museums that replaced the about-this-painting placards with QR codes.
It do be annoying, fiddling with your phone at every interesting painting, and descriptions are sometimes shorter than before. (Although audio options are pretty poggers when they go in-depth, but its rare)
Those little audio doohickeys that some museums have are my favorite objects in the world. Museums used to have them on cassette and sometimes they'd let me copy them. As a kid I used to have a cassette for San Antonio's science museum and I'd listen to the dinosaur parts repeatedly.
Yeah, the annoying part with audioguides they are incomprehensible alphanumeric gibberish on a server (sometimes), not structured folder type deal, so you cant backtrack to them from home :(
They claim it's also to replace the headsets for audio explanations, etc., but either way it's bullshit. https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/newsletter/2022-01-22/essential-arts-qr-codes-in-museums-blessing-and-curse-essential-arts
Is this a thing? I have literally never seen this.
When places reopened after the first wave of the pandemic they tried to brute force it into existence. It's faded a bit since then but I still come across it now and then. So not quite (*latest fad), but fad enough.
There are also museums that replaced the about-this-painting placards with QR codes.
It do be annoying, fiddling with your phone at every interesting painting, and descriptions are sometimes shorter than before. (Although audio options are pretty poggers when they go in-depth, but its rare)
Those little audio doohickeys that some museums have are my favorite objects in the world. Museums used to have them on cassette and sometimes they'd let me copy them. As a kid I used to have a cassette for San Antonio's science museum and I'd listen to the dinosaur parts repeatedly.
Yeah, the annoying part with audioguides they are incomprehensible alphanumeric gibberish on a server (sometimes), not structured folder type deal, so you cant backtrack to them from home :(
They claim it's also to replace the headsets for audio explanations, etc., but either way it's bullshit. https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/newsletter/2022-01-22/essential-arts-qr-codes-in-museums-blessing-and-curse-essential-arts
So much that the city of Rio de Janeiro had to pass a law mandating bars an restaurants to have physical menus for clients that ask for them.
I've only encountered it a couple times but yeah, I think it got more popular when Covid started.
It started when places reopened after the first covid wave, because I guess paper menus spread covid? It never made sense
because they saved 500$ at the printers
all covid did was make it necessary to disinfect them ...which they already should've been doing...