Timothy McNeil (University of California, Davis, US) Smoke and mirrors: the art of deception and the exhibition designer’s box of tricks
Kate Hill (University of Lincoln, UK) ‘Chilly tombs’ or ‘communion with the past’? Staging objects as dead or alive in early twentieth century museums
Izabela Derda, Zoi Popoli and Tom Feustel (Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication, The Netherlands) From “just a collection of objects” to “only tech show off”: grasping a change and unpacking design approaches to multisensorial immersive exhibitions
Barbara Fahs Charles (Staples & Charles, US) Total immersion: taking viewers on a journey
Viveka Kjellmer (University of Gothenburg, Sweden) Smelling exhibitions: scented scenographics and olfactory communication in the museum
Individual Papers:
Timothy McNeil (University of California, Davis, US) Smoke and mirrors:the art of deception and the exhibition designer’s box of tricks
This paper was available for the period of the conference only (1-11 September 2020)
Like our minds, exhibitions play tricks on us. Following in the footsteps of entertainers, sideshow carneys, escape artists, magicians and stagecraft technicians, exhibit designers incorporate illusion and deception to wow audiences and reinforce messages using a dose of fantasy and wonder. Natural history, science and children’s museums and themed and entertainment environments rely heavily on such trickery. Early automata and mechanical devices inspired modern-day animatronics, magic lantern theater and the Pepper’s ghost technique preceded augmented reality, and Victorian parlor games such as the thaumatrope anticipated flip and reveal didactic labels. From anamorphosis and trompe l’oeil paintings to Yayoi Kusama’s infinity mirrored rooms, designers employ deception to powerful effect in their work.
This paper features historical and contemporary examples by designers who use these tools of deception and illusion to inspire people, transform exhibition encounters, and trigger emotive reactions. It will demonstrate the impact of design to shape these experiences and propose that without design at the helm and employed effectively, these experiential moments would not become lasting memories that inform and engage increasingly sophisticated museum audiences. The paper also concludes that capturing a designed experience overshadows its content. Although social media and recording platforms like Instagram offer powerful tools, they remain distinct from those forces that create immersion and establish lasting memories. This content is extracted from the author’s book manuscript that aims to chart a new methodology for understanding exhibition and experience design. His research documents the trajectory of exhibition design, professional practice and making, and introduces the design theory, techniques and tools used to deliver successful exhibition-based experiences across a broad range of venues.
Timothy McNeilhas spent 30 years as a practicing exhibition designer working for major museums, researching exhibition design history and methods, and teaching the next generation of exhibition design thinkers. McNeil’s research and creative work seeks to define exhibition design practice and explore the exhibition space as a medium for the effective display of objects and the communication of engaging narratives. He is a Professor in the Department of Design at the University of California, Davis and Director of the UC Davis Design Museum. He serves as the primary instructor for undergraduate courses on exhibition design and environmental graphic design and is a thesis advisor for graduate students researching exhibition-related design theory, criticism and practice.
Kate Hill (University of Lincoln, UK) ‘Chilly tombs’ or ‘communion with the past’? Staging objects as dead or alive in early twentieth-century museums
From around 1900, some museums, curators and collectors started to display their historical objects in very different ways, deliberately rejecting conventional exhibition design in order to create environments which more directly replicated ‘life’ in the past. Folk museum staff particularly aimed to put objects into use, (re)building them, wearing them, sitting on them, playing them, and including animals in their collections; and to ‘free’ them from the ‘prison’ of cases and typological display.
This paper examines museums’ move away from conventional display cases under the influence of the open air, folk life/social history, and reconstructive approach to displays in the early twentieth century. It stresses the extent to which this was framed as a rejection of professional museum exhibition design which was felt to deaden and decontextualize artefacts, turning them into ‘museum-ified’ objects rather than the real stuff of history. Pioneers of reconstructive design were often museum ‘outsiders’, with no training or experience, and emphasised the ‘home made’, amateur nature of their displays; they were inspired by their own relationships with their objects, which were both emotional and sensual, to try and create such relationships between visitors and objects. Displays were thus often described as bringing objects, or indeed the past as a whole, to life, and enhancing their communicative potential. Moreover, the rejection of conventional display can also be seen as a rejection of the restricted sensory range of such displays – reconstructive displays formed an important intervention in the idea of opening up museum objects to smell, taste and hearing, and occasionally even taste.
By examining the growth of new designs for display, and the rejection of old ones, then, we can reconstruct changing attitudes to the past and how its material survivals were thought to enable knowledge and experience of it.
Kate Hillis Associate Professor in History and Deputy Head of History and Heritage at the University of Lincoln. She works on the history of regional and local UK museums; her most recent book was Women and Museums 1850-1914 (MUP 2016). Kate is co-editor of the Museum History Journal and Chair of the Museums and Galleries History Group.
Izabela Derda, Zoi Popoli and Tom Feustel (Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication, Rotterdam, The Netherlands) From “just a collection of objects” to “only tech show off”: grasping a change and unpacking design approaches to multisensorial immersive exhibitions
This paper was available for the period of the conference only (1-11 September 2020)
In popular discourse, immersive exhibitions are often (and almost exclusively) associated with extensive use of new technologies and a high level of visuality. What is overlooked is the fact that immersive technologies are implemented to bring forth the narrative of the exhibition and to enhance the overall audience experience by providing inspirational and emotional layers. The multisensory layer, which surrounds and exposes the theme of the exhibition, supports the submersion of museum visitors in the storyline. For this reason, exhibition design is not tech- but story-driven, and digital methods serve only to reinforce the storytelling and create an immersive environment. New design approaches provoke a change from exhibitions understood as collections of tangible objects curated for structured exploration to active co-creation and co-production of experience by consumers interacting with the environment. In our research, we explore the shift from linear, curatorial-led exhibitions to multisensorial immersive experiences and investigate relations between place, space, story, technology, interaction and consumer in the process of exhibition co-creation.
Izabela Derda, PhD, is a researcher and lecturer at Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication in the Media & Communication Department in Rotterdam, Netherlands. She investigates how new technologies influence the transmedia design and reshape content-medium-consumer-creator networks.The paper belongs to the NWO KIEM-funded project “Smartification of audience experience” aiming to improve flexibility to enhance audience’s experiences (in which she is a primary investigator).
Tom FeustelandZoi Popoli are graduates of the Master Media & Creative Industries program at ESHCC involved in the “Smartification of audience experience” project.
Barbara Fahs Charles (Staples & Charles, US) Total immersion: taking viewers on a journey
This paper, from the designer’s perspective, addresses several aspects of the conference, especially collaborative working, material culture, emotion and affect, and responsibilities.
Large traveling exhibitions, with everything—artifacts, art, cases, even walls—to be shared among venues, are a specific design challenge. Two that Staples & Charles created are especially interesting for immersing visitors in other cultures. ‘Views of a Vanishing Frontier’ (1984–85), developed by Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, to commemorate Prince Maximillian du Wied’s and Karl Bodmer’s 1832–34 explorations up the Missouri River, took visitors on the journey based on Maximillian’s diary. Over 125 original watercolors and drawings by Bodmer were featured in tall, thin vertical panels that could be joined in curves emulating the rhythm of the river. Huge enlargements of Bodmer’s engravings, lightly hand-colored as in the 19th century, punctuated the trip. Encased Native American artifacts and natural specimens, collected by Maximillian and illustrated by Bodmer, enriched the experience. The ‘Views’ pallet was natural linen and wood, letting the exquisite tones of the watercolors predominate. ‘Crossroads of Continents: Cultures of Siberia & Alaska’(1988–90),expressed cultural diversity and relationships among eight ethnic groups, four in Siberia and four in Alaska. Organized jointly by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History and the USSR Academy of Sciences, ‘Crossroads’ combined pre-1867 Alaskan collections preserved in Leningrad with artifacts in North American institutions from the 1897–1903 Jessup Expedition, the first to scientifically investigate the peoples of North Eastern Siberia. Fantastic garments, some made from fragile fish skins or bird pelts, were a special challenge. For these, unique manikins were created to express the people who wore them. The pallet of light greys and birch gave a sense of the cool north, underscoring the subtle natural materials of the artifacts.
For Bob Staples and for me, the solution should be so “right” that visitors focus totally on the story, people, art and artifacts, not the design. These two exhibitions achieved that elusive goal.
Barbara Fahs Charlesis an independent scholar looking at exhibition design, Eames, and carousels and carnivals. As a partner and designer with Staples & Charles for forty-five years, she was responsible for history, anthropology, and art museum projects across the US and internationally, from Singapore to South Africa. After several years as a costumier in professional theatre, she first worked on exhibitions as a researcher and modelmaker at the Office of Charles and Ray Eames, where she met her partner, Robert Staples, then a senior designer at the office. Between four years at the Eames Office and the formation of Staples & Charles, she photographed carousels across the United States and designed several museum projects solo.
Viveka Kjellmer (University of Gothenburg, Sweden) Smelling exhibitions: scented scenographics and olfactory communication in the museum
How can something invisible, like a smell, be exhibited and understood as meaningful in a museum? In this presentation, I focus on the meaning of scent as art, as exhibited artefact, and as an experience-heightening scenographic agent to create a multisensory whole in the museum. I investigate some of the curatorial and communicative challenges faced while working with smell as a bearer of meaning in the museum. Doing so, I discuss scented scenographics, smell technologies and design solutions in perfume exhibitions and olfactory art, where scents are used as communication tools. I highlight the sense of smell as a key factor in the sensory and bodily communication of these multisensory exhibitions. In the exhibition Art of Scent (New York 2013), perfume was exhibited as artwork, stylistically compared to art history. The exhibition Perfume (London 2017) visualized the fragrances in scented scenographies where the stories conveyed by the perfumes where conceptualized. Nez à nez (Lausanne 2019) exhibited perfumery as an applied art and used design installations to illustrate the styles of the perfumers. Belle Haleine. The Scent of Art (Basel 2015) exhibited olfactory artworks and installations, among them the smell of fear. This is compared to scented scenographics at play in contemporary visual art at the Gothenburg International Biennial for Contemporary Art (GIBCA) 2019. Smell in the museum can play a multisensory role – to activate the body and the other senses. An exhibition layout with scented focus will also promote bodily interaction, touch, navigation, and interactivity. Olfactory focus leads to a different pace; instead of scanning the room visually and then zoom in, we have to sniff it out slowly. Visiting a scented exhibition forces us to be present in the scent, to slow down, and go where the nose takes us.
Dr Viveka Kjellmeris a senior lecturer in Art History and Visual Studies at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. She also holds a university degree in Economics and has a background in marketing. Kjellmer has published studies about the visual language of advertising, focusing on the image of scent, and has also written about fashion exhibitions and visual consumption. Her current research concerns costume, body and multisensory analysis, as well as scented scenography and olfactory communication.
Comments
Thread: Smelly exhibitions
Claire Wintle Topic starter 06/09/2020 10:09 am
Dear Viveka, thanks for this fascinating paper – I loved your careful analysis of these inspirational shows. I was wondering if you knew anything of the earlier history of using smell in exhibitions? @kate_hill and @tjmcneilmight have some insight into this, but I don’t think I’ve come across the purposeful use of smell before it was used in the British Museum/Museum of Mankind’s reconstructive exhibitions of the 1970s, for example in Nomad and City (1978) where the designers and curators hoped to recreate the experience of a souk, including through smell. I’ve got a feeling I’ve come across earlier examples, but they are escaping me at the moment! Thanks again, Claire
Kate Hill 06/09/2020 10:34 am
It’s such a fascinating issue! I don’t know of any deliberate uses of smell prior to the 1970s but of course plenty of museum exhibitions DID smell – Alberti talks about how disturbingly anatomy museums might smell and how efforts were made to remove or at least contain and minimise those smells. Recreative displays with real fires, animals, dyeing processes being demonstrated certainly smelled (also Grant at the Highland Folk Museum had some unorthodox methods of dealing with woodworm – liberal use of Cuprinol – so that may have added to the smell…). My main memory of the Weald and Downland Museum is of the smell of wood smoke – the multi-sensory nature of reconstructive exhibitions is definitely part of the appeal and has been since the 1930s at least.
Viveka Kjellmer 06/09/2020 5:30 pm
Thank you 🙂 It seems that a visit to a museum might have been quite a multisensory experience in pre-victorian times, and that a sensory shift towards the scientific and the visual changed this approach during the nineteenth century. This is discussed for example by Constance Classen in her article “Museum Manners: The Sensory Life of the Early Museum”, where she points to the massive sensory input in early museums and private collections, and the later change towards an almost complete focus on vision. She writes: “As regards the museum, this sensory shift meant that allowing visitors close contact with museum pieces could no longer be justified by scientific values. The important thing in modernity was to see” (2017, 907).
Claire Wintle Topic starter 07/09/2020 8:51 am
@viveka_kjellmer Ah yes, of course – I really like Constance Classen’s work. I suppose I was thinking about the purposeful introduction of smell in the modern museum, more specifically in the 20th century, but this is a prompt to remember that exhibition ‘design’ started way before then! 🙂 Perhaps @awitcomb (my “go to” resource for affect and emotion in museums!) might know more?
Yes, thank you Viveka for addressing such a fascinating and under utilized sensory element in the museum exhibition. I was very taken with one of your examples where visitors activated the smells coming from the vessels by cranking a handle to pull out the stopper which after when released would return to seal in the vapor. I don’t have much to add further in terms of history except to look at experiences in early-mid 20th century theater, cinema and World’s Fairs with Smell-O-Vision and AuromaRama – of course the idea here to associate film and visual narratives with smell. Not many of these exploits took off but they are quite ingenious and may have inspired museum exhibition designers at the time. I ask students in one of the courses I teach to think of a smell associated with childhood and then describe the experience – their responses are always wonderful – a lot of food answers and indicative of the various cultures and backgrounds they come from. My purpose for conducting this exercise is to demonstrate the power of experience as a tool for engagement but also because as you say smell is so evocative and memory inducing. Here’s to more smelly museums!
Claire Wintle 08/09/2020 8:19 am
@tjmcneil What a great teaching tip! And, of course, the Commonwealth Institute adapted these World’s Fairs techniques in its Malaysia exhibit too @kelvin might be able to give us more insight, and you can read about the simulated smell of rainforests in his article on Instant Malaysia
Kelvin Chuah 09/09/2020 3:42 pm
Archigram, the London architects designed and realised the Instant Malaysia exhibition at the Commonwealth Institute in 1973. Here is an excerpt from Archigram Archival Project’s text for this exhibition:
“The major feature of the exhibition, which is built on two levels, is the sensory (and sensual) simulator located at the level above the general display area. Inside, ‘in 12 minutes you experience the 90º atmosphere of the Malay jungle and the cool winds after the monsoon’. The simulator accommodates up to 15 people at any one time and they are subjected to constantly changing visual images and sounds, and, more powerfully, temperature and humidity. the mechanics of the simulator are interesting – the four screen multi-projection slide system, which is literally done by mirrors, synchronised with three track sound, and the associated impacts of superimposition, dissolve, blink etc…In the end, of course, it is the simulator which really draws one’s attention. Rightly or wrongly, this particular piece of hardware is much more intriguing than the content of the exhibition as a whole.” Architectural Design, June 1974, pp. 387-388.
The quote references a purpose-built simulator that created an immersive experience for visitors – simulating a Malaysian encounter for the visitor. One of my Malaysian informants who visited the exhibition said when she stepped into the simulator; it felt real. She vividly remembered the artificially induced smell of tropical rain and the humidity touching her skin similar to the blast of hot air when one comes out of Subang Airport (Malaysia’s international airport in the seventies).
I found it fascinating. As Archigram managed to construct a tropical climate as an exhibition experience, which in turn, attracted visitors who made repeated visits to the simulator – again, according to my informant who was then a London based designer making weekly visits to Instant Malaysia with her colleagues.
Claire Wintle Topic starter 10/09/2020 7:15 am
Thanks Kelvin. I’ve just listened to Marlene Van-de-Casteele’s excellent paper on Panel 13 that references the use of smell in museums much earlier than all this. I’d forgotten that in an exhibition I’ve done some research on, Vogue editor/MET curator Diana Vreeland had pumped a sandalwood fragrance made by Guerlain through the air-conditioning system at the ‘Costumes of Royal India’ at the MET in 1985 (!) She used scent in quite a lot of her shows and was famed for her blurring of commercial and museum spaces in those exhibitions that she created at the Costume Institute. Thanks all! Claire
Viveka Kjellmer 11/09/2020 7:19 am
Thank you all for these very interesting examples and the valuable input. I’m really excited about this conference and all the wonderful presentations, truly inspiring work!
Thread: Archiving design practice
Claire Wintle Topic starter06/09/2020 9:53 am
Dear Barbara,
I really enjoyed your paper – thank you for sharing the designer’s perspective! I was especially interested in the emotional and physical labour of the design process – of you forming attachments and even friendships with historic figures, worrying about mannequin skin tone, running up and down to the balcony to set your letters, and taking the physically demanding role of the model during the mannequin making process. It was fascinating (and I felt tired for you!)
My question links to Martha Fleming’s paper (Panel 2), which I think you will enjoy, if you haven’t seen it already. I was wondering about your archiving process, now that you and Bob have closed the practice. Your presentation images are absolutely amazing, and I remember seeing some real gems when I visited your studio – can you tell us a little about how you have archived your design process and the material generated during your practice? Thanks again, Claire
Barbara Fahs Charles 08/09/2020 11:49 pm
Thank you Claire for asking. Basically we felt that as long as an exhibition was on display, we needed to keep the records in case questions came up. When the shows would ultimately close (and some still haven’t after 25 years!), we were on to the next projects and didn’t go back to throw things away. Everything was just put on shelves, still in their notebooks or drawings were wrapped in paper. In the last 20 years or so (after we were on computers for drawings), we started making closeout notebooks that included all the final drawings as 11 x 17″ sheets, as well as all the graphic fiiles, texts, colors and materials, etc., as well as all the digital files. The client received one set and we kept the other. Keeping eeveryythiing was fine as long as we had space. But when we moved from our larger office in 2012 decisions had to be made. American University Library Special Collections has asked for about 60% of our projects. I have slowly been getting them transferred. For each client, I put together cover information about the project, including all the key people, dates, why I think the project is important (to us and/or others) and an inventory of what is being transferred. Typically, this includes all the final files, as well as process materials and photographs. Some of the projects not going to American University have found refuge in the dumpster, while for others that I am fond of, I am looking for better long-term retirement homes. For example, the files from “Puppets: Art & Entertainment” are now at the Center for Puppetry Arts in Atlanta, GA, and have joined related files from others.
One point I have been meaning to make to the conference participants is that for anyone doing research in museum designer files, please try to understand how the office was set up–who were the players, what were their roles. A lot of what you may research and study is likely by others than the name on the letterhead. The Office of Charles & Ray Eames, for example, varied in size during the 16 years Bob worked there from 7 (including C&R) to 10 times that during the NY World’s Fair. While I was at the office, it ranged from 17 to double that. Besides graphic designers and industrial designers of the early years, once the Eameses started doing exhibitions, the office also included architects, writers, researchers, filmmakers, scientists, etc., some on staff, some consultants. These professionals were not “assistants” in the traditional sense, but creative people and the output of the office reflected their styles and changed over time.
And thank you for remarking on the physicality of exhibitions. Its all fun and a lot better than sitting at a computer.
Barbara
Kate Guy 09/09/2020 11:40 am
Hi Barbara,
Thank you so much for such a fascinating presentation I thoroughly enjoyed it! I also found your comments here on researching museum design files incredibly useful, as my research focuses on designers and their practice at the British Museum.
In your presentation, I was particularly struck by the quote from your Washington Post article- “having been primary players just the night before we would now recede into the background…” (apologies if I missed quoted, my notes are a little illegible) this is a sentiment I hear echoed time and time again by both present and former designers of the British Museum, but none has ever articulated it quite so eloquently. I would be very interested and grateful to read the entire article if you have a copy?
Many thanks again!
Kate
Barbara Fahs Charles 09/09/2020 10:18 pm
Hi Kate, I am delighted that you enjoyed my presentation. My most relevant writings are online at: www.staplesandcharles.com/writings. Scroll down, and the one for the Washington Post is the last one “Display’s the Thing.” At the time, the Post had a regular column “First Hand” where artists, etc. wrote a short piece about their work. When I contacted the editor, she didn’t know that museum designers existed! I have also attached the article with this response. The other issue that you will probably hear a lot is credits. Barbara
Kate Guy 10/09/2020 9:08 am
Thank you so much for this Barbara, and thanks again for your wonderful presentation!
Thread
Thread: Smoke and mirrors, magic and modernity
Sandra Kriebel: Topic starter01/09/2020 12:52 pm
Dear Timothy,
Thank you so much for your highly interesting and very entertaining presentation! Thinking about the often very technical side of the used props and tricks, I wonder if the aspects of magic and miracle that seemed to have dominated in the earliest, rather theatrical examples might at some point have transformed into something to do with modernity and technical progress. I thought about the Tate’s Ochre Atelier, where Modiglianis atelier can be visited with the help of VR goggles. Isn’t this also about showing, what an up to date and well equipped exhibition could do? I was also thinking about the electrical light, that completely changed the visitor’s expierience in the 19th and early 20th century. Here, modernity was most certainly an imporant incentive to lure visitors into the museums.
I was really inspired by your talk, so thank you very much again!
Sara Woodbury 02/09/2020 2:39 pm
Dear Timothy, I also really enjoyed your talk, and the way you highlighted the intersection between the desire for authentic experiences as encountered through the senses and the importance of deception and illusion in enabling those experiences. Your discussion of the entertainment value of deception as experienced in Barnum’s museum also reminded me of Michael Leja’s discussion of trompe l’oeil in Looking Askance, where he’s basically arguing that the pleasure of these paintings came from not only the technical skill required to potentially fool audiences, but in the viewer ultimately discovering the deception itself. I was also interested in your discussion of automata, AI, and humanity, as when you mentioned the clarinetist automaton and the spectacle/performance of exposing its status as a machine. That idea of exposing the machine behind the deception seems to be a recurrent one that underscores ongoing anxiety about technology, humanity, and their interdependence. It’s an especially interesting tension to occur in places like museums, which have often been ascribed with attributes of authenticity or truthfulness in some capacity (though those attributes have been under scrutiny). Do you discuss these ideas further in your book manuscript, or do you delve into other aspects of exhibition design and sensory deception?
Again, thank you very much for your engaging video!
Timothy McNeil 07/09/2020 8:54 pm
Hi Sandra – thank you for your comments – really helpful and insightful. Great point about the advent of electricity as a light source – a huge technological shift allowing new and more sustained exhibition experiences – we can liken it the advent of the digital age in terms of its transformative nature. I was wrestling with VR and where it belongs in my discussion and Modigliani’s atelier is an excellent example. Is VR an extension of projection in so much as it’s about the activation of pixels to form an image? I definitely see it as an immersive experience – is VR being used to deceive audiences in museum applications – probably so in the gaming industry? And how much of feeling like you’ve been thoroughly deceived is collaborative and social as we seek confirmation from those around us in a shared experience (as in early theater as you reference) – certainly multi-user VR headsets where we interact with each other in a virtual space has this potential. It’s got me thinking – thank you.
Timothy McNeil 07/09/2020 9:35 pm
Hi Sara – thank you for your feedback. I’m pleased you enjoyed the talk. The reference to Michael Leja and “Looking Askance” is a great one and I will delve into this work further. Regarding authenticity in museums – I started at one point to go down this path for the talk but cut it out because of time. I also shelved a whole section about the relationship between anamorphosis, twist-and-reveal games and hands-on exhibits. I do intend to continue with this delicate interplay between museums as trusted institutions and deception as a method of audience engagement – the topic could however begin to get a little dicey if it veers off into object authenticity and provenance! Also, museum object facsimiles intrigued me – reproductions of objects made to look like the real thing (often for a good reason) but with fairly discrete disclaimers on the label are certainly in the business of deceiving museum audiences who I’ve found want to know above all else that what they are looking at (and expect) in a museum is the actual object. I also started to pursue museums in a time of deep fakes and distorted media coverage not to mention political leaders (now that could be really dicey). The communication of science in the museum environment is grappling with that one more than ever – Thanks again.
Sara Woodbury 08/09/2020 1:08 am
@tjmcneil as with any great project there are lots of potential directions to take it (that’s always the challenge, isn’t it?), and that sounds especially so with your research. Certainly there’s plenty of relevance in terms of authenticity, fake news, etc. I’ll look forward to learning more about your work as it continues to develop, whether through conferences, articles, and the book manuscript!
Sandra Kriebel Topic starter08/09/2020 6:19 am
@tjmcneil Dear Timothy, thank you for your reply. I hadn’t thought about the shared museum experience yet. Very good point! Also the 360 degree view of the VR room reminded me of panorama paintings, which were – and still are – a great success with the audience. I can’t wait for you book to be published!
Tim Satterthwaite 09/09/2020 8:24 pm
Thank you, Timothy, for this fascinating presentation. I have a question that you touch on in your second response in this thread, so I wondered if I might draw you further? Does this dazzling use of spectacle make you uneasy at all – or have you come across instances where you felt it was inappropriately used? As you suggest, it can tend to transform the museum experience into entertainment – how does, for example, the brilliant use of animation in the Leonardo exhibition shape the viewer’s artistic response to the work itself? Are we in danger of being seduced by all this technical wizardry?
Thread: Question to all panellists : Including Emotions in Evaluation of Immersive Experiences
Thanks everyone for your presentations on immersive technologies, emotion and design. I’m working my way through them and really enjoying what I hear and see. I have a question though, which pertains to the evaluation of these exhibitions. Has anybody specifically included the emotional responses elicited during these immersive experiences as a parameter in their evaluation strategies? How? And if you have, which model/framework have you used to analyse this data? Is there any relevant literature/studies that I should check in this respect? Apologies if this is something you may have covered at some point in your presentations – as I said, I’m still working my way through them, but I didn’t want to forget! Many thanks in advance for your responses.
Claire Wintle 03/09/2020 8:35 pm
Hi Susana, UCL has a resource on measuring wellbeing that might be helpful, and the Happy Museum project is interested in emotions in museum participants, which you may be interested in. Best wishes, Claire
Susana Sanchez-Gonzalez Topic starter04/09/2020 9:07 am
Thank you. This is really useful!
Izabela Derda 04/09/2020 9:10 am
Dear Susana,
As a part of our project at EUR next year (hopefully), we’ll be testing AI-driven emotions recognition systems (adapting some solutions existing in other sectors). We aim to see how it can support both evaluation and co-design. Best, Izabela
Susana Sanchez-Gonzalez Topic starter04/09/2020 9:23 am
Sounds fascinating! I’ll make sure to keep an eye on your project. Any particular way to do this?
Thank you for your paper. I’m really interested in your methodology, of interviewing contemporary curators and designers about their innovations. I wondered how you had tackled the inevitable limits of this source material in your work? I’ve found in my own research that contemporary curators and designers sometimes either 1) overstate their innovations in a bid to emphasise their contributions to the sector, or because they are unaware of practices that were going on before their time, or 2) underplay their contributions – sometimes this is because of modesty, and other times it is because they are working within and conditioned by a discourse and practice that hasn’t yet acknowledged those historic innovations, and so through the memory process deny and forget their own innovations. It’s so complicated, and I wondered how you managed these considerations in creating your timeline. Thanks again.
Izabela Derda 06/09/2020 3:01 pm
Dear Claire,
Thank you for this question. Indeed, the creators don’t really have an objective outlook on their work. That’s why we didn’t really frame those interviews around “newness” or “innovation”. I think this was important, because quite a few of them had a view that every single exhibition should be immersive (on a storytelling level), so they didn’t see “immersion” as anything particularly new.
Therefore, we were rather going for more “tangible” metrics – like the changes in the creative process, new roles in the team (internal and external) and team dynamics in the creative/development process. And of course comparison with some existing literature on those topics was helpful here.
Thread: ‘Chilly tombs’ or ‘communion with the past’?
Mark Liebenrood Topic starter05/09/2020 10:52 am
Dear Kate,
Thanks for your paper. You mentioned commentary on declining museum attendances that was contemporary with insistence on the usefulness of case-based and serial displays, but I wondered if you’d come across much commentary to suggest that the introduction of more immersive displays had prompted increases in visiting?
Thanks,
Mark
Kate Hill 05/09/2020 3:23 pm
Hi Mark
Good question – I’ve not come across anything concrete in terms of numbers but there’s certainly evidence of a lot of visitors, and good visitor feedback, on opening and for the first few years at least, for brand new museums like the Castle Museum, Abbey Museum and even for the Highland Folk Museum which was kinda out of the way. What would be interesting but I haven’t looked at/for yet is what happened to existing museums which started to incorporate this sort of display – like National Museum of Wales, Liverpool Museum etc. I will add that to the many things I still want to find out!
Kate
Mark Liebenrood Topic starter07/09/2020 8:10 am
Hi Kate,
Thanks, it’s the latter situation I had in mind – the response to updated displays. Historic records of visitor numbers are a problem all of their own, but I guess I was wondering if there were anecdotal accounts of responses. All the best with finding out more!
