Showing papers on "Exhibition published in 2017"

Not just seeing, but also feeling art: Mid-air haptic experiences integrated in a multisensory art exhibition

Abstract: The use of the senses of vision and audition as interactive means has dominated the field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) for decades, even though nature has provided us with many more senses for perceiving and interacting with the world around us. That said, it has become attractive for HCI researchers and designers to harness touch, taste, and smell in interactive tasks and experience design. In this paper, we present research and design insights gained throughout an interdisciplinary collaboration on a six-week multisensory display – Tate Sensorium – exhibited at the Tate Britain art gallery in London, UK. This is a unique and first time case study on how to design art experiences whilst considering all the senses (i.e., vision, sound, touch, smell, and taste), in particular touch, which we exploited by capitalizing on a novel haptic technology, namely, mid-air haptics. We first describe the overall set up of Tate Sensorium and then move on to describing in detail the design process of the mid-air haptic feedback and its integration with sound for the Full Stop painting by John Latham (1961). This was the first time that mid-air haptic technology was used in a museum context over a prolonged period of time and integrated with sound to enhance the experience of visual art. As part of an interdisciplinary team of curators, sensory designers, sound artists, we selected a total of three variations of the mid-air haptic experience (i.e., haptic patterns), which were alternated at dedicated times throughout the six-week exhibition. We collected questionnaire-based feedback from 2500 visitors and conducted 50 interviews to gain quantitative and qualitative insights on visitors’ experiences and emotional reactions. Whilst the questionnaire results are generally very positive with only a small variation of the visitors’ arousal ratings across the three tactile experiences designed for the Full Stop painting, the interview data shed light on the differences in the visitors’ subjective experiences. Our findings suggest multisensory designers and art curators can ensure a balance between surprising experiences versus the possibility of free exploration for visitors. In addition, participants expressed that experiencing art with the combination of mid-air haptic and sound was immersive and provided an up-lifting experience of touching without touch. We are convinced that the insights gained from this large-scale and real-world field exploration of multisensory experience design exploiting a new and emerging technology provide a solid starting point for the HCI community, creative industries, and art curators to think beyond conventional art experiences. Specifically, our work demonstrates how novel mid-air technology can make art more emotionally engaging and stimulating, especially abstract art that is often open to interpretation.

Development of a Virtual Museum Including a 4d Presentation of Building History in Virtual Reality

Abstract: . In the last two decades the definition of the term “virtual museum” changed due to rapid technological developments. Using today’s available 3D technologies a virtual museum is no longer just a presentation of collections on the Internet or a virtual tour of an exhibition using panoramic photography. On one hand, a virtual museum should enhance a museum visitor's experience by providing access to additional materials for review and knowledge deepening either before or after the real visit. On the other hand, a virtual museum should also be used as teaching material in the context of museum education. The laboratory for Photogrammetry & Laser Scanning of the HafenCity University Hamburg has developed a virtual museum (VM) of the museum “Alt-Segeberger Burgerhaus”, a historic town house. The VM offers two options for visitors wishing to explore the museum without travelling to the city of Bad Segeberg, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. Option a, an interactive computer-based, tour for visitors to explore the exhibition and to collect information of interest or option b, to immerse into virtual reality in 3D with the HTC Vive Virtual Reality System.

Art perception in the museum: How we spend time and space in art exhibitions.

Abstract: Aesthetics research aiming at understanding art experience is an emerging field; however, most research is conducted in labs without access to real artworks, without the social context of a museum and without the presence of other persons. The present article replicates and complements key findings of art perception in museum contexts. When observing museum visitors (N = 225; 126 female, M(age) = 43.3 years) while perceiving a series of six Gerhard Richter paintings of various sizes (0.26-3.20 sq. m) in a temporary art exhibition in January and February 2015 showing 28 paintings in total, we revealed patterns compatible to previous research. The mean time taken in viewing artworks was much longer than was mostly realized in lab contexts, here 32.9 s (Mdn = 25.4 s). We were also able to replicate visitors spending more time on viewing artworks when attending in groups of people. Additionally, we uncovered a close positive relationship (r2 = .929) between canvas size and viewing distance, ranging on average between 1.49 and 2.12 m (M = 1.72 m). We also found that more than half of the visitors returned to paintings, especially those people who had not previously paid too much attention at the initial viewing. After adding the times of returning viewers, each picture was viewed longer than had been estimated in previous research (M = 50.5 s, Mdn = 43.0 s). Results are discussed in the context of current art perception theories, focusing on the need for the ecologically valid testing of artworks in aesthetics research.

Multimodal Serious Games Technologies for Cultural Heritage

Abstract: This chapter describes how multimodal serious games can create an immersive experience to enhance the visitor’s experience. The creation of more engaging digital heritage exhibitions by seamlessly integrating technologies to provide a multimodal virtual and augmented reality experience is presented. In engaging exhibitions, participants can switch between different modes of exploring the physical artefacts at the museum and can explore these artefacts further through serious games, user interfaces, virtual reality and augmented reality. Different types of interaction paradigms are also illustrated. Moreover, a framework for multimodal cultural heritage is proposed based on the above technologies. Finally, future research directions for creating new opportunities for scientific research are presented.

Foreign artists versus French critics : Exhibition strategies and critical reception at the Salon des Indépendants in Paris (1884-1914)

Abstract: This dissertation explores how foreign artists constructed their careers at the Salon des Independants during the Parisian Belle Epoque. The focus is on the Salon des Independants, as this Salon (founded in 1884) was the most open exhibition in Paris due to the fact that it was unjuried. The French careers of three foreign artists – Dario de Regoyos, Edvard Munch and Vincent van Gogh – are explored, analyzing their strategies and artistic identities. The results of my research refute the common opinion that foreign artists had limited chances of success in Paris, and instead argue that is was matter of understanding the mechanisms that were at play and how to negotiate these. The book is a contribution to the expanding area of research of transnational exchanges in art history and the ways and means in which these were affected by agents and actors from other socio-cultural and political fields, offering new perspectives on artistic strategies and identities, value systems and critical reception.

30° from the Northern Tropic : art, region and collective practices from urban Latin American and Arab worlds

Abstract: This thesis investigates the socially imagined representation of two areas of the global South, through the lens of contemporary art It traces the historicisation of urban Latin America and the Arab world along a timeline of critical lenses, questioning their construction as imagined sites Re-occurring tropes from exhibition spaces acting as representations of the global South on a macro-level are contrasted with observations from a local level, in an ethnographic study of nineteen artist groups of four capital cities of Latin America and the Arab world The research draws upon sociological methodologies of research, arts methodologies and historicisation to chart the scope and function of these groups against the backdrop of the global art-institution’s so-called geographic turn and it’s romanticisation of the precarious state as the new avant-garde Moving away from the traditional cartography of art and social history, this thesis offers an expanded concept of collectivity and social engagement through art, and the artist group as unit of social analysis in urban space Putting these ideas into dialogue, artist-led structures are presented as counter-point to collective exhibitions and to the collectivity of national identity and citizenship An abundance of artist groups in the art scene of each city represents an informal infrastructure in which a mirror image of inner-workings of the city and art world become visible through this zone of discourses in conflict This unorthodox exploration of art, region, and collective expression launches into the possibility of new constellations of meaning, tools to recapture the particulars of everyday experience in the unfolding of large narratives Examining the place of collective art practices in the socio-political history of the city, this intervention into current theory around the role of art from the global South traces the currents and counter-currents of the art-institution and its structures of representation re-enacted in places of display and public discourse -- the museum, the news, the gallery, the biennial,the street and the independent art space

Objects in Focus: Museum Visitors and Instagram

Abstract: While there is increasingly widespread use of social media by those visiting museum exhibitions relatively little is understood about this practice. Further still, the focus of such practices is unknown yet research in this area can reveal much about how visitors using applications driven by smart phone technology are engaging with exhibition content, space, design, architecture and people. This article draws on a case study of one exhibition using visual content analysis to frame, explore and interpret visual and text based posts by visitors using the social media application, Instagram, as part of their experience. Findings suggest that museum visitors using this application do so to account for and record details of their experience that draws attention to exhibition content, specifically objects. The implications are extensive for cultural institutions given the uptake of social media in all corners of life, with museums and galleries being a lively context for social media use via mobile technologies.

Divergence in brain composition during the early stages of ecological specialization in Heliconius butterflies.

Abstract: We thank the Ministerio del Ambiente del Ecuador for permission to collect butterflies. SHM was supported by research fellowships from the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 and the Leverhulme Trust, a Royal Society Research Grant (RG110466) and a British Ecological Society Early Career Project Grant. RMM was supported by a Junior Research Fellowship at King’s College, Cambridge, and funding from the Bedford Fund. We are also grateful to Chris Jiggins for providing insectary space and Swidbert Ott for discussions on insect brain evolution.

More than words: text art since conceptualism

Abstract: Since 2009, there has been an increased presence of group exhibitions in public institutions in the UK and the US which address the ways contemporary artists in the past two decades have used text as a material, a subject, and a conceptual device. Significant amongst these exhibitions are Poor. Old. Tired. Horse. held at the Institute of Contemporary Art in London in 2009, and Ecstatic Alphabets/Heaps of Language held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 2012. Within their curatorial strategies, and independently from one another, both exhibitions draw a binary of the genealogy of text in art practice as emerging either from the international movement of concrete poetry of the mid-1950s to 1971 (including the work of Decio Pignatari, or Haraldo de Campos), or from conceptual art of the mid-1960s-early 1970s (including the work of Joseph Kosuth, Art & Language, Robert Smithson, or Mel Bochner). Such group exhibitions have overlooked how feminist, second generation conceptual artists embraced language as material. Artists of this second generation of conceptual art were critiquing conceptualism by introducing subject matter which looked outward from art and which demanded the audience to engage with language as a material through their use of the printed word, typography, written language, and methods of printing. For these artists, such as Mary Kelly, language was not presumed natural, and the materiality of text was necessary in order to engage an art audience in questions of power, representation, gender, and socialisation. With the rise of the digital age, the materiality of the linguistic signifier offers artists today something different than it did in the 1960s. Since the late 1990s, there has been a proliferation of works by contemporary artists in the UK and US that I refer to as text art, made by artists such as Fiona Banner, Janice Kerbel, Shannon Ebner, Pavel Buchler, or Paul Elliman. Part of my original contribution to knowledge is to explore the ways contemporary artists use text, to interrogate how this is different from work seen before, and to question the demands it places on the audience who reads it, as well as the challenges it places on the act of reading an artwork made of words. The literature emphasises a turn away from looking or the visual to a turn towards reading which occurred in conceptualism (Kotz, 2007; Blacksell, 2013). I explore the binary of this turn in the conceptual art period of 1966-1973 and I suggest that artists are engaging with text today not only to challenge how an audience encounters written language as art, but the very act of reading text in a digital world. The first three chapters explore the materiality of text in a historical genealogy of conceptual art, conceptual art in relationship to concrete poetry, and the feminist critique in second generation of conceptual art. The latter three chapters explore the materiality of text in contemporary art practices. This is the focus of the thesis, which builds on the foundation for materiality of text argued in chapters one, two, and three. I argue not for a cohesive movement of contemporary text artists, but rather, that diverse, contemporary artists’ practices are making similar investigations across text in art, and that this warrants attention to explore how we consider text as a medium today.

Hands-On Math and Art Exhibition Promoting Science Attitudes and Educational Plans

Abstract: The current science, technology, engineering, art, math education (STEAM) approach emphasizes integration of abstract science and mathematical ideas for concrete solutions by art. The main aim was to find out how experience of learning mathematics differed between the contexts of school and an informal Math and Art Exhibition. The study participants () were 12-13 years old from Finland. Several valid questionnaires and tests were applied (e.g., SRQ-A, RAVEN) in pre- and postdesign showing a good reliability. The results based on General Linear Modeling and Structural Equation Path Modeling underline the motivational effects. The experience of the effectiveness of hands-on learning at school and at the exhibition was not consistent across the subgroups. The lowest achieving group appreciated the exhibition alternative for math learning compared to learning math at school. The boys considered the exhibition to be more useful than the girls as it fostered their science and technology attitudes. However, for the girls, the attractiveness of the exhibition, the experienced situation motivation, was much more strongly connected to the attitudes on science and technology and the worthiness of mathematics. Interestingly, the pupils experienced that even this short informal learning intervention affected their science and technology attitudes and educational plans.

Connecting with New Audiences: Exploring the Impact of Mobile Communication Devices on the Experiences of Young Adults in Museums

Abstract: Museums worldwide have embraced digital technology and social media in their exhibitions and marketing, yet many discourage visitors' use of mobile communication devices (MCDs), claiming this detra...

The interactive museum experience: investigating experiential tendencies and audience focus in the Galleries of Modern London and the High Arctic exhibition

Abstract: Although there are many studies on interactivity in museums in terms of enhancing learning, achieving educational objectives, structuring and orchestrating visitor engagement, democratising knowledge, exploring social interaction and bringing more audiences in to the museum space, they often do not take the multifaceted nature and context-dependency of interactivity into account. Throughout the thesis, I argue that the practice of digital interactivity in museum spaces should not be fetishized, but it must be examined and understood, depending on the context and the setting it takes place in. The approach undertaken in this study brings philosophical and theoretical perspectives on physical, emotional and technological interactivity and its multiple threads into dialogue with ethnographic research in two exhibition spaces: the permanent Galleries of Modern London, at the Museum of London, and the temporary High Arctic exhibition, at the National Maritime Museum, London. The study extends existing literature in two respects. First, attention is paid to the concerns reflected in different approaches to the digital interactivity in museum spaces: I term factual and poetic interactivity as two techniques and forms directly related to the empirical examples. The analysis and this distinction offer a platform to theorise and discuss nuances and tendencies of digital interactivity in museum spaces. Second, it identifies the multiplicity of modes of interactivity as perceived by visitors and museum professionals in and around two museums, foregrounding not only the technological aspect, but also the content and the processes of interaction through sensorial and embodied means such as touch, play and immersion. Together, the findings foreground and engage with an approach to digital interactivity, which discusses how a complex assemblage of institutional practices, multisensory experiences, and affective and cognitive dimensions are at work and at play in digitally mediated environments. Keywords: museums, digital interactivity, experience, audience, visitors

Analysis of painted artworks' color appearance under various lighting settings

Abstract: Designing suitable lighting arrangements for art exhibitions is extremely relevant in order to provide a real appreciation of the artworks for museums' and art shows' visitors. The light sources' features, as well as the design of museum spaces, have a huge impact on people's visual perception of artworks and, in particular, their colors. This project aims to analyze the parameters affecting people's perception of paintings and their preferences about the lighting arrangements. It was possible, through surveys conducted in the laboratory, to establish how people's preference about artworks' lighting varies and which factors mostly affect it.

Learning from the Crackle Exhibition

Abstract: This paper describes the Crackle exhibition, an interactive exhibition presented at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam in 1975. We propose that it can be seen as a foreshadowing of aspects of the current state of the art of TEI avant la lettre; and that there might not only be value in examining historical work to construct a longer historical framework for TEI, but that the methods used in the construction of this exhibition might be useful in constructing new visions that foreshadow into the future from our current technological position. We present a detailed description of the exhibition based on documentation and interviews with the people who built it, and suggest that the current state of disappearing computers and embedded computational ability in everyday devices form an opportunity to imagine novel interaction paradigms that may transcend the digital in a similar way as the Crackle exhibition in 1975 transcended the electrical.

Making digital heritage about people’s life stories

Abstract: Actively creating new digital heritage content about people’s life histories is part of the democratisation of heritage engagement with the public. The approach of documenting unofficial histories is supported by a growing literature. Unofficial stories contribute new perspectives on the heritage identity of a region. The case study of the ‘Local People’ exhibition, curated by the author in 2013 in the North West of Ireland, is used to discuss the methodology of a digital curatorial process, www.localpeopleireland.com. This article argues that gathering and presenting unofficial histories of individuals' life experiences, can disrupt official narratives of The Troubles and challenge a regional identity based on conflict and division. The making of digital history is analysed as a curatorial process, rather than the ease of use of technology. The methods used included: filmed interviews, new portrait photography and the digitisation of family photograph albums. A virtual exhibition was produced and...

An exploratory study of factors that exhibition organizers look for when selecting convention and exhibition centers

Abstract: This study examines the dimensions of convention and exhibition (CE (F2) extra-exhibition opportunities; (F3) image of CE (F4) industrial environment of CE (F5) center facilities; (F6) center accessibility; (F7) CE (F8) exhibition hall cost; and (F9) hotel accommodation. The results of this study enhance the insights of concerned C&E center management and stakeholders with regard to which factors should be considered when conducting a feasibility study before constructing a center, and wih regard to determining effective ways to manage an operating center that aims to focus on hosting ...

Curating Revolution: Politics on Display in Mao's China

Abstract: How did China's Communist revolution transform the nation's political culture? In this rich and vivid history of the Mao period (1949–1976), Denise Y. Ho examines the relationship between its exhibitions and its political movements. Case studies from Shanghai show how revolution was curated: museum workers collected cultural and revolutionary relics; neighborhoods, schools, and work units mounted and narrated local displays; and exhibits provided ritual space for ideological lessons and political campaigns. Using archival sources, ephemera, interviews, and other materials, Ho traces the process by which exhibitions were developed, presented, and received. Examples under analysis range from the First Party Congress Site and the Shanghai Museum to the 'class education' and Red Guard exhibits that accompanied the Socialist Education Movement and the Cultural Revolution. Operating in two modes - that of a state in power and that of a state in revolution - Mao era exhibitionary culture remains part of China's revolutionary legacy.

Museums of Europe: Tangles of Memory, Borders, and Race

Abstract: In this article I investigate the making of two new museums of Europe—Marseille's Museum of the Civilizations of Europe and the Mediterranean and Berlin's Museum of European Cultures—by focusing on the kinds of “Europe” envisioned in their exhibitions. I argue that museums represent an important site where the geopolitical imaginary of a bounded, culturalized Europe is produced, even if by default. I explore how these older national folklore collections were strategically rebranded as museums of Europe to give a second life to their nearly obsolete displays. National projects and geopolitics play a key role in such memorial Europeanization. These insights challenge taken-for-granted understandings of scale in memory studies and offer a more nuanced understanding of how Europeanization is playing out within cultural institutions. Amid multiple European crises, “Europe” is increasingly imagined as a diverse but essentially united cultural space—however fuzzy and contested its cultural content may be—while this spatial imaginary is racialized in subtle ways.

The Ambivalent Potentiality of Vulnerability : Museum Pedagogy in Exhibitions on Difficult Matters and its Ethical Implications

Abstract: The aim of this dissertation is to critically investigate and problematize how museum exhibitions on Difficult Matters, like war and sexual violence, can be designed in order to contribute to teaching-learning relations between museum and visitor, which may transform existing perceptions of self, others, and the world and evoke a deepened sense of responsibility in the viewers, i.e. an ethical transformation.Based on a hermeneutic phenomenological approach the study takes three paths to shed light on the above. 1) Investigating literature on museum studies on New Museology and Difficult Matters on the basis of which the research maps out current problems of understanding the pedagogical and ethical potentials. 2) From conducting case studies of two specific exhibitions to make an in-depth examination of designing exhibitions on Difficult Matters and how these are related to contextual conditions. 3) Investigating pedagogical theoretical literature inspired by the philosopher Emmanuel Levinas and literature in feminist philosophy on ethics of vulnerability all closely linked to the case studies, the study develops a conceptual basis for understanding the practice of designing exhibitions on Difficult Matters. A main finding is that designing exhibitions on Difficult Matters is related to the condition of vulnerability and this demands a pedagogical perspective sensitive to the ethical implications of exhibition making. This is because evoking ethical transformation is conditioned by a teaching-learning relation, which inspires openness on the part of the visitor to an encounter with the other and her/his life-story as being different from existing perceptions - an openness which is defined by vulnerability. As a result, vulnerability is at the heart of exhibitions on Difficult Matters.The overall conclusion to be drawn from the study is that vulnerability is a key concept in museum pedagogy and that vulnerability is an ambivalent potentiality which must be addressed from a double perspective on vulnerability as being inherent to the human condition and dependent on the particular situation. Consequently, vulnerability calls for pedagogical considerations and ethical attention from museum professionals, when designing exhibitions on Difficult Matters.

Is cultural democracy possible in a museum? Critical reflections on Indigenous engagement in the development of the exhibition Encounters: Revealing Stories of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Objects from the British Museum

Abstract: Recent museological scholarship emphasises visitor participation and democratic access to cultural heritage as key to securing the ongoing relevance and future sustainability of museums. But do legacies of colonialist collecting practices and hierarchical conventions of representation in museums afford the possibility of genuine cultural democracy? This paper explores this question via detailed analysis of the Encounters exhibition, developed by the National Museum of Australia in partnership with the British Museum and promoted as an unprecedented partnership between the institutions and Indigenous Australian communities. Drawing on an extensive and emerging literature on museums, community engagement, participation and democracy, in tandem with analysis of public critiques and Indigenous responses to the exhibition, the paper suggests that the extent of Indigenous agency within the collaboration fell short of the articulated goals of the project. It concludes that the concept of maximal particip...

Mapping The Drowned World

Abstract: x Introduction: In the beginning, The End 1 Chapter One: The ABCs of The Drowned World 6 Chapter Two: Mapping The Drowned World 64 Chapter Three: It's all about Eve 97 Chapter Four: Soon it would be too hot 119 Chapter Five: The ruined city 154 Conclusion: At the end, new beginnings 205

Autophoretic flow on a torus

Abstract: This work was undertaken as part of EPSRC-funded UROP project. E.L. is supported in part by the European Union through a Marie Curie CIG grant and an ERC Consolidator grant. T.D.M.-J. is supported by a Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 Research Fellowship.

Museum literacy : a sociomaterial study of families, literacies and museum objects

Abstract: This research explores a new museum space which connects literacy, museum objects and families. I argue that this space presents opportunity for transformative encounters for visitors when literacy can encompass affect and is amplified through literacy mediators and the resources different generations visiting together bring to each museum visit. The study uncovers ways that cultural institutions can recognise the potential for literacy within their collections when they look beyond the achievement of the meanings they would like acquired to an appreciation of literacy practices by family groups. Museums through their collections are strongholds of the material and semiotic realm yet the relationship between literacy, objects and visitors remains largely unexamined, limiting literacy to visitor comprehension of museum content generally conveyed in print. I introduce theoretical tools, including concepts of materiality, spatiality, affect and mediation to help understand key dimensions in the literacy interactions between families and museum objects. Adults with dependent children are a large visitor group to museums. Their representation in museum studies has had little impact on mainstream exhibition programming beyond exhibitions for children. Non-mainstream visitors from less well-resourced demographics can be streamed into the museum via worthy and justifiable access programs, but to date these visitors have had few opportunities to influence the accessibility of the museum's core offering. In this study nine families were recruited from community agencies that assist marginalised or vulnerable groups to visit the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery and the Museum of Old and New. Through positioning the literacies of these families as a benefit, rather than liability, and literacy as socially and materially assembled, the study expands the number of actors within the museum research assemblage. A mosaic of methods was used to identify literacy practices, including observation, guided discussion, photography, onsite recorded conversations, and participation in programs such as drawing, writing and other documentary or creative activities that did not privilege age, ability or background. Literacy became a set of theories, methods, products and actors within a material semiotic framing. Experimental writing of tiny fictional vignettes by the researcher gives life to things in the research and opens up different patterns of thinking. These writings are study motifs, being emblematic of the theoretical approach taken. Collections of objects are the essence of a museum and pivotal to its public face. Each object is a significant currency of its institution, yet the economy between families, objects and other previously unrecognised actors is little understood. By specifically interrogating the intersection between families and objects, this study argues that museums can develop new partnerships and practice directions. Overall, the findings of this research extend the opportunity for museums to reshape their…

Staging Migration (in) Museums: A Reflection on Exhibition Design Practices for the Representation of Migration in European Contemporary Museums

Abstract: Migration, cultural diversity and the growing ethnic-cultural mix that characterize contemporary society are nowadays a key issue for European museums. Since the 1990s a rich theoretical debate on the subject has been developed by scholars and the museums community at large, several ‘migration museums’ have been opened across Europe, while, most recently, a number of museums have been reassessing their collections and galleries in relation to issues such as emigration, immigration, cultural diversity and intercultural dialogue. This article aims at contributing to the debate with a museographical reflection on the subject by exploring its design implications, to finally suggest that the challenge for representing migration in museums does not only concern the museum’s curatorial approaches but also requires the development of new exhibition settings and practices. Keywords: exhibition design; migration museums; museography

Performing Colonial Modernity: Fairs, Consumerism, and the Emergence of the Indonesian Middle Classes

Abstract: Late-colonial Indonesia witnessed the proliferation of annual fairs and exhibitions that attracted hundreds of thousands of visitors from all ethnic backgrounds and walks of life. This article argues that the Dutch colonizers organized these fairs as part of a larger hegemonic attempt to legitimize colonial authority. At the fairgrounds special exhibits demonstrated the benevolence of colonial governance, while modernity was displayed to emphasize the alleged cultural, technological, and scientific superiority of the West. Moreover, visitors were enticed to consume Western products and the lifestyles and world views associated with them. These fairs were mainly aimed at, and were constitutive of, the nascent Indonesian middle classes that became increasingly central to the maintenance of colonial rule. It is demonstrated that fairs were sites of interaction and discursive spaces where the middle classes not only bought into colonial discourse, but negotiated and challenged Western modernity to create a distinct, Indonesian middle-class lifestyle and culture.

Designing Interactive Technologies for Interpretive Exhibitions: Enabling Teen Participation Through User-Driven Innovation

Abstract: The active involvement of teenagers in the design of interactive technologies for museums is lacking further development. Adopting a user-driven innovation framework along with cooperative inquiry, we report and discuss a case study that has been designed to involve users in the ideation of interpretive experiences for a local museum. Working in collaboration with the Natural History Museum of Funchal, this contribution will present and discuss co-design sessions that were aimed at participants with ages 15 to 17 and where they were asked to ideate an interactive museum experience. As a result of the co-design sessions, we have found several design patterns. We have grouped these patterns into four categories that express the interests of a teenage audience; these categories are: “interactions”, “gaming”, “localization” and “social media”. Our findings suggest that teenagers value interactive technologies when visiting museums and that user-driven innovation plays an important role when involving this specific audience in the design of user experiences for museums.

Mounting frustration: the art museum in the age of black power

Abstract: After decades of spotty acquisitions, undernourished scholarship and token exhibitions, American museums are rewriting the history of 20th-century art to include black artists in a more visible and...

International exhibitions and urbanism : the Zaragoza Expo 2008 project

Abstract: Contents: Foreword Prologue Introduction Part 1 Three Historical Cycles of International Exhibitions: 'Historical' expositions: from ephemeral to permanent Expos in the modern era: a change in urban development perspective Expositions in the era of globalisation and post-modernity: cultural economy and strategic urban development. Part 2 The Expo Zaragoza 2008 Project: The Expo Zaragoza 2008 project as a part of urban development The Expo as an urban project and meta-project: from masterplan to building projects The Expo project as a catalyst for other urban development projects (2004-2008): the accompanying plan Epilogue and Conclusions: problems, opportunities and conditions for the Zaragoza Expo 2008 Project Appendix Bibliography Index.