The inside/outside theme may be identified as the centre–periphery tension in cultural heritage, typically acknowledged in the many international cases of cultural plunder and consequent retention. The most apparent being the 'Elgin Marbles', which are still to be found in the British Museum while the New Acropolis Museum in Athens continue to anticipate their return to Greece. However, the centre–periphery problem is not limited to highly published examples, but continue to be a fundamental challenge to all centralized museums and their relationships to the original contexts of their stored and displayed artifacts. The emerging digital solutions based on locative media may solve several of these problems, at least limit some of the damage being done.
In the paper/presentation we discuss the various exchanges and stages in the relationship between periphery and centre, between the primary location of an artifact (its original habitat) and the secondary location (its place in the museum collection) and how they can be augmented by sensory media and situated simulations (Indirect Augmented Reality). There are at least three important aspects of this correlation:
1. Deprivation and centralization – from primary to secondary location (the traditional and dominant). The artifact is abducted from its original context and replaced in the artificial environment of the museum.
2. Simulation in situ – from secondary location and back to primary location by means of situated and sensory media. A digital reconstruction of the displaced object is returned to the primary location.
3. Shared simulation – a situated simulation is used both at the primary and the secondary location, thus bringing the (simulated) object back to its original environment as well as bringing the (simulated) environment to the real object in the museum.
The paper/presentation will discuss how several situated simulations for smartphones and tablets (with topics ranging from Acropolis in Athens to the Gokstad Viking Ship in Oslo) have been evaluated and experimented with in these settings.
