In art museums, the integration of interactives and social media in gallery spaces has contributed to new social and cognitive challenges for visitors (Pierroux & Ludvigsen, 2013; Alexander, Barton, & Goeser, 2013). In contrast to earlier ‘stand-alone’ multimedia presentations accessed on kiosks in galleries, visitors are increasingly invited to participate in diverse forms of content creation by interacting with interpretive resources. In this paper, we contrast the design and use of two different interactives, both of which incorporated social media to engage visitors in generating and sharing pictures (Flickr) and text (Twitter) on the museum’s website. The design aim for both interactives was to engage young people 15-18 years old in interpretive conversations related to artworks in a national art museum.
The activities were developed for a project room adjacent to galleries of Edvard Munch’s paintings, in a co-design process involving university researchers, museum curators, and young people, the target audience. The ‘Myself’ interactive invited visitors to study self-portraits by Edvard Munch and to reproduce their own versions of his works. Visitors ‘posed like Munch’ and took a photograph, and were then invited to caption and share their photos on the museum’s Flickr stream. The ‘My Friends’ interactive encouraged visitors to sit at a table and read about Munch’s network of Bohemian artist friends and their famous ‘nine commandments’ on how to live an artistic life. This activity invited visitors to write a tenth commandment for their friends in the form of a ‘tweet’ that would be posted on the museum’s Twitter feed. The visitor-generated content was also displayed on screens in the project room. In this presentation, I will discuss the collaborative design approach and an analysis of the respective ways the two interactives structured engagement and interpretive experiences for young people.
