Linda’s defense, social media and the impact on museum image

Linda’s dissertation has been the third at TEC-CH to explore the use of social media in cultural heritage communication. Before Linda, Joao Paulo analyzed the impact of social networking on the growth of cultural knowledge, taking music as example of a cultural product and the specific case of Brazilian music on the web. Olga looked upon the potential of web 2.0 for communicating Italian cultural heritage and leaned on a case for adopting web 2.0 by a small museum in Italy.

Linda’s approach was an analytical one, focused on the way social media impacts on museum image and on the perceived benefits and disadvantages of its use in museum communication, from the perspective of museum decision-makers. Her hypothesis is that social media have changed the museum communication landscape and will consequently induce museums to change their communication strategy. Starting from the observation that there is an unequal integration of social media services in museum communication in the city of Geneva, Linda has tried to understand the reasons behind this, focusing on four museums in Geneva: The Musée d’art moderne et contemporain (MAMCO) and the Centre d’art contemporain (CAC); Musées d’art et d’histoire (MAHs) and the Musée d’ethnographie de Genève (MEG). The results point to the fact that museums look at social media as a means to attract an audience that would not have been otherwise touched by typical museum communication. Though the results point at the openness and interest towards using web 2.0, they also highlight the limited amount of information that decision-makers have on the variety of tools and services now available (the decision-makers interviewed knew Facebook, and while two of them also used Facebook, none of the interviewees knew about Twitter). Regarding the content production strategy, it appears that the museums in her study which used social media tend to re-use existing content rather than creating it for scratch for publishing on a specific platform. The overall conclusion of her study is that the museums studied are aware of the benefits of using social media and of the positive impact they might have on their image, but are either reluctant to use them, or would use them in a very limited part of their potential, due to lack of human and financial resources, and especially due to lack of personnel specialized in communication through social media.

Paola’s defense: re-evaluation of a local cultural heritage site, the Baradello Castle

The Baradello Castle is a fortress in the North of Italy - Lombardy region, nearby the city of Como. Though a cultural heritage site rich in architectural value as well as historical significance (one of the early historical evidences dates back to 7th century AD), little communication efforts have been done to promote it or include it in the touristic circuits in the Lombardy region. As Paola's research points, the number of visitors to the castle has significantly dropped in the past decade. A re-evaluation of this cultural heritage site is currently considered as part of a global project of revival of the Regional Park Spina Verde, of which the Baradello Castle is part.
Paola has tried her hand at a communication strategy proposal for the Baradello Castle, and by extension, a strategy that can equally be applied to promoting local cultural heritage sites through both traditional and new media-based communication artefacts.
Her proposal includes a high-level communication strategy, aiming at giving enhanced visibility to the castle at local and regional level, allowing local people to re-discover and re-connect with this cultural heritage symbol, and including it in the touristic circuits of Lombardy and Como city. In specifics, Paola proposed a sum of communication artefacts to be developed for on-site (for the castle premises, and in local areas of high touristic affluence) and online use. The core of her proposal is an interactive storytelling application in two versions, one for educational usage and a second, informative version, for a general public.

Image: snapshot of one page in the storytelling application, from the mock-up produced by Paola

Federica’s defense, Opera as intercultural communication device

Federica has conducted an internship at the Fondazione Arena di Verona (Verona, Italy http://www.arena.it/), and participated in the organization of various Opera shows. Her thesis was inspired by this experience and her passion for Opera. The research hypothesis was that Opera can act as an intercultural communication device, as it manages to transmit meaning irrespective of language barriers, through elements that go from scenography, to costumes, characters mimicry, and nonverbal communication. The core of the research is a case-study on La Traviata, by Giuseppe Verdi. The choice of this particular opera show is motivated first by the special place La Traviata holds in the Grand Opera history “Verdi created a new construction-deconstruction of the traditional scenes: not only in the story told, but also in the musical solutions, chosen in order to present a truthful passage without rhetorical artifice and in theatrical real-time. Traviata revolutionized the history of opera and quickly became one of the masterpieces of Verdi’s popular trilogy (Trovatore, Rigoletto, Traviata), certainly the most modern and relevant.” (quote from Federica's thesis). La Traviata has caused bewilderement and even fury or rejection in its audiences, along its historical representations from 1800 onwards. This has resulted also in a richness of visionary representations of the play from various directors who have put forward their own interpretation in its staging.
Federica's analysis took into consideration various representations of the play, from the ones adapted to modern and contemporary times, to those faithful to the original version by Verdi; the focus was on the production of La Traviata staged at Arena di Verona in 2004 and directed by Graham Vick.
Click here for a selection of pictures from Fede’s defense

We came, we saw, we conquered...TEC-CH

Update: Photos from thesis defence now available on Flickr!

The past week was one that was intense and liberating at the same time for some of our TEC-CH Master students. As the conclusion of their graduate studies careers, Joao-Paulo, Susanna, Paola and Miriam defended their theses at the University of Lugano. Their thesis topics, naturally, circled around the theme of technology-enhanced communications for cultural heritage, but yet they are individually special and present distinct aspects about the field.

Using Brazilian music as a case study, JP presented the importance of weak ties and popular hubs in the world of Web 2.0. Susanna, on the other hand, discussed the use of multimedia applications in the Archaeological Park of Populonia. Paola took a broad look at the Swiss museum industry and surveyed their uses of technology. Last but not least, Miriam discussed an inter-communicative online PR system designed for art exhibitions, using the case of the exhibition Piet Mondrian: Depiction to Picture at the Museum Ludwig in Cologne, as her departure point.

Well done (former, and forever) TEC-CHers! Congratulations to our fresh graduates.

This week's graduates

Four new TEC-CH graduates this week: Claudia, Silvia, Olga and Federica. Claudia, a trained artist in the Academia di Belle Arti di Venezia looked upon the future of the exhibition catalogue and researched the possibilities set forth by electronic multimedia and technological devices for adding interactivity to the process of documentation that occurs after a visit to a museum/gallery/exhibition.
Silvia has drawn her thesis research idea from a stage at the Triennale di Milano. She studied the re-evaluation of the city suburbs through art and design.
Federica researched the potential of information technologies for enhancing art experiencing and understanding. The focus of her work was a case-study that she documented while doing her internship at the Louvre Museum: Louvre - DNP Museum Lab results from a collaboration between the Museum Louvre and the Japanese technology producer DNP. Through this collaboration, a series of exhibitions were organized in Japan, based on a unique concept: the display of one or a reduced series of artworks, surrounded by technological devices coming together in a setting where art meanings could be explored.
Olga looked upon the use of web 2.0 for communicating the Italian cultural heritage. After providing a background on the Italian cultural heritage panorama, and the use of digital technology for promoting it, she set this against the possibilities offered by user-contributed content creation. The focus of her work was a case-study on the website of the Museum Capodimonte.

Ilze's thesis defense

Ilze has put forward a project proposal for communicating the cultural heritage of the Livs through digital technologies. The Livs, or Livonians, are an indigenous population in Latvia, with their peculiar language and culture.
Ilze's presentation was particularly impressive, as she brought together professional tenure and performance.
Above, Ilze in the Livonian traditional dressing.

March defenses

Alessandro, Diana, Marco and Giuseppe have defended last week. They all did a great job.
Alessandro prepared a survey on the use of ICT in learning in Brazilian universities. Diana prepared a usability analysis and a redesign proposal for the website of the Kunsthaus Zürich, where she worked as an intern. Marco did a great job at researching instant multimedia authoring tools, creating taxonomies and puting down his own proposal for an authoring tool, Exhikit. Beppe did a structured research on the cultural impact of archeological and ethnographic museums, with a core case-study for the Archeological Museum of Milan.

Some photos (last in the set), you can also take a look at Shelley's shots

Mauricio’s thesis: low-cost IET with impact on visitors

Well-presented, well-researched subject, Mauricio’s defense was great to attend from beginning to end. His theme was low-cost technologies and cultural heritage diffusion. He tried to determine how the IET (interactive educational technologies) currently used by museums have an impact on the visitors/users’ learning curve and whether/to what extent these are more effective than educational resources used traditionally. Mauricio used his practical experience gained while conducting his curricular internships – one at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, where he is working at the present and the second one at the San Francisco MOMA. He drew research data from the survey conducted at the MOMA – user observation and self-administered questionnaires for the “Anselm Kiefer: Heaven and Earth” exhibition; he evaluated how visitors perceived the impact of interactive technologies vs. traditional educational resources. The research results were proven solid by a sound methodology and a good interdisciplinary sense in the analysis - thanks also to Mauricio's academic background in psychology.
And congratulations for his re-consideration of established patterns of targeting: “of course youngsters are more drawn to technologies, but aged people have the time and the resources and the interest in arts and culture. They take computer classes and are eager to learn how to use technologies. Therefore this target should not be overlooked when designing interactive educational technologies for museums”. (inexact quote from his oral presentation, we all loved that!)

See pics (last in the set)

Thesis defense X 3

This session, Antonella, Shelley and Natascha defended their theses.
Antonella presented her content development work for a project of the Polilab, Politecnico of Milan, with the goal of creating a repository of learning objects for kids, in fields ranging from archaeology to science and technology. Antonella's part has been to document and create the content for archeology learning objects. The result: 54 learning objects, of which some have been already implemented, in a format meant to provide information in a simple and engaging way, with the high-level goal of developing in kids a critical spirit of daily life today as compared to daily life in antiquity.
Shelley's thesis theme is "Seeing Identities: Visitors, Viewers, Communities and Tibetan Art", a research based on a visitor survey on the exhibition The 14 Dalai Lamas, held in 2006 at the Ethnographic Museum of the University of Zurich, and a social tagging project on Tibetan art. The tagging phase of the research has been funded by the Rubin Foundation and the Rubin Museum of Art .
Natascha has developed a communication plan for the Museum of Cultures, Lugano, based on the insider's view she had as an intern, in 2006 and her on-going collaboration with the museum, for communication projects.

For photos, see Flickr