Community Connections
Art++!: Collaborative Augmented Reality Application Development at Stanford
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Anna Toledano, María del Carmen Barrios Giordano
In summer 2016, the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University launched Art++, an Augmented Reality (AR) application developed in partnership with the Image, Video, and Multimedia Systems Lab at the School of Engineering. In an age in which apps and in-gallery interactives have become standard at museums, Art++ presents an instance in which a museum has partnered with graduate engineering students to launch a new in-gallery experience, rather than hiring a private company to design and execute a technical build. This paper will focus on the development of the interdisciplinary, collaborative project at Cantor. The paper encourages museums to join with in-house or local universities to create technological offerings for visitors. Collaboration with graduate students on such projects allows smaller museums to create interactive tools, such as mobile apps, that are often expensive and thus reserved for Tier 3 institutions. An overview of the Art++ software, its interface, and its use will help lower the bar for smaller museums to incorporate customizable technological additions within their exhibition spaces.
Rethinking the Role of Museums in Pakistan: The Case of State Bank Museum
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Asma Ibrahim
In the year 2006 I was given a job to establish the first Monetary Museum of Pakistan by the Central Bank. It was a great challenge but at the same time very interesting and close to my heart. I wanted a museum which should be a place of activity, engaging visitors with their surroundings, contemporary life, and history. I wanted to promote diverse visitors and be fully inclusive. I believe we are accountable to communities. Museums are not just for acquiring collections, conserving objects, and creating exhibits. All this is possible only when the visitors engage themselves and the curator has the role of a skilled advisor and member of the world outside. Museums are no longer judged by their internal resources (collections, endowments, facilities, and staff), but rather by external benefits and the value they create for the individuals and communities. The audience of State Bank Museum is the public, teachers, students (from primary level), diplomats, communities, differently-abled visitors, and foundations/NGO. The museum is multilingual and multi ethnic. It is the only museum in the country which is fully accessible, including photographic workshops. Special outreach programs give workshops all over the country. This paper discusses how museums can reach out to the public, in a country where priority is not museums or education, highlighting how the museum plays an important role in educating and bringing pride to younger generations.
Are Visitors’ Artistic Creations Welcome in an International Exhibition of Contemporary Art? : The Contribution of Participatory Projects in Promoting the Inclusive Museum
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Katerina Paraskeva, Niki Nikonanou, Evi Papavergou
This paper discusses the meaning and forms of participation by the examination of a collaborative approach inside and outside the museum in the 6th Biennale Exhibition of Contemporary Art held in Thessaloniki in 2017. For the first time in the history of the event, museum-educators had the chance to contribute in the exhibition process from the early stages, in the selection of artists and the discussion of the overarching exhibition theme. Furthermore, they developed a participatory project that involved visitors as co-creators enhancing inclusiveness. Teenagers and adults -over fifty- collaborated with a local artist and museum educators in a workshop to discuss the issue of "imagined homes" and create an animated video installation, which was exhibited in the Biennale venues. Visitors, curators, museum educators, the artist, and a group of university students shared their experiences from their involvement in the project. Data selected had been analyzed raising interesting issues about visitor participation in artistic projects, the importance given in the artistic quality of the end product when working with visitors, equality as a presupposition in pedagogical practice, and the contribution of inclusive projects in “learning from each other” procedures for museum professionals, artists, and visitors.
Participatory Museum Exhibition as a Tool for Social Change: Connecting Different Maritime Communities
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Irena Sertic
The Mediterranean region is under enormous pressure by industry and massive tourism. Those forces constitute a major threat as they are rapidly changing communities and devastating their heritage and culture. The current situation requires a concerted recovery effort to rebuild the Mediterranean culture and identity by recreating, and ultimately, renewing a set of shared cultural values. These values can be developed by building up the sense of belonging to Mediterranean context and through the protection of historical features as well as strengthening communities that preserve maritime cultural values. This paper presents the concept of "Co-Modelling" museum exhibition which is based on involvement of local community in reinventing and rediscovering maritime traditions by having new access to cultural collective memory through participatory, intellectually stimulating and emotionally challenging museum exhibition. This concept will be discussed through a presentation of museum exhibition model with roots in local community involvement and conception of sustainability based on principles of a community-oriented creative process of both social and cultural matters which turns heritage objects into a „people's heritage “ and bring museum exhibition “into the flow." The motivation is to explore new methods within the Total Museum approach and new possibilities to making museums transhistorical and sites for social change by active construction of past, using innovative way of co-curating exhibition in participatory manner and digital tools as co-creative medium for “heritage dialogue” – “dialogic” engagement of cultural objects from different museums through thematically joint exhibitions linked by VR/AR technology with aim to connect maritime communities.
