I’ve unfollowed LACMA’s twitter feed for now, and will have to seriously consider whether I want to follow it again or not. I doubt that was the intention of this project.

So if you happen to continue this project in a similar manner, I would strongly recommend 1) getting a separate account and cross-promoting (within reason) on @LACMA so as to not alienate followers and degrade your brand further, and 2) actually picking people who know what they’re doing and know how to restrict themselves to 140 characters or less, & engage with people constructively via twitter.

If the goal was to “use mobile phone technology to circulate thought-provoking narrative works about the museum and its audience,” well, it’s succeeding in that I am an audience member who feels provoked enough to search out a way to engage with the museum, but entirely for the wrong reasons. I’m not thinking about the museum, about the narrative of visiting a museum (and I love museums, I would love to see an artistically well-captured museum visit mediated through technology reach a significant audience), about the potential of interactive media or even about the frustration of disruptive technology. I feel no connection to Adrienne, have no empathy for her frustration with her (apparently) first attempt at tweeting, have no sympathy for her defensive ‘Well if you don’t like it that’s fine, I’m not here to entertain you’ attitude.

“Who is Adrienne Ferrari? Has she ever used Twitter before? Why on earth would anyone choose her to launch this series?” Those are the questions being provoked.

One of my professional duties involves live tweeting from time sensitive events to a mercurial and insatiable audience. I know what endurance tweeting looks like from the outside and feels like from the inside. Aside from pulling back the curtain on power consumption and framing one’s time around recharging today’s tweets didn’t approach anything close to endurance tweeting.

Perhaps the disruptive and belligerent takeover of LACMA’s Twitter account today can be framed in a redeemable artistic manner but as both a narrative experience and as endurance Twittering it fails in a truly remarkable fashion.