Collection Insights
Hybrid Experiences and Intangible Cultural Heritage: Potentials and Challenges of Using Digital Sound in ‘Authentic’ Settings at House Museums View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Mia Yates
Digital technologies or media are often perceived to be artificial and to stand in contrast to ideas of ‘authenticity’ and of ‘real’ places or objects. This poses a challenge for many house museums in search of ways to communicate about the immaterial aspects of their collections. Danish house museums especially refrain from introducing digital communication means, in fear of disturbing the visitor’s experiences of an ‘authentic’ home, and in fear of excluding their core elder audiences. But is it possible to merge digital media with the physical house museum setting, in ways that are experienced by visitors as ‘authentic’? And is there a difference between how younger and older generations experience such ‘hybrid’ realities? The paper presents the results of an empirical study into the potentials and challenges of using digital sound to communicate about intangible heritage in a house museum setting in Copenhagen, formerly the home of a Danish literary couple, in the early 1800s. In several design experiments, we have used digital sound to re-create scenes from the couple’s everyday life in the house. Through systematic observations and qualitative interviews with museum visitors, we have gained knowledge about how visitors experience ‘authenticity’ in relation to ‘the digital’, during these experiments and across demographics. The paper presents the most important findings from the study and relate them to wider questions of how museums can use digital technologies to communicate about immaterial cultural heritage. The paper proposes new and ‘hybrid’ directions for house museums and other ‘authentic’ heritage sites.
The Benin Bronzes: The Role of Museums in Repatriation View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Jennifer Coury
The repatriation of the Benin Bronzes is a multifaceted historical, social, and political issue in the art world. The artifacts contain the pre-colonial history of the Edo people in the form of statues, plaques, and ornamental figures, which the British Empire looted following the Benin Massacre of 1897. Since 1897, the history and culture of the Edo people continue to fill museum collections as spoils of war. The ongoing effort to repatriate the Bronzes calls attention to the lasting impact of colonialism on museums as institutions and their societal role. As purveyors of culture, should museums be required to evolve with the rest of society? The case could be made that such changes are essential to a museum's authenticity. Museums' responsibilities must go beyond the need to revise descriptive plaques and reconfigure displays. Furthermore, the inability of the Edo people to claim proprietary rights to the Benin Bronzes exposes a system that perpetuates cultural violence. Existing cultural property laws focus on antiquities and objects displaced during World War II, but a sizable grey area surrounds colonial-era theft and damage. Today's cultural property laws allow for a continued lack of accountability amongst museums and governments holding artifacts looted during colonialism. Museums and cultural property laws must address this grey area to achieve restitution. The case for the repatriation of the Benin Bronzes underscores the importance of cultural restitution and the amendment of cultural property laws to the decolonization of art history.
How Cultural Mediators Perceive the Use of Technology for Increasing Accessibility in Museums View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Leandro S. Guedes, Monica Landoni
Museums are ideal places to foster informal learning. Therefore, they must be accessible for all. Cultural mediators play an essential role as facilitators when people with disabilities visit a museum. The way cultural mediators communicate and adapt to different target groups makes the difference as it helps visitors get a better understanding and appreciation of the visit. There are a plethora of inclusive and technological solutions, such as accessible websites, audio/video guides, easy-to-read materials, braille descriptions, and text-to-speech, but how can museums in general and cultural mediators, in particular, take advantage of any of these? Our project aims to design technological solutions to provide museum visitors with accessible, rewarding, and memorable experiences before, during, and after a museum visit. In this work, we observed a number of museum-guided tours and conducted interviews with six cultural mediators working in Switzerland. Moreover, we asked about their background and ethics, as well as how they organize a tour from scratch and their experience working with visitors with disabilities. We enquired about the different ways they communicate with visitors, and their perception of what role technology could play in assisting them and their visitors. The effect technology could have on their work and the way they interact with visitors is discussed. Our findings show that there is still a lack of guidelines and accessible solutions, which could interfere with the quality of the overall visit.
