Museums and the Web 2009

Every year, somewhere in North America, Museums and the Web is a major conference for tech and museum professionals to mingle, share ideas and exchange latest progress in the museum field. This year it's taking place in Indianapolis, Indiana, USA from April 15 to 18. The Opening Plenary on Thursday summed up this year's theme - Moving from Virtual to Visceral. It is a call to bring the virtual world down to earth, so that museum applications, just like its physical venue will be usable by real people from all walks of life.

The writer personally cannot be there for this wonderful event, but a few members of the TEC-CH community are among the crowd. Please stay tuned and once they return there will be more on the conference.

For now, you can check out all of the papers and presentations online at the MW2009 conference site. Also whenever the conference is taking place, you will find a lively Twitter conversation going on in the background - participate in the conversation with #mw2009 or search it to see what people are talking about!

Exhibition Display: A Technological Perspective

In response to our loyal blog reader S.'s request, I have researched on display technology in museums and am here to offer my two cents.

Display is one of the most vital aspects in the existence of an exhibition, as "show-and-tell" is the core idea of how museum learning occurs in the most traditional sense. With objects, interpretive schemes and curatorial knowledge, an exhibition display combines and compacts a multitude of knowledge into one concentrated dose of information that visitors can see, touch, hear, smell and/or even taste, and bring home the memories of "a museum visit" and hopefully new things that they do not already know. With the invention of various display technologies, it enhances the amount of information that can be packed into a museum exhibition and presents them in manner that is wondrous and resonates with the technology-enhanced lives of modern day. Considering that the topic is extremely broad and has many implications, this post will focus on the most interesting (yes it is as subjective as it sounds) uses of technology in recent exhibitions, in an attempt to shed some light on the potential uses of such medium.


The above video is demonstration of a project at the Vienna University of Technology called The Virtual Showcase. Quote from project website: "The Virtual Showcase allows for three-dimensional graphical augmentation of real objects placed inside a glass housing similar to a traditional showcase. The Virtual Showcase has the same form factor as a real showcase, making it compatible with traditional museum displays. Scientific or cultural artefacts are placed inside the Virtual Showcase, allowing to add additional virtual objects, explanations, reconstructions or virtual characters used for storytelling. The virtual (and the real) part of the showcase can react in various ways to a visitor, enabling intuitive interaction with the content displayed."

By allowing interactions with a virtual object, the showcase offers an augmented experience for visitors without risking damage for the original artifact. In addition, visitors can also access interpretive information and interact with an object that is usually off limits in a tactile sense. However, I wonder, does the interaction that visitors gain with an object's 3D rendering compensate for the loss of experience with the original artifact?

On this note, it is interesting to think about what happens if a museum completely relies on digital and virtual displays, without owning any permanent collections. This was the initial idea of architect Kisho Kurokawa when the National Art Center, Tokyo was built.

Besides the obvious fact of huge money savings, the lack of a permanent collection also allows a constant change of temporary exhibitions, including blockbusters that tend to attract visitors as well as more experimental work that pushes the boundaries of the art world. Kurokawa intended the museum to use cutting-edge technology in displaying images of artwork of flat-screen panels, instead of showing original artworks that are fragile and unclear. However, due to copyright issues, the plan was shelved indefinitely.

This also begs another question, should cultural institutions be exempted from certain copyright restrictions for the sake of public good? And should digital displays replace the exhibition of original art/artifacts?