Emerging Technologies And Museums

How can emerging technologies display, reveal and negotiate difficult, dissonant, negative or undesirable heritage? Emerging technologies in museums have the potential to reveal unheard or silenced stories, challenge preconceptions, encourage emotional responses, introduce the unexpected, and overall provide alternative experiences. By examining varied theoretical approaches and case studies, authors demonstrate how “awkward”, contested, and rarely discussed subjects and stories are treated – or can be potentially treated - in a museum setting with the use of the latest technology.

How can emerging technologies display, reveal and negotiate difficult, dissonant, negative or undesirable heritage? Emerging technologies in museums have the potential to reveal unheard or silenced stories, challenge preconceptions, encourage emotional responses, introduce the unexpected, and overall provide alternative experiences. By examining varied theoretical approaches and case studies, authors demonstrate how “awkward”, contested, and rarely discussed subjects and stories are treated – or can be potentially treated - in a museum setting with the use of the latest technology.

Chapters covering on-line networks, digitizations of collections, cultural intellectual property, public access, finance, and management provide analyses of emerging information technology and the opportunities and challenges these changes present for museums.

This book constitutes the post-conference proceedings of the First International Conference on Emerging Technologies and the Digital Transformation of Museums and Heritage Sites, RISE IMET 2020, held in Nicosia, Cyprus, in June 2021*. The 23 revised full papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 38 submissions. The papers are organized in the following topical sections: digital curation and visitor engagement in museums and heritage sites; VR, AR, MR, mobile applications and gamification in museums and heritage sites; digital storytelling and embodied characters for the interpretation of cultural heritage; emerging technologies, difficult heritage and affective practices; participatory approaches, crowdsourcing and new technologies; digitization, documentation and digital representation of cultural heritage. * The conference was held virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The biggest trend in museum exhibit design today is the creative incorporation of technology. Digital Technologies and the Museum Experience: Handheld Guides and Other Media explores the potential of mobile technologies (cell phones, digital cameras, MP3 players, PDAs) for visitor interaction and learning in museums, drawing on established practice to identify guidelines for future implementations.

This book provides extensive research into the use of augmented reality in the three interconnected and overlapping fields of the tourism industry, museum exhibitions, and cultural heritage. It is written by a virtual team of 50 leading researchers and practitioners from 16 countries around the world. The authors explore the opportunities and challenges of augmented reality applications, their current status and future trends, informal learning and heritage preservation, mixed reality environments and immersive installations, cultural heritage education and tourism promotion, visitors with special needs, and emerging post-COVID-19 museums and heritage sites. Augmented Reality in Tourism, Museums and Heritage: A New Technology to Inform and Entertain is essential reading not only for researchers, application developers, educators, museum curators, tourism and cultural heritage promoters, but also for students (both graduates and undergraduates) and anyone who is interested in the efficient and practical use of augmented reality technology.

This book explores how digital culture is transforming museums in the 21st century. Offering a corpus of new evidence for readers to explore, the authors trace the digital evolution of the museum and that of their audiences, now fully immersed in digital life, from the Internet to home and work. In a world where life in code and digits has redefined human information behavior and dominates daily activity and communication, ubiquitous use of digital tools and technology is radically changing the social contexts and purposes of museum exhibitions and collections, the work of museum professionals and the expectations of visitors, real and virtual. Moving beyond their walls, with local and global communities, museums are evolving into highly dynamic, socially aware and relevant institutions as their connections to the global digital ecosystem are strengthened. As they adopt a visitor-centered model and design visitor experiences, their priorities shift to engage audiences, convey digital collections, and tell stories through exhibitions. This is all part of crafting a dynamic and innovative museum identity of the future, made whole by seamless integration with digital culture, digital thinking, aesthetics, seeing and hearing, where visitors are welcomed participants. The international and interdisciplinary chapter contributors include digital artists, academics, and museum professionals. In themed parts the chapters present varied evidence-based research and case studies on museum theory, philosophy, collections, exhibitions, libraries, digital art and digital future, to bring new insights and perspectives, designed to inspire readers. Enjoy the journey!

Museum Informatics explores the sociotechnical issues that arise when people, information, and technology interact in museums. It is designed specifically to address the many challenges faced by museums, museum professionals, and museum visitors in the information society. It examines not only applications of new technologies in museums, but how advances in information science and technology have changed the very nature of museums, both what it is to work in one, and what it is to visit one. To explore these issues, Museum Informatics offers a selection of contributed chapters, written by leading museum researchers and practitioners, each covering significant themes or concepts fundamental to the study of museum informatics and providing practical examples and detailed case studies useful for museum researchers and professionals. In this way, Museum Informatics offers a fresh perspective on the sociotechnical interactions that occur between people, information, and technology in museums, presented in a format accessible to multiple audiences, including researchers, students, museum professionals, and museum visitors.

Hackathons, maker spaces, R&D labs: these terms are common to the world of technology, but have only recently seeped into museums. The last few years have witnessed a wave of art museum initiatives that invite audiences-from casual visitors to professional artists and technologists-to take the reins of creative production using emerging technologies. The goals of this thesis are threefold. First, I situate this trend, which I call "museum making," within two historical narratives: the legacy of museums as sites for art making and the birth of hacker and maker cultures. These two lineages-histories of art-based and technology-based creative production-are part of a larger participatory ethos prevalent today. A second goal of this thesis is to document museum making initiatives as they emerge, with an eye to how staff members at museums are able to develop such programs despite limited financial, technological, or institutional support or knowledge. Finally, I critically examine how museum making may or may not challenge traditional structures of power in museums. Museum making embodies a tension between the desire to make the museum a more open and equitable space-both by inviting creators into the museum, and by welcoming newer forms of creative production that might not align with today's art world-and the need to maintain institutions' authority as arbiters of culture. My analysis draws on a wide range of fields, including sociology, educational theory, media studies, museum studies, and art theory. This thesis is informed by extensive fieldwork conducted at three sites: the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's Art + Technology Lab, a program that awards artist grants and mentorship from individuals and technology companies such as Google and SpaceX; the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Media Lab, an innovation lab that invites members of New York's creative technology community to develop prototypes for and based on the museum experience; and the Peabody Essex Museum's Maker Lounge, an in-gallery space in which visitors are invited to tinker with high and low technologies.