Eleventh International Conference on The Inclusive Museum

Abstract

The interactive film museum project NaFilM offers a unique space to test the interface through which a visitor actively learns from an exhibition approached as a structure of cognitive stimuli. The method of constructive communication enables visitors to learn through their experiences, encouraging them to actively make associations in order to critically reflect on the film medium and its history. The concept of such a film museum is being continuously tested through a series of short-term film exhibitions, which are being developed with the active participation of audience members, educators, and school groups. The project creates an active space where visitors can directly experience how the film medium is changing its form and functions and the ways it addresses its audience. This way of presenting film history, provoking insight and reflection in its visitors, is vastly different to the traditional collection displays and spectacular form of postmodern film museums, whose effect is limited to visual perception without true engagement or educative stimulation. The designer Tina Roppola writes about “transactional exchange” between an engaged visitor and the knowledge that a museum exposition orchestrates. The physical space of the museum is then a specific medium for dynamic experience through which the visitor enters the cognitive process. NaFilM project applies this concept of transaction in order to guide the visitor to individual reflections of history which will be demonstrated on a communication scheme of a installation focused on Czechoslovak cinema in the era of Stalinism.