NODEM 2013 Conference

Follow along in Mikael Blomkvist and Lisbeth Salander’s footsteps while getting additional background information about the characters and the author. The walk starts at Bellmansgatan 1, where Mikael Blomkvist lives, then passes the Millennium editorial office, Lisbeth Salander’s luxury apartment and many other locations mentioned in the books and film.

Collaboration has been a major issue for museums ever since, for reasons of knowhow, prestige or budget constraints. And since out local governments more and more often redirect our budget demands towards EU programs, networks for exchange and collaboration between our institutions have been successfully established.

But in a world of Google, Wikipedia, facebook etc., we have new kids on the block and participation has become not just a keyword, but a real demand, something that our visitors expect.

But how could such a new collaboration between museum and its audience look like? 

Ars Electronica Linz GmbH is a corporation owned by the City of Linz. It consists of the following operative divisions: Ars Electronica Festival-Prix-Exhibitions, Ars Electronica Center, Ars Electronica Futurelab and AE Solutions as well as Management Services.

The Center is the Museum of the Future – the place where all the diverse blends of artistic genres, scientific domains and technological directions are displayed and processed. Biotechnology and genetic engineering, neurology, robotics, prosthetics and media art are juxtaposed here on equal terms and form experimental arrays conducive to testing ways in which we might be interacting and communicating with our surroundings and other human beings in the very near future, and getting the impression of what these changes will mean for us and our society. All exhibitions focus on issues having to do with how people can deal with their environment, and offer a variety of perspectives on our nature, our origins and our world. An extensive set of methodological tools is available to provide visitors with multifarious approaches to and ways of looking at the challenges posed by everyday life. Here, the emphasis isn’t just on interaction with exhibits on display; it’s on participation. The exhibitions are continuously being reworked and updated. What you won’t find here is a bunch of “Do Not Touch” signs; you’re cordially invited to enjoy a hands-on experience. 

The focus of this presentation is the fundamental question - How do we facilitate participatory democracy in the digital domain? How do we frame civic spaces promoting digital democracy for the triangulation of Collections – Connectivity – Communities. Collections are perceived as embedded knowledge systems with layers of significance, visualised as predominantly ‘tangible’ things in the digital domain. The intangible elements once digitised become only documentary heritage, museumising that which is living. Connectivity provides the means, and not the end, for access, engagement and interactivity through the affordances and possibilities in the digital domain. However, stakeholder communities, in all their meanings, manifestations, cultural understandings; and the multitude of publics and audiences remain in the liminal space between the collections and connectivities. The Inclusive Museum Knowledge Community is an open ended project that endeavours to bring the three elements into a discourse to address the complexity and triangulation and situating it in the shifting paradigm of culture in sustainable development.

The ICOM Cultural Diversity Charter underlines the axiomatic principle - DIGITAL DOMAIN: To understand the differences between digitisation, digital access and digital heritage, to support digital access in all activities, and to recognise that digital access is not a substitute for return, restitution and repatriation’. (http://inclusivemuseum.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/ICOM_Cultural_Diversity_Charter.pdf)

The 28th General Assembly of ICOM, meeting on 17 August, 2013, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, resolved  to ‘Evaluate the extent to which programs and ICOM activities are in accordance with the 2010 Cultural Diversity Charter of ICOM adopted in Shanghai and implement a policy of gender equality as an integral part of the strategic directions of ICOM’. In this context the Inclusive Museum Knowledge Community endeavours to facilitate discursive crossings in the range of cultural borders that we either cross, or transgress if you will, as we create meanings that appear seamless but nevertheless hegemonic. 

The dynamic processes through which human rights are sought and claimed, awarded and denied, are not confined to discrete legal or governmental domains but rather embedded in the values and practices of individuals and institutions across a variety of social, cultural political and media spheres. With this understanding of human rights, museums – it can be argued – have occupied a unique (indeed, privileged) position as highly trusted and visible institutions that hold the capacity to not only reflect but to challenge and reconfigure normative ways of thinking and talking about equality.

Museums are sites which embody and publicly articulate moral standpoints on rights-related issues, sometimes explicitly – for example in human rights museums – but also implicitly in the narratives and silences that museums of all kinds shape and present. The effects and consequences of these morally loaded narratives, though diffuse and often difficult to capture and measure, can extend beyond museum visitors to reach much broader audiences through a variety of networks and media.

However, a suite of interrelated trends – including the proliferation of media forms made possible through digital innovation; changes in the way audiences interact and engage with diverse media; and a turn towards more participatory and co-creative practices within the cultural sector – are opening up new challenges, and well as opportunities, for museums that take on human rights and related issues of social justice, fairness and equality. Drawing on a range of examples and recent research this paper explores how these trends are impacting museum practice, audiences and, more broadly, the climate within which human rights can be claimed and denied.

Professor Srinivasan argues that we must re-think the global expansion of technologies away from simple ideas of access and embrace diverse cultural and community-based value systems. This talk explores the ways in which diverse communities on the margins of today's world are re-making and subverting technologies, shaping literacy and development in rural India, indigenous knowledge systems in Native American digital museums, and political revolutions within the Arab Spring. This talk argues that to empower diversity and support social justice and democratization we must pay attention step away from the design laboratories of Silicon Valley and look at the vast ways in which cultures and communities are attempting to engage with the digital age.

The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom and one of the world's greatest research libraries with a rich and diverse collection exceeding 150 million items representing every age of written civilisation. Books, journals, manuscripts, maps, stamps, music, patents, photographs, newspapers, sound recordings and now UK websites make up this vast and growing cultural heritage resource.

With millions of digitised and digital items held and counting, the role of the curator as custodian of an increasingly electronic collection continues to evolve. The sheer scale of these complex digital collections poses unique opportunities and challenges for cultural heritage staff and requires fresh skillsets and perspectives to ensure these resources are leveraged to their full potential. This presentation will explore some of the key shifts underway in traditional curatorial practice through the lens of the exciting work undertaken by the Digital Curator team at the British Library.

Art museums have been utilizing mobile in the form of transportable audio programs to support exhibition content since the earliest documented audio tours in the 1950s. Those early initiatives set the foundation for many of today’s mobile websites and applications for museums. The Museum of Modern Art’s own mobile program was launched after the onsite wand-based audio program was made free in 2004, providing a core content base upon which to build. Throughout subsequent projects that include various apps and mobile websites, MoMA has striven to support the educational mission of the museum, which is focused on encouraging an ever-deeper understanding and enjoyment of modern and contemporary art by the diverse local, national, and international audiences that the museum serves.

This session will explore how the various mobile apps and websites support, enhance, and extend the interpretive programs of the museum. Integral to all of MoMA’s projects has been an ongoing research effort that analyzes visitor behavior, knowledge, and interests, combined with continuous monitoring of best practices in the fast moving and ever-changing mobile landscape. Undeniably, mobile has become integrated into our everyday lives. We find directions and answers to questions that arise in casual conversation; we communicate with friends and family; we share images, links and news items; we read magazines, books, and blogs. Mobile has untethered us from our desktops and laptops and enabled us to be digitally connected at all times. The question for museums and cultural organizations is what role do we play in this new mobile landscape? How do we use these new tools to support the museum’s curatorial goals and programs? And how do we organize ourselves to undertake these new initiatives?

The rapid advancement of technology has transformed modern society. In the museum field, these advancements have had a significant influence on learning and experiencing cultural objects and the heritage associated with those objects. Museums throughout the world have adapted various digital media strategies in exhibition design, spatial and floor planning, educational outreach, and social media interaction to take advantage of this shifting paradigm. Consequently, integrating new media interpretation into exhibition planning has become a standard practice for enhancing the museum experience.

As part of technology evolution, museums are facing constant innovation in digital media. This presents both challenges and opportunities. If properly harnessed these can offer museums great potential but must be used wisely. Employing the vast array of interpretive media in the museum exhibit must be carefully and “thoughtfully” planned. It should assess their target audience and consider the use of only such technologies and practices appropriate for a given exhibit that is consistent with the purposes of the exhibition and core values. The selection of technology tools and the desired goals must be clearly defined. However, the quality of digital content is more important than technology – this should be a guiding principle. Sustaining the aesthetic is the core value that makes a museum exhibit what it truly is; yet balancing educational interpretation with entertainment in the application of new technologies is critical.

This session focuses on the intricate balance among objects, interpretation, and technology in the context of preserving cultural heritage. It describes the process of planning, developing, and organizing the Yuan Ming Yuan—Qing Emperors’ Splendid Gardens exhibit, as an example of a comprehensive approach in applying new media tools for storytelling. In addition, it will also address issues raised in the context of digital curation especially digital preservation and sustainability.

Museum Centre Vapriikki Tampere is one of the largest and the most popular museums in Finland with its 13 000 square meters of museum space and over 140 000 annual visitors. Vapriikki has gone through major renovations during the last five years. All the permanent exhibitions have been totally renewed and at the same time the concept of permanent exhibitions has been radically changed.

The future development of the Museum Centre Vapriikki has now started. It includes the coming of the three special museums (National Postal Museum, Mineral Museum and Mediamuseum Rupriikki) under the roof of Vapriikki from 2014 onwards.

In my presentation I will focus on the ideas, concepts, dramaturgy and implementation of the new exhibition design in four different exhibitions in Vapriikki. Tampere 1918 exhibition on the Finnish Civil War was the first of the major renovation projects of the permanent displays in Vapriikki. This project was followed by the exhibitions “City of Tammerkoski Rapids” (2009) and “Innovations” (2008−2012).  All of these exhibitions are shedding their light on special themes related to the history and contemporary life in Tampere and all of these permanent exhibitions were made with different museological ideas and approaches. I will elaborate these aspects more deeply and concentrate first on the European Museum of the Year special commendation awarded Tampere 1918 exhibition, and discuss how to create strong emotional feelings in the exhibition. I will then go more into detail to the other exhibitions with some international comparison and reveal some secrets and new perspectives of my current project: creating the permanent and temporary exhibitions of the Finnish Postal Museum to be opened in September 2014.

I will be mainly looking at the changes in the exhibition design through three aspects: 1) Storytelling and the sharing of information 2) Experiences 3) Participatory aspects. Moreover I will present some viewpoints on the use of technology and on the physical and digital interfaces in the exhibitions.

Gagarin develops rich interactive media experiences for museums and institutions that allow people to experience stories vividly, to understand interesting content, and to share their discoveries with others.

How can one use interactive installations to further the narrative in exhibitions? And how this can be achieved through a dramaturgy in interaction?

There is a vague maxim out there saying that learning through interaction is better, but why is that exactly? This is not a strictly intellectual process. Seeing as learning, or rather, the will to learn is not an intellectual task. It has to do with emotion, motivation, somatic markers. This is why the audience needs to be engaged to learn.

To create a provocative narrative is essential; to surprise, to reveal, to... Yes provoke.

How to leverage those elicited emotions and fit them into a dramatic arc of the overall exhibition?

Institutional knowledge and the access to institutional knowledge will be touched upon with regards to how existing data can more easily lend itself to narrativization and or visualization.

Also the Wittgenstein concept of private language will be discussed in terms of the knowledge sharing aspect from science to technology. Where to narrative is needed in order to create an ease with which their knowledge can be transferred.

The use of semiotic signaling to communicate interaction will be analyzed and also how this squares with the projected future of flattening the design, where objects are no longer supposed to communicate their purpose in a vulgar way anymore. Here the difference between consumer products in continuous use will be compared with the daunting experience of stepping into a museum for the first time. What can exhibition design allow itself and what are its prerogatives and unique affordances?

Imagine creating a virtual exhibition space in your own house and being able to make the perfect place to expose your favorite digital art. Bartek is using +35 screens to create a seamless virtual display area in different compositions and shapes without a hint of a technology installation, all hidden by translucent mirrors. Being at the forefront of technology, digital art is exposed in 4K Ultra HD resolution and motions are put to moving 360 degrees displays - creating a strong immersive experience, all controlled from your Ipad. This installation is a perfect place to expose Bartek’s big passion to capture magic moments by flying his drones to the most distant place on earth and creating stunning videography. In this keynote, you will see how technology can bring your home to life in a completely different way and admire beautiful video photography from ancient limestone cliffs, archipelagos in Thailand, to waterfalls and volcanoes in Hawaii.

ABBA The Museum opened in May 2013 to tell the story of one of the greatest pop bands in history. In classic museum format, the museum features environments that resemble the places where the stars lived, worked and created the music, showcasing original clothing and props as well as interviews with the band members and their closest friends and colleagues. But unlike the classic museum, technology plays a vital role in the exhibition to aid telling the story and including the visitor with interactive features used to activate them and to challenge their skills. The exhibition features an interactive application system where visitors are invited to take on different roles in the band with singing, dancing and even stage performances. Visitors’ experiences are saved by each application in various formats onto the visitor’s ticket and the visitor can later enjoy them and download them from the website.

This talk will focus on the interactive applications and the system architecture used in the museum and highlight some of the gains and difficulties of using interactive applications in public places. 

The City of Stockholm will welcome NODEM 2013 Conference international participants to a reception at Stockholm City Hall, which will include wine tasting and visit to one of capital’s famous tourist attractions, due to its grand ceremonial halls, and unique art collections. The Stockholm City Hall is the venue of the Nobel Prize banquet held on December 10th each year.

This article discusses how museum professionals are shifting their professional practices and emphasis of public engagement from social inclusion, accessibility and participation towards openness. Against this background we situate and present a part of our on-going research work in the AvoinGLAM initiative, more specifically we address a series of workshops conducted by the authors. The key objective of these workshops was to collectively develop strategies how to open content[1] and data held by Finnish cultural institutions, and how to open up professional processes for general public. In the workshop, the participants from cultural heritage and memory institutions performed predefined group works; for example they mapped possibilities and challenges of e.g. engaging various audiences and participatory approaches. The main questions that we address in this article are: How to motivate museums towards openness? What is the contribution that this discussion on openness can bring to the museums?

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.

Ever growing potential of locative media opens up new possibilities for working with archival materials and their placement in the context of public space. Similarly, wide range of affordable mobile devices gives a rise to new palette of archival practices and methods of collecting and documenting.  Slussen Project can be seen as a case study exemplifying a potential that this emergence offers in regard to archiving the social, cultural and historical aura of the space which is about to disappear.

The aim of this project was to analyze and protect from vanishing the ephemeral heritage that the old Slussen is leaving behind after being replaced with its successor. The ephemeral heritage is understood here as a range of non-intentional, intangible and ephemeral extensions that grew out of the structural and(dis)functional constraints and affordances of Slussen area. These might be stories, memories, relationships, acoustic situations or activities rooted in the very space and subsequently exposed to extinction once old Slussen is demolished. Systematic collection of geo-tagged sound-based material hence can be compared to a pro-active as oppose to retro-active archeology, aiming at sealing off the strata which in the future would be otherwise unreachable for profound excavating. The final stage of the project, which will be concluded in the future once the new architecture is completed, will aim at conceptualizing an immersive experience based on the analyzed findings. This time capsule – invisibly dispersed across new architecture of Slussen, although according to geographical references - due to the use of locative media technology will enable a non-linear, sonic experience, transporting listeners back to the ephemeral dimension of the old Slussen.

Besides Slussen Project, this presentation will shortly discuss other examples of employing locative technology to work with memory and its representation in public space.

Basics of Digital Engagement

How can you use a weblog to get more visitors to your museum? How can you turn

Facebook fans into paying members? In this workshop you will learn the basics about how

to turn your digital media platforms (Facebook, website, etc.) into engagement activities.

We focus on a simple framework for engagement and apply this to case studies whichParticipants will bring to the workshop.

Please note that this is a beginners workshop. Participants who are comfortable with digital engagement can better join the other workshops.

Interactive exhibitions make visitors actively participate in museums. 3D technologies are today mature and robust and provide endless opportunities: the numerous new variants for input (gesture, multi-touch, tangibility, 3D acquisitions) and output (projectors, see-through displays, 3D printers) make it possible to merge real and virtual worlds seamlessly. The involved activation of multiple senses builds high visitor engagement through all ages. In this talk, we show and discuss the enormous potential of integrating interactive 3D content into exhibitions and online visits, and we share recent experiences of the V-must.net European Network of Excellence.

No doubt that ICT has found it’s way into museums. Everyday museum visitors around the world are met by audio guides, touch screens, mobile applications and so on, filled with text, sound, video, games and other contents with the intend to improve the museum experience. However, many museums lack the resources and know-how needed to develop ICT, and in order to go down the digital road, museums establish partnerships with ICT design companies where curators, educators and other museum professionals collaborate with external interaction designers, creative directors, developers and the like.

In recent years, a great deal of the literature and research concerned with collaborative ICT design practices at museums has focused on collaboration and co-design with users and communities, for instance building on the notions of the ‘participatory museum’ (Simon 2010). Even though this is an extremely important area to look into, I argue that collaborative design practices taking place between museums and ICT design companies deserve more attention. To collaborate across organizational contexts is not an easy task, but to do so and to succeed is vital for reaching creative and innovative results (Sawyer 2007; Skot-Hansen 2008).

The aim of the paper is to explore empirically some of the contextual challenges for collaborative design between museums and ICT design companies. This is done by analysing data from longitudinal case studies of two quite dissimilar Danish museum projects where the collaboration with ICT design companies played an essential role. Finally, I discuss the implications of the findings for future collaboration between museums and ICT design companies.

The project presentation will focus on new visitor experiences developed by the Galata Sea and Migration Museum (Mu.MA) in Genoa (Italy) in partnership with ETT S.p.A. ICT company.

This collaboration has already produced several permanent exhibitions, where new technologies better “explain the message” that the museum wants to impart. The first was the “Nazario Sauro” pre-show, an exhibition that reveals life in a submarine. Then came the Memories and Migration (MEM) section, which tells the history of emigration from, and immigration to, Italy by presenting real migrant stories. On a fully recreated 17th century Genoese galley, visitors enjoy an interactive experience with the “crew”. The new Christopher Columbus section has portraits and video-audio renditions of his documents in various languages.

These exhibitions integrate original content with innovative solutions such as high-resolution monitors, interactive touch-screen interfaces, 3D reconstructions, proximity sensors, gaming simulations, augmented reality applications and interactive projections with on-screen actors; ensuring complete visitor immersion, and promoting and renewing interest and involvement. The museum aims to revitalise communication with visitors, transforming them from passive to active through an “immersive” experience. This approach is based on the concepts of “knowing through doing” and “recognise by touching”, creating synergy with gallery artwork and environments, so that each age, academic and social group (from school children through to students, adults, parents and pensioners) will dynamically relate to the immersive visitor experience. Galata Museum’s renewal action was carried out creating meticulous cooperation between museum curators (original content and context) and ETT (experts in the fields of ICT interactivity and museology). This collaboration works when the two main objectives are satisfied: 1) enhancement of inherent value of content and context; 2) rapid return on investment through substantial visitor growth - especially true now that central government funding is progressively less. 

What is the public value of an online collection? Why should museums and archives invite digital artists to deconstruct and reimagine their online collections experience?

This paper argues that the traditional online collection- a database of object records- is fundamentally designed for research audiences, and presents very few opportunities for serendipitously engaging the casual browser. It will propose that in order to reach new audiences online, museums and archives should be less concerned with technical innovation and more interested in enabling and publishing creative reuse of collections; they should promote their collection as a resource bank to creative practitioners who design compelling digital experiences; and that designing digital heritage experiences to inspire curiosity and wonder is more important than facilitating learning.   

This paper will refer to the innovative Half Memory project as a case study. The project, developed by TWAM with Tusk Music and Pixel Palace, invited musicians, sound artists and film makers to use TWAM’s collections as a resource for creating engaging (digital) heritage outputs; outputs that recontextualised historical material in order to inspire new audiences.

This presentation will describe a unique project to put online the United Kingdom’s entire national collection of oil paintings in public ownership. The project was ten years in the making and involved creating a photographic record of over 210,000 paintings from 3,200 collection venues. The website –

www.bbc.co.uk/yourpaintings – was built in partnership with the BBC. The Your Paintings project dramatically improves public access to paintings in Britain. Eighty per cent of the physical works in this collection are in storage, and the majority had not been photographed before the project began.

A key aspect of the Your Paintings project involves the public tagging the paintings with keywords and subject information using the Your Paintings Tagger tool (http://tagger.thepcf.org.uk/). The public’s tags are fed through an algorithm to create high-quality tags that are used to help users search for paintings on Your Paintings. To date approaching 10,000 members of the public have signed up as Taggers. 

The PCF, a UK not-for-profit organization, has the objective of opening up art in UK public collections for enjoyment, learning and research. Following the completion of the oil painting digitisation programme, the PCF is now working on various initiatives, including plans to digitise the UK’s public sculpture collection. A key focus is keeping the Your Paintings resource up to date through updates from participating collections as well as through suggestions about missing information from the public. Building on this, the PCF is setting up a digital network – to be called Art Detective – that will provide pro bono expertise drawn from the UK and abroad for collections in need of help with art historical questions or information about subject matter. Art Detective will be operational in early 2014.

The presentation will discuss the benefits and challenges around collaboration between collections, the general public and individuals with specialist knowledge.

For the last two years, the CHESS project has been prototyping and evaluating visitor experiences in collaboration with Cité de l’Espace, a space technology centre in Toulouse. These experiences consist of fictional stories, told through the medium of an iPad, and incorporating a variety of media types including audio recordings, photographs, interactive games and augmented reality. Family groups are an important element of the visitor base at Cité, and the design and production process targets families with relatively young children.

Cité presents an interesting challenge for experience design, in that the site integrates elements of indoor and outdoor space. A domed exhibition hall contains small-scale interactive exhibits, whilst a large outdoor area presents replicas of key space technologies such as the Ariane 5 or Mir. Some outdoor exhibits also include indoor areas. Visitors can walk through the narrow corridors of the Mir, where they can see a recreation of life on a space station. They can also walk under the engines of an Ariane 5 and into an exhibition space that illustrates its design and use.

In designing and evaluating mobile experiences for this site, we have uncovered and explored a number of issues which are relevant to sites which integrate indoor and outdoor spaces, and which we report on in this paper. Key issues include:

• how to handle transitions from indoor to outdoor space

• how to support navigation in the absence of an all-encompassing location system (given that GPS works outdoors but not indoors)

• how to design interfaces that are robust in the presence of high levels of natural light

• the impact of experiences on visitors who are not engaged in them.

Research presented in our paper draws on observational studies of visitors interacting with prototype experiences, and on participatory design sessions with museum professionals.

This paper aims at presenting the findings of a study on the documentation and visualization of the artefacts, “process” and “knowledge” relative to exhibition design inside a wider digital repository of temporary exhibitions.
The contemporary cultural offer is always richer of temporary events and exhibitions, that come in quick succession and are fast realized, so it’s very difficult to keep track of this important contemporary cultural production. Events and exhibition often provide the catalogue of the art works but there isn’t any documentation about the exhibition itself.
At the same time the exhibition design practice about the cultural events is a mean for the staging and of experience of culture; it’s also a mirror of an articulate system of knowledge, processes, techniques, materials, design and designers that represent the culture of the project about the Temporary.
This contribution proposes an analysis of the contemporary models of conserving, archiving and communicating the memory of the “Temporary” through a critical interpretation of cluster of several case studies; it studies also on the potential about the ICT (virtual reality, cultural web, user generated content and so on) in the visualization and experience of the cultural heritage.
The project “Digital archive of the temporary cultural exhibitions” was an opportunity to study the potential of design to elaborate new models, styles and narrative frameworks for a renovated experience of the temporary exhibition.
This research project proposes a new way of archiving, promoting and enhancing the ephemeral nature of temporary exhibitions. In fact the “Digital archive of the temporary cultural exhibitions” collects heterogeneous and complex set of documentation as sketches, maquettes, technical drawings, pictures, video, interviews and so on. We can explore this digital archive through three different paths: the historical masters (where the user can find several exhibitions made by the most famous designers in the past), different exhibition for same place (where the user can do a comparison among different exhibitions in the same place) and contemporary experiences (where the user can immerge himself in the narration of the process of exhibition). This last part is focused on the “exhibition design knowledge” as an emblematic form of contemporary heritage. With the expression “exhibition design knowledge” we indicate the complex set of knowledge and skills that is mobilized during the process of exhibition design, from concept to realisation. Different configurations of knowledge and relational dynamics among the actors involved in the exhibition design process (from project to installation) play an important role in shaping exhibitions arrangements. In example, we detected three knowledge dimensions like: cognitive knowledge (systematic application of knowledge and skills like the ideative, design, productive), collaborative knowledge (exchange and transmission of knowledge and skills among the actors), contextual knowledge (interpretation of the context, and adaptation of knowledge to the situation, exploitation of latent cognitive systems).
The integration of design and exhibition design knowledge about practices and skills represents, in itself, a form of heritage that mixes traditional cultural elements with innovative practices, and is worth conceiving as a culturally valuable layer of contents to be both exhibited and documented.
These aspects innovatively challenge and reconfigure the strategies of exhibition design practices interpretation, documentation and archiving asking for an approach that combines design and new media.

Futuristic History is a two-year research project started in January 2013, implemented in cooperation with University of Turku and VTT Technical Research Center of Finland. Its goal is to research and develop augmented reality based solutions and business models for tourism and culture. TEKES, The Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation, is funding the project and there are several partners from ICT, travel and museum sectors.

The project creates working prototypes, which present historically important locations in new, interesting ways. Special focus is on augmented reality techniques, which mix digital content with real-life environments. Finding economical and efficient ways to make such content is also an essential part of the work. It is investigated what kind of business models would be feasible and attractive in museum context.

The target locations of the project are in the region of Turku, which is the former capital of Finland and has several historically interesting sites. We have already completed a mobile 3D virtual guide of a short-lived 16th century church in Turku. Other target locations include Luostarinmäki handicraft museum, which is the only preserved part of 18th century wooden city of Turku, and the Louhisaari manor, one of the rare palatial style manors in Finland. In these locations, the original residents’ daily life and work will be presented using augmented reality solutions. We may also be able to reveal hidden details or let physically disabled persons to look through walls of difficult-to-access rooms. In central Turku, old photographs will be used to give a virtual view of some buildings that have been demolished long ago.

We present the goals and production principles behind the prototypes implemented during the project. We also briefly discuss the challenges and opportunities of bringing augmented reality solutions to the museum settings from both the museum professionals’ and end-users’ perspectives.

With those questions in mind, the intention and challenge for the Nordes 2013 Design Research Exhibition was to expand on current notions of staging research enquires in design research conference contexts. Artefacts, installations, performances, and other materialities that relates to the theme of the conference - Experiments in Design Research – were displayed as tools to express and communicate different design research enquires. Through this paper we will describe the Nordes exhibition as a specific case that renders questions visible in regards of how to utilize a design research exhibition. Furthermore, we suggest ways of inviting participants to explore what role exhibitions and all its materialities can play in design research through a ‘design-research kit’.

MDC is focal point of croatian museum network.  It is a center where learning initiatives and the sharing knowledge and experience take place, particulary in the field of vast range of museum activities, documentation and digitalization of museum holdings. 

Since 2004. MDC has  u crucial role in the introduction of a software package for managing museum objects to all croatian museum network, setting up data from museum databases and improving the computer processing of museum items in general.
The implementation of new IT to MDC and museum sector is resulted by their increasing production of digital contents that could be presented online.

The paper is dealing with the strategy plan of  projecting the digital repository for digital content of each museum and the role of MDC as single domain aggregator.  That is and could be a sound platform for different project in future. Also, the need for cross domain aggregator is stressed.

As an example, the project of the new release of Guide to Croatian Museum and Collection is presented. Using QR code , which is on the cover of publication, one is directed to access MDC's  databases; Register of Museums, Galleries and Collections and Register of Museums, Collections and Treasuries owned by Religious Communities where most updated additional information on Croatian museums and collections is available.

MDC is focal point of croatian museum network.  It is a center where learning initiatives and the sharing knowledge and experience take place, particulary in the field of vast range of museum activities, documentation and digitalization of museum holdings.

Since 2004. MDC has  u crucial role in the introduction of a software package for managing museum objects to all croatian museum network, setting up data from museum databases and improving the computer processing of museum items in general.
The implementation of new IT to MDC and museum sector is resulted by their increasing production of digital contents that could be presented online. 

The paper is dealing with the strategy plan of  projecting the digital repository for digital content of each museum and the role of MDC as single domain aggregator.  That is and could be a sound platform for different project in future. Also, the need for cross domain aggregator is stressed.

As an example, the project of the new release of Guide to Croatian Museum and Collection is presented. Using QR code , which is on the cover of publication, one is directed to access MDC's  databases; Register of Museums, Galleries and Collections and Register of Museums, Collections and Treasuries owned by Religious Communities where most updated additional information on Croatian museums and collections is available.

In January 2015 Stockholm’s National Museum of Science and Technology will open a new science center.

“The Creative Brain” - an innovative arena for interactive experience-based learning - explores how imagination and consciousness enable innovation, broadening the horizons of what we can envision. Art, science, culture and technology are blended into sensorial and physical experiences.

The aims are to encourage visitors to work creatively together with innovation, and to be accessible for all regardless of capabilities. Three concepts are the underlying foundation of the science center:

• For everyone
• Togetherness
• Service and care

The science center’s primary target group is children aged 3-12 - regardless of their abilities - who come accompanied by families or classes. We are collaborating with several disability organizations and to meet visitor’s demands and expectations, we are working with our target groups via a collaborative project (Nina Simon, “The Participatory Museum”):

• Pre-school and school children
• Children with disabilities
• Families
• Educators

Still in an early stage, we have held workshops where ideas regarding service, accessibility and experience-based content have arisen with participant group members being used as advisors and consultants.

Participants will test and help develop exhibition design, content and its educational programs. Some will serve continuously as advisors and others as co-producers with the museum, project architects and interactive designers.

This learning process is a new way of making exhibitions for us. We wish to present our experiences and pose questions to attendees also working in collaborative projects involving children:

• What are our expectations?
• Selecting participants
• Participant meetings; creating collaboration, who/what are we listening to/for?
• Assuring the collaboration succeeds; what’s in it for participants?
• Assimilating these experiences
• Make sure the collaborative process continues after the opening
• Will this collaborative project change future exhibition planning?

Time Trails is a collaboration between Royal Albert Memorial Museum and Art Gallery (RAMM), 1010 Media, University of Exeter, and the Exeter City Football Club Supporters Trust (2013). The project researched the use of trails as a means to encounter and respond to RAMM's collections outside the museum in conjunction with content and branding provided by other partners, most prominently Exeter City Football Club Supporters Trust. Drawing on research into trails (Ingold 2000 and 2007) and into trajectories as a way of designing mixed reality environments (Benford and Giannachi 2011), and focussing in particular on the orchestration of time, space, and role, Time Trails investigated the curation of encounters with hybrid collections and archives via the creation of a number of chronological trails (e.g. Roman, Tudor, World War 2) and thematic trails (e.g. health and sport) that lead visitors through the city of Exeter. These trails can be further annotated by users via social media. Time Trails explored how users benefit from engaging creatively with hybrid collections outside the museum; how trails can be used by schools, the tourist industry, and local communities to raise cultural awareness and bring together diverse user groups. The framework developed from this project identifies the benefits of creative experiences of museum collections outside the museum, allowing organisations to engage audiences with objects which are not on display; learn how to stimulate creativity, reflection and self-documentation and facilitate free-style mobile learning in mixed reality environments; increase audience reach with social media to encourage participation among users who do not habitually visit museums; reconnect objects with the locations they were originally associated with and relate locations to different values; promote well-being by encouraging walking and collaborating with organisations that work with cultural tourists and local communities, including children who are at risk of disengaging from education.

Since 2006, the City Museum of Stockholm has published images depicting artifacts and photographs from the museum collections on the website Stockholmskällan (www.stockholmskallan.se). The website provides images ranging from historical photos of the city, art objects, cultural artifacts to historical documents and records. The website is a collaboration between cultural heritage institutions and the Stockholm Education Administration. The museum selects website content to fit the primary target audience: school children and students in primary and senior secondary school, age twelve to 20 years.

On the website, about 50 guides for teachers are available, with examples of how they can use the digitized heritage resources in their teaching. The website displays search results in four different ways, in order to match pupils’ and students’ different learning styles. A popular feature on the website is “Compare Map”, which makes it possible to compare historical maps with today’s map.

As part of Stockholmskällan, there is also a smartphone app called Historical Stockholm Images (Historiska Stockholmsbilder). The app makes it possible to search for images based on the user’s current geographic position. The user can also upload her/his own personal photo of the location and provide personal comments.

Classification map

The City Museum also publishes a classification map , (kartor.stockholm.se/bios/dpwebmap/cust_sth/kul/klassificering/DPWebMap.html )

which displays historically important buildings and archeological remains. The website visitor can use this map to access additional related information.

The Digital City Museum

In April 2013, another website, the Digital City Museum (digitalastadsmuseet.stockholm.se), was launched. The aim of this new initiative is to publish all the information and images with historical content that is available in digitized format. As of today, 33 000 items are digitally catalogued and published, including images of original photographs, objects, and various types of documents including treaties and records. The Digital City Museum also contains digitized museum records such as the records of available original photographic images and the list of keywords used in the museum catalog system.

In the Digital City Museum, not only keyword and title searches can be performed, but also full text searches on available covering documents. This enables visitors to efficiently find historical information and knowledge. For example, the location of the former street Kokhusgränd is described in an archeological report from 2000; this information is easy to retrieve from the website, but would be very difficult to find without the website.

In essence, the Digital City Museum is an information hub with automation functions that integrate data from various databases and other sources.  Through the system, visitor access to historical photographic images is also greatly simplified. Add-in functions are available for download, which enable loading of photographic images into MS Word and MS PowerPoint.

Over the past three and a half years we, at Statens Museum for Kunst have been working on the implementation of CollectionSpace as our new Collections Management System. As early adopters we have gathered valuable experience participating in community driven open source development from the project out spring.

CollectionSpace is a web-based collections management system developed in open-source. Museum of the Moving Image, NY has been the project lead, while the technical development has been carried out by organisations in USA, Canada and United Kingdom. Early adopters include Fine Arts and Cultural Heritage Institutions, as well as University collections of a.o. Anthropology and Natural Sciences.

CollectionSpace is based on the SPECTRUM standard which is internationally accepted as a leading standard for Collections Management. CollectionSpace is designed to be independent of collection type; and to be configurable to each organization's needs. By multi tenancy it is possible to run several instances of CollectionSpace on one installation which is a great benefit for organizations with diverse collections.

In CollectionSpace there is a distinction between the Core application and different domains common to specific types of museums. As a leading art museum in the project we were asked to define the Fine Arts Domain in CollectionSpace. Other domains include: Performing Arts, Digital Media, Herbaria, Anthropology, and Visual Resources.

Besides presenting the CollectionSpace project and our implementation at SMK, I would like to discuss the considerations and reasoning leading to the decision to engage in an open source project as early on as we did; the risks involved in early involvement; as well as our experiences gathered in the course of the project. There is no doubt that it has been a substantially larger job than foreseen at project start, but we are still confident that our decision was the right one.

Innovations in digital cultural communication for museums demand us to develop appropriate methods for participation in curatorial processes, as well as to rethink the role of audiences inside exhibitions. Moreover, hybrid and pervasive digital technologies prompts us to rethink relations between heritage and technology to include temporal and imaginative aspects of cultural heritage inside as well as outside the museum institutions.

I present experiences from an interactive exhibition experiment, Digital Natives, in which we combined principles and methods from anthropology, and Scandinavian participatory design, with issues of contemporary digital culture to explore possibilities for co-creating dialogic forms of digital heritage. I elaborate on the collaborative design process; involving teenagers, anthropologists, interaction designers and programmers through the course of eight months, and its consequences upon establishing the design space, and negotiating issues and imaginations of contemporary digital cultural heritage.

The project shows that the framing of the participatory design process and the final exhibition outcome are closely interlinked, and have profound consequences for creating emergent hybrid spaces and ecologies for dialogue and interaction between everyday practices of audiences, and heritage issues in the museum exhibition

Exploring the potentials for connecting audiences’ everyday cultures to issues of heritage inside the museum in this way, shifts the common focus from technologies as heritage communication, to a view on sites of cultural production and transformation through which living and emergent forms of cultural heritage can be created through dialogic processes of ‘worldmaking’. More profoundly, the research provides promising results towards rethinking technology in museums, not as heritage communication of the past inside the museum, but as an imaginative and hybrid material for constructing emergent cultural futures, based on the past and present.    

The ubiquitous computing technology has realized Andre Malraux’s ideal of “museums without walls” to a certain degree by increasing the accessibility in the digital world. The abundant mobile applications available now concerning multimedia guide, podcast publication, and education games serve as attractive communication channels to reach out for the visitors while offering alternative exhibition interpretations with interaction possibilities. However, to those medium-small size museums, the mobile application are often not applied due to limited resources in budget and personnel. Therefore, a distributed mobile guide application platform in being developed and on its way to meet the needs in Finland as well as in other Nordic countries. To bring this distributed mobile guide application in use to Asia, this paper is to take a Finnish art exhibition that will be hosted in Beijing China as a case study, to explore how to localize this application in terms of the user interface design, information architecture, social media strategy, and location aware service. The cross-cultural communication features of a museum mobile application, is then the core issue here to speak in general. Ideally, there is no border online and mobile, however except the linguistic challenge and the telecommunication infrastructure condition, the user experience also varies significantly from culture to culture. The development of museum history is to go democratic from the social cultural aspect of the institution to the involving participants targeted by museum exhibitions and education programs. The mobile application is in line with it and can be influential in many dimensions, especially in China. The goal of this application is to increase the impact of the exhibition, to generate societal discussion, and to enhance cultural exchange. Along with the implementation after the concept design, challenges will be identified in a concrete sense and be dealt with, technically and theoretically.

This paper describes ex-ante the process of developing a framework for establishing a digital resource at National Museums Northern Ireland (NMNI). The content of the digital resource is provided through high resolution digitisation of the original Olympics class ship drawings and plans including “Titanic”. This collaborative exercise is carried out with a view to registering a strong beneficial impact, using the “Balanced Value Impact” (BVI) tool to seek and justify funding.

For any Impact analysis to be trusted as good evidence on which to base a major decision (such as strategy, policy or funding), the perspective of resource managers and the context in which it is established need to be clearly and transparently stated.  After providing a short introduction of the BVI model and tool kit which had been published by Dr Simon Tanner (Deputy Head of Digital Humanities at Kings College London) in 2012 under “Creative Commons” non commercial use, license. This paper will explain the collaborative and multi disciplinary process of digitizing large ship drawings (up to 6 meters long) to a very high resolution using a Kyoto University IDElab scanner technology. The project was managed by ideaScan Ltd, UK and was sponsored by NMNI’s Head of Collections Management.

Finally the paper will make suggestions for a design and analysis process which will establish the digital resource related to the content described. In line with BVI recommendations this study shall suggest appropriate contextualisation of the stakeholders, user communities and target audiences whilst being mindful of the investments which address challenges such as viewing software for big data accessibility, high definition screens, and interactivity.

Structured Digital Engagement

What role does digital media play in the media mix of a museum? How can digital media help your institution achieve its mission? This workshop introduces the Digital Engagement Framework, a much used tool to structure digital engagement in institutions. Using input from the participants, we will discover how your institution can structure and enhance its digital and traditional media activities.

Museums today try to ride the digital wave by developing and especially maintaining digital products like smartphone apps, info-screens and new websites as well as being present on portals like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Flickr. The development and maintenance work is both time-consuming and expensive – and often the museums will have difficulties assessing the quality of the counseling provided by the IT-development companies. 

In a collaboration between a group of museums and the Danish Broadcasting Corporation (DR) the focus is on building a sustainable and open platform that can distribute data to different digital products. 

In our presentation the steps of the collaboration will be explained, including the development of a series of digital products (eg. apps for smartphones, info-screens and a website) for small and medium-sized museums and a shared domain, where all involved digital objects are search- and shareable. DR's strategy for the development of an open sourced “back-end” platform CHAOS: \ _ (Cultural Heritage Archive Open System), which serves as the backbone in DR's wish for flexible use of digital content from the heritage partners, is introduced. The creation of new content using methods from journalism, and not traditional museum communication, is described. Finally, in this phase of the project where most of the smartphone apps are launched, the key learnings are explored. 

The project shows that the smaller museums involved have come much farther than even larger institutions can come on their own. Together, it is possible to save money, develop the institutions, gain valuable knowledge and insight on how users want to explore valuable heritage content, and create new formats and platforms. When public cultural institutions share skills, content and technology, significant value is being created. 

Museums and other cultural heritage institutions have developed and experimented with applications providing online access to their collections. Whilst doing so, they face many challenges, both technical and intellectual. Many scientists and scholars follow the initiatives of the cultural heritage sector in the digital domain with much interest. In recent years, several research projects have worked with cultural heritage institutions to develop methods and techniques to provide access to and interpretation of objects online museum collections.[1] The Agora project [2] of the VU University Amsterdam is such research project. In addition it reflects on digitally mediated public history.

            In this paper, we will argue that the online access to cultural heritage raises questions about the nature of historical events and narratives. Museums not only provide information; they also support the interpretation of objects.[1] [3] Stories help us to interpret and value objects. As such, online cultural heritage contributes to the field of e-humanities in a specific manner. Rather than starting with big sets of data and ending with the interpretation of the cultural patterns found in those data; the design of applications in the domain of cultural heritage starts with the study of cases - people, objects and events - with the aim of providing and supporting narrative interpretations of those cases.

In order to maintain the permanence of art, knowledge and cultural heritage, museums started to employ varying interaction modes by taking advantage of the advanced networking and displaying technologies (Bullivant, 2006; Hughes, 2010). The analysis of the latest interactive exhibitions and works showed that spatially organized mediated tools have improved museums’ roles in conveying information through participation but not inventive enough to transform them into interactive spaces (Lorenc, Skolnick, & Berger, 2006; Caulton, 1998; Simone, 2010). However, the narrations of exhibitions, which structure our perception and communication on the basis of making meaning, have the potential to provide a context for communicating with the content as well as selecting the tools and shaping and linking varying interactive experiences (Bruner, 1990; Kolko, 2007; Porteous et al., 2010). This paper searches for alternative solutions to generate innovative narrations guided by the architectural quality of the space and digital technologies, to bring novelty to the design of interactive exhibitions and contribute to the interpretative processes of museums.

This project presentation will sum-up the objective and methodology of documentation of the endangered craft knowledge of some milanese masters during the two years research project Contemporary Authentic (http://archivio.contemporaryauthentic.com).

Craft knowledge and skills, like traditions and behaviors, can be considered a form of Intangible Cultural Heritage here defined as “typical knowledge”. Even if craft appears physically in objects or products, in fact, has an immaterial form whose visibility is critical: it’s often easier to save the physical product of craft, but saving all information related to the context, the handcraft abilities and techniques it’s ever more complex. 

The “Contemporary Authentic/Milano” project, developed by the research group Design for Cultural Heritage of Politecnico di Milano, developed an articulated strategy of “craft documentation and activation” by digital technologies: video narration, on line repository, mobile app etc enabling a distributed access to the digital archive and an enriched smart fruition in the context of Expo 2015. The presentation will illustrate and discuss the results, re-applicability and innovative findings of the project (visualisation tools and media, identity system, touristic itineraries) that go beyond the state of art for their systematic approach that bridge documentation and fruition.

With its political influence in decline, the once mighty Australian trade union movement is now exploring new ways to bring working-class history into public space. Individual unions now experiment with integrations of interactive technology and significant public sites, with varying success. This paper explores one of these projects – in which the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) has sought to register the union’s militancy on the Port Melbourne waterfront. The paper reflects on some problems arising in linking public place, memorial events and mediated, digitised interaction.

The MUA was formed in 1993, out of an amalgamation of a number of Australian waterfront unions, all of them with long histories of industrial militancy and leadership in progressive social movements, from aboriginal rights to anti- nuclear campaigning. With a strong cultural memory expressed in printed text, the union has been trying for more than a decade to create some form of public space reflecting on union history in Melbourne. This effort has now been concentrated on one pier, Princes Pier, and one event, the shooting of striking waterside workers by police in 1928. The union has sought to broaden connections with local residents and the local historical society in this effort. These activities have included plans for a museum, digital data storage, newsletters, walking tours and memorial events on the pier itself.

After lengthy discussions with port authorities, local residents and political representatives, the pier has now been, in part, restored and the new space includes digitised touch screens exploring waterfront history.  It now seems that in 2014 a fixed plaque will register a few key aspects of the 1928 dispute, to be explained in more detail via an Internet site. Disputes over plaque wording will no doubt be resolved in web data – which becomes a repository of material that cannot be presented in fixed displays.

The sense of working-class identity sought by the MUA is not always consistent with such other reconstructive efforts, nor in the first instance, with the opportunities of digitisation. Understandably the former workers and their supporters want to mediate in visitors’ haptic experiences through fixed, tangible and material items. However the very diverse memories of place, the sequence of waterfront activity separate from unionism (wartime troop movements and post-war immigrant arrivals for example) that can be presented by way of digitised mediation, militate against the historical sequence that the union might want to communicate. The paper reflects on tensions, in relation to local cultural memory. It is argued here that whilst digitising makes a range of historical data available it perhaps diminishes any coherent sense of cultural memory, especially one grounded in working-class identity. The visitor’s experience of the public space of Princes Pier is unavoidably diluted in this process. An insistence on a memorial and recognition in fixed material culture is probably justifiable. But how to use digital technologies to enrich a visitor’s sense of movement through and beyond the site, in either walking trails or memorial events, remains an open question; some answers will be suggested in this paper.

Founded in 1816, the Städel museum is a well renowned German art museum and faces several challenges: We’ve 100.000+ exhibits. But we can only show 99% of them. We’re engaged in more than 50 different educational programs. But we haven’t found a way addressing the diversified global audience needs through digital channels. We jumped into the digital world starting to digitise our content centrally, making it findable through semantic search. In a joint project we developed an exhibit platform realising a concept we call “digital strolling”.

Digital strolling redefines digital visits of a museum. Physically strolling through a museum means interacting with others, getting inspirations and exploring new content. The Google Museum approach is not a generically digital way as people would get information how an exhibit looks like and where it resides. Transferring this information cannot replace impressions given facing the original.

Real digital offerings should enrich the visitor’s initial interest, deliver more than requested and ignite interest in new topics.

The semantic search engine achieves this by intuitively matching digitised multimedia content which is based on a complex system indexing unstructured and structured data related to our exhibits.

Compared to lexical searching, the visitor gets a nudge to new but relevant content without being aware of it before. It supports digital visitors finding a path through vast offerings of digitised exhibits: Semantic searching brings up results being intrinsically relevant.

Digital visitors can save their visiting paths and also share and discuss with them with others. This goes toward high-quality consumer curation thanks to the inner semantic logic. Though not being comparable to art historians’ curations, it helps digital visitors expressing themselves better than submitting Facebook “likes” or pictures on Pinterest and alike. (Live demo planned).

This paper examines a Museum projects that deals with Communities of Knowledge (CoWs) and Communities of Practice (CoPs) as related to Memory and Heritage. These communities came to be as a result of the need to create a new system of knowledge gathering and dissemination in the form of a 3D historical reconstruction for the Vrouw Maria project. Participation by these communities in the project led to a retrieval and reorganization of memory related to heritage. The community participants in the project were experts of their own respective spheres of knowledge. The project facilitated an exchange of knowledge that was materialized both virtually and physically: The Vrouw Maria interactive virtual reality installation allows the museum guests to “visit” the underwater heritage site of the noted 17th Century shipwreck.

In the project, the participating communities contributed with knowledge about acoustics, archeology, architecture, biology, computer science, design, new media, maritime history, and sound design, among other topics. From the beginning the project’s objective was that the work would operate within the Museum’s context. Knowledge would be transferred from closed communities of specialists to the general public through their interaction with an open system that uses multimodal, embodied, representations.

In this paper I examine the choices made in the design that supports such open system. I focus on the interaction design as interplay between a narrative and a ludic approach to interaction and navigation in 3D space. As a conclusion I would like to stress three factors: 1) Successful interactive installations must really empower people. 2) In systems design this mostly happens by creating open systems that accommodate to the interactor. 3) In addition to the difficult task involved in these two previous guidelines, media art applications designed for the Museum carry on the added responsibility of clearly communicating knowledge to the audiences.

An archive in the basement of KUNSTEN Museum of Modern Art in Denmark has turned out to be an interesting case study for preserving a new kind of museum object: the big, bulky, and messy collection of cultural heritage, art, everyday objects, and personal items. Digitizing, cataloguing, and mapping this kind of archive forces us to either choose to focus on a single object or the overall archival and museological organization of objects. 

This paper presents the ideas and background behind a digital mapping project based on Mogens Otto Nielsen’s mail art archive. Firstly, I will give an introduction to the archive and the art movement it represents, and secondly, I will focus on the challenges, problems, and paradoxes that rose cataloguing the archive, i.e. merging a messy art archive with a modern museum archive. Third and finally, I will describe the initial idea behind the digital mapping project entitled “Mapping the Archive” and the on-going work with developing an interactive visualization of the archive in collaboration with Danish Broadcasting Corporation’s Cultural Heritage Archive Open System (//:CHAOS) and a small group of digital designers. 

Mogens Otto Nielsen’s mail art archive consists of about 10.000 letters, notes, fragments, objects, and artworks in various media sent from about 600 artists in the international avant-garde network of mail art from the 1960s and onwards. Today, more and more mail art archives are being collected and categorized by museums, but the mess of the archives – larges and intertwined quantities of artworks, everyday objects, personal correspondences – challenges the museums with an increasing problem with too information and multiple connections to other items or information in and outside the archive. 

The purpose of the clinic is to provide the GLAM institutions a possibility to present projects and productions related to openness and participation in the museum context, and obtain feedback and suggestions from participants and facilitators of the workshop. This interactive session discusses the opportunities and challenges that art and memory institutions face when opening their work practices, processes and collections for wider public. Furthermore, through case examples and experiences we address various strategies and drivers for openness, and demonstrate how art and memory institutions can be more open and accessible for wider public.

Participants can exchange good practices and tools for the development of their cases. They will map their initiatives in relation to other projects that dealt with similar themes, in this way understanding how their proposals contribute to the current discussion on openness in the sector. This clinic set the stage for institutions to present future cases or concepts for discussion and peer assessment.

Participants: The clinic is open for all, but specially targeted to representatives from the art and memory institutions. Participants are encouraged to send a short description of their ongoing or future project. The registration form can be found here Please notice that the cases will be reviewed and selected by the facilitators and the clinic will take place only if there are at least 5 selected cases.

The clinic is hosted by Mariana Salgado. For further information, please contact Mariana Salgado, mariana.salgado@aalto.fi

In 2014 The Norwegian Museum of Science and Technology, in Oslo will celebrate its one hundred years’ anniversary. There is no coincidence that in the same year there will be a national celebration of 200 years of the Norwegian constitution. The museum will use this occasion to make an exhibition about technology and democracy – called “Ting”.  The title reflects the double meaning of the word referring to ting as object and ting as a governing assembly and a court – a place where things are put up for discussion. 

The aim of this participatory exhibition is to engage people in discussions and experiences that explore the complex relationship between technology and society (democracy). In the exhibition visitors will be invited to discuss a selection of objects from the museum's collections.  These discussions will take place daily.  Visitor input becomes the nucleus of the experience which will evolve over the duration of the exhibition. Our overarching goal is to engage people in a meaningful dialog concerning the importance of technology, both historically and today. 

Physical space design, graphic design and object displays provide the social stage for this performance, and a range of interactive multimedia programs as well as live performers facilitate the interaction, explain and visualize the different stories of the objects. Media also enables communication with the public within the exhibition as well as online through the museum’s website.

The exhibition will be made by the museum in cooperation with Ralph Appelbaum Associates an exhibition design firm based in Berlin, New York and London. The multi-media concept is developed and produced by Tamschick Media + Space GmbH of Berlin. We will make a joint representation of the ongoing design process and development of the content. We will focus on the Ting concept, the meaning of the discussion and how we intend to use the multi-media technology as a tool to communicate, to catalyze a socially oriented dialog as well as to animate otherwise stationary museum objects.

“I cannot believe we are not doing this” a colleague from National Gallery in Washington spontaneously uttered a couple of years ago when seeing our CAD-model (Computer aided design) presenting the display of the actual exhibition.  By then this method was used as a compliment to the architectural drawings, giving possibilities for curatorial changes in details before the installation began and still being able to, through the CAD, produce installation plans to the art handlers. Now ten years have passed and this method, which awoke from pure curiosity and a will to explore the possibilities of using new technology for improving visualization of exhibition display in the working process, is implemented as a routine in the exhibition planning process. In the beginning it was mainly a tool for the art handlers in planning the installation phase; reducing the overall time needed and as a positive end result the museum could keep the galleries publicly open for a longer period.

“you feel like you´re in the exhibit. It´s surreal. It´s awesome. It´s the future , an American architect this summer blogs when virtually having visited the Carl Larsson exhibition on show in Stockholm in the model he downloaded from the museums website. This  quotation expressively high light the topic of our paper in which we will focus on the adding value in curatorial practice, especially concerning public and museological aspects, when using CAD as a tool to enable visual experience in virtually space.  In two case studies the following aspects will be discussed:

-           Curatorial possibilities in planning the content and design in collaboration with other museums.

-          Enable visiting an exhibition without boundaries in time and space

-          Enable revisiting a former exhibition

-          Enable reconstruction of a historical display – getting better understanding of the interplay between space and narrative

-          Valuable documentation for future museological research.

Our paper will deal with the creation process of a mixed reality -based presentation and a 3D model of the Holy Ghost Church in Turku in Finland as a part of the Futuristic History research project. The focus of this case study was to research how experts from fields of history, archaeology, economy, engineering and art should work together to produce attractive user oriented content for museums. 

Mixed reality covers both virtual and augmented reality solutions. Augmented reality stands for technologies combining interactive virtual elements and information with reality in real time. The content can be presented using mobile or wearable equipment, like a smartphone, tablet or eyewear. 

Building of the Holy Ghost church was begun in 1588 but was never entirely completed. The church, however, was probably in use a couple of years until it was severely damaged in a fire in 1593. Afterwards the church ruins were used as a cemetery. The last visible remains of the church were cleared in 1650s to make way for the realization of the new street plan for the town. The ruins were revealed in archaeological excavations in 1960s and 1980s.

The mixed reality -experience of the Holy Ghost church includes both inside and outside presentation of the church. The experience consists of an accurate 3D model enriched with natural imagery, 3D scanned elements, live action video and realistic soundscape. Also further information is presented in textual form and alternative historical Interpretations are presented visually. 

The main challenge was that no pictorial representations of the church have remained. With the help of the material from the excavations, archival research and comparisons with similar buildings in Finland and Sweden the presentation is made as historically reliable and accurate as possible. The viewer is however reminded that the model is only an interpretation of the past, not the past in itself.

The topic of digital identity has gained academic attention with the increasing popularity of user created Internet content (referred to as Web 2.0) on social media networks. A seismic technological and cultural shift occurred with the rise of social media, a shift from corporal existence in the real world to a virtual existence online. These emerging forms of communication culture have placed media theorists in new frontiers of interdisciplinary research, to understand and explain the phenomena and increased social and cultural importance placed on the existence of digital identities .

In our technologically determinist culture we increasingly depend on digital media for validating offline information, which places us in a paradigmatic shift where the offline (real) loses importance while the online (virtual) gains meaning. It can be argued that virtual existence via digital identity has become exponentially popular because of a culture that associates technology with progress, while largely ignoring the social ramifications and the reality distorting effects of our new media ecology.

This study merges both theoretical resources on the discussion of digital identity in such fields as media ecology, virtual ethnography, narrative identity theory, social psychology and the philosophy of communication with qualitative primary research on how artists and other creative professionals utilize social media to negotiate a professional and social reputation.

Petrelli et al. (2013) propose a movement that would empower curators, artists and designers in the creation, installation, maintenance and alteration of exhibits that are meant to bring materiality and physical interaction to the forefront of visitors’ experience, while simultaneously expressing the values of the cultural institution. While many cultural heritage professionals would welcome this ability to create and integrate interactive exhibits into the design of exhibitions, for the majority there is a significant technical knowledge gap and the tools required to create these exhibits are still out of reach. In order to understand what methods and technologies could be suitable, we first need to ascertain the existing challenges and opportunities faced by cultural heritage professionals in designing interactive exhibits. The research focuses specifically on the working perspective of cultural heritage professionals, complementing existing studies on the design and implementation of  interactive exhibits at cultural heritage sites.

Based on interviews with professionals from a range of cultural heritage institutions across Europe, we investigate the existing curatorial practice, revealing the challenges faced when creating interactive exhibits, as well as the difficulties in relation to access, authorship, participation, creativity and control of such exhibits. We examine two aspects of the cultural heritage professionals’ work practices in relation to interactive exhibits: (1) the attitudes and perspectives of curators and designers highlighting the values, goals and aspirations that are considered when creating exhibitions and (2) current resources and methods used to create and implement interactive digital exhibits indicating the advantages and disadvantages of these.

In conclusion, we outline strategies and resources that could aid cultural heritage professionals in the design and development of interactive exhibits. We discuss design implications to be considered in the creation of a hardware and software platform that would allow these professionals to bridge this knowledge gap.

We describe an experiment using digital technology to influence visitors' movements, motivations and meaning making. The exhibition Panopticon: Experimental Tales of Jeremy Bentham explored the life, influence and radical ideas of the 18th Century philosopher, best known for the prison he designed, the Panopticon. The exhibition ran during August and September 2013 at UCL in London. We augmented historical documents and images with digital projections to create multiple narrative sequences using lighting and interpretive text, in order to influence visitor meaning making and engineer a sense of wonder using narrative storytelling structures. This follows from research on visitor-generated trails (Walker, 2013), but inverts the principle by imposing particular trails in a top-down curatorial fashion. Visitor movements were tracked using a 3D depth camera to provide quantitative data, and meaning making was evaluated using Personal Meaning Making, an established method for generating qualitative data (Falk, 2003). As an experimental setting, the exhibition was held in a small space and the number of exhibited objects was limited to a small number in order to be retained in visitors' short-term memory, following Miller (1956); access to the exhibition was restricted to individual and small groups of visitors at a time, each of which were timed. The data is to be analysed by comparing the qualitative with quantitative data to evaluate the extent to which each visitor followed the curated narrative, and the extent to which their knowledge and understanding changed as a result. Motivation is analysed using the model of Csikszentmihalyi and Hermanson (1999). We will present our results for the first time at NODEM 2013.

Data visualisation as a critical practice involves the creation of objects, spaces and experiences which foster dialogue on important and timely topics. I have been running so-called ‘critical visualisation’ workshops at the Royal College of Art (RCA) in London since 2010, and have recently brought the workshop to The China Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. Here we describe as a case study Data Manifestation, a critical visualisation project run by Karin von Ompteda and Kevin Walker of the Information Experience Design (IED) programme at the Royal College of Art and showcased at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) in London.

The brief tasked 23 RCA students to create meaningful connections between data and the citizens of London. The project was cross-disciplinary and collaborative in nature, involving students from IED, Architecture, Sculpture, Visual Communication and Printmaking, working in consultation with researchers from Imperial College London. The resulting ‘data manifestations’ explored and ultimately challenged traditional notions of ‘data visualisation.’ Data manifested as dripping honey, ringing bells, and robotic origami demonstrated fresh ways of communicating complex information that might be better termed ‘data experience.’ Furthermore, these projects offered a context within which museum visitors could engage with fundamental issues surrounding the ubiquitous role of data in our modern lives including privacy and monetisation. The work was exhibited in a hands-on showcase at the V&A’s Sackler Centre in May 2013, an event that was documented as a film, excerpts of which will be shown within our presentation at NODEM 2013. We gratefully acknowledge project funding provided by the Urban Prototyping Festival and the Sustainable Society Network+ at Imperial College London.

Digital Media and Social Institutions

A social institution uses digital media and other strategies and processes smartly to achieve its mission and create value for and with its audiences. In this workshop, we will focus on what a social institution is and how participants can help their organisations develop towards such institutions. We will outline the processes, technologies and strategies needed to be successful and create value.

Please note that this is an expert workshop aimed at participants who want to take their organisation to the next step in the digital revolution.  

Paper will be devoted to the educational exhibition “What does Lace and Windmills Have in Common? The Low Countries” which took place at the National Museum in Poznań, Poland in 2013 . The exhibition was a result of so called co-creative participatory project (according to Nina Simon).

The community members were teachers. Teachers as members of  participatory team realized all functions which usually belong to curators. They selected objects for the exhibition, its title as well as defined themes of particular parts of the exhibition. Teachers also created interpretative plan, they helped to design exhibition and created rich educational kit for schools which was published online on the museum web site.

The pedagogical experience of teachers was an opportunity to create the exhibition, which differed from the exhibitions organized at the National Museum in Poznan. The exhibitions draw from the assumptions of constructivism and referred to the theory of multiple intelligences. The teachers knowledge of contemporary Belgium and the Netherlands was the starting point for determining the choice of topics and objects which were presented.  The way of presentation of objects (involving also senses of touch, hearing and smell) enriched the experience and understanding by the visitors.

The exhibition has become a challenge for the everyday curatorial practice of the National Museum in Poznan. For that reason the paper will consider changing of such traditional assumptions of creating exhibition as the paradigm of the individual authorship, paradigm of transferring knowledge to public and the habit organizing exhibitions without the participation of the potential recipients. Instead, the exhibition was created by the team, based on the experience of team members and relied on the exchange of knowledge between the museum staff and members of the community.

This paper discusses ongoing research exploring the potential for tangible interaction technologies to enhance activities at Sheffield General Cemetery (SGC), a conservation area of rich historical, social and natural heritage located in Sheffield (England). As well as a historical park displaying significant works of art and architecture, the cemetery is also a local nature reserve. SGC is managed by a community group that organizes volunteer work for conservation, guided tours and other community initiatives. In our project, we are exploring the challenges of visitor access, interpretation and appreciation at such a complex open-air heritage site and how novel technological installations could support the activities of visitors and volunteers. Our focus is particularly on tangible interaction, and on how integrating digital capabilities into material objects and spaces can provide immersive and engaging experiences for users (Petrelli et al., 2013). The research we are conducting follows a co-design approach, whereby our multidisciplinary team of designers, developers and social researchers is collaborating closely with SGC volunteers both in documenting and reflecting on the complexities of this heritage site, and in exploring design ideas and rapid prototypes of tangible interaction concepts to be discussed and evaluated on site.

Traditional craftsmanship is a specified domain in UNESCO’s Convention for the safeguarding of the intangible cultural heritage. During 19th and 20th centuries, museums and archives in the western world have been collecting a considerable amount of artifacts and produced records of trades, workshops and manual procedures referring to threatened traditional crafts. What potential value is embedded in the records on traditional crafts? To whom and for what purpose may this documented heritage be of interest or have use value? We find these questions critical to the subject of museology, and how to develop appropriate documentation methods as well as safeguarding strategies for the intangible cultural heritage. 

This paper critically investigates film making of traditional craftsmanship, and experiment augmented documentation methods to elicit tacit dimensions and multisensory aspects of craft skills. The text is grounded on a case study of a documentary from early 1970th, recording two old blacksmiths making a wrought scythe. This documentary has generated several research questions: How instructive is this documentary, as learning resource for blacksmiths of today? What meaningful information dwells in the colour and sound of the work process? How does the discontinuity of the edited film affect the intelligibility of the process in action? 

The tacit dimension of craftsmanship has been investigated in philosophical and pedagogical research (Gamble 2002, Mayer 2003, Polanyi 1958, Schön 1983, 1987), management and organisation theory (Agyris 2003, Kolb 1984), and recently in the emerging field of craft research (Adamson 2010, Niedderer 2009). However, the edge focus on documentation methodology to elicit the tacit dimensions of traditional craftsmanship is not extensively examined. Peer research to this study is performed at The Art and Design Research Centre (ADRC) at Sheffield Hallam University (e.g. Hjort-Lassen & Wood 2013, McCullough 1997, Wood 2006, Wood, Rust & Horne 2009) and the Craft Laboratory at the university of Gothenburg (e.g. Almevik 2012, Jarefjäll & Sjömar 2011, Karlsson 2013) exploring the use of film record and time-geography in documentation and display of craftsmanship. 

The documentary is scrutinized through a time-space path and a procedure analysis. Setting out from the data and interpretation of the film record, the craft procedure has been re-enacted by the authors. The re-enactment gives a critical reference to the documentary, exposing discontinuities lacunas, misinterpretations and hideouts of tacit blacksmith knowledge. Core problems in understanding skills and judgments made by the old blacksmiths relate to lacking qualities in the documentary concerning colour and authentic timeline. One sub-experiment concerning the judgment of colour in the process of hardening and welding is carried out by visual and IR measure. 

What happens when the audience is allowed to influence the exhibition? In November 2010, 2000 Swedes (age 12-74) were randomly selected to participate in a survey about the greatest innovations ever. This survey was the starting point for the exhibition 100 innovations at Tekniska museet - National Museum of Science and Technology in Stockholm. The aims of this exhibition were to discuss and highlight innovations and creativity in a new manner by means of co-creation in curating.

▪   100 innovations opened in February 2012, but the development of the exhibition did not stop there. A digital bridge, influencing the content in real time, was created. The survey continues on site as well as on the web. Votes and nominations are compiled in a database, and rankings for each innovation on display are continuously updated in the exhibition and on the web. Nominations may result in new innovations on display.

Another distinguishing feature of the exhibition is that visitors can choose the level of detail – from ‘little genius’ to ‘nerd’ – and find a large collection of text, audio and visual materials accessible both in the exhibition and on line.

▪    100 innovations was a step to bring Tekniska museet into the 21st century. It was also ment to create a visually arresting, thought-provoking, and independent exhibition in dialogue with the audience. It was meant to tickle the mind and create emotion-based bonds with the visitors.

▪   So - what happened? How did people’s input influence the exhibition? Did they enjoy participating - or did they feel like cooking their own meal at a restaurant? How did the idea attract sponsors and collaborators? What were the consequences to the museum - to the curator’s perspectives, thoughts, processing and future?

The democratisation of heritage through digital access is well documented. It has included innovative ways to manage interpretation and create experiences through the ‘decoding’ of heritage. This decoding of heritage becomes democratised, more poly-vocal than didactic exhibitions, and less dependent on ‘experts’. However, the decision of what ‘heritage’ is and what is commissioned for digitisation (the encoding) is not necessarily a part of this democratisation. The introduction of digitisation requires more expertise and training within established professional discourse, and more resources.

This paper will consider 'authorised heritage discourse' (AHD), a top-down approach to heritage that normalises or legitimises existing power structures, within digital humanities. This influences the digital humanities in terms of who has the power to say what encoded and how that takes place.

Through social media projects such as Wiki loves Monuments, the public can upload their own images of heritage.  However, Wikipedia’s convention to avoid original research means that ‘heritage’ is defined by top-down lists (e.g. government designation), thus reinforcing AHD rather than democratising heritage. Alternatives are subject to epistemic populism.

Technology may provide many possibilities, but does it actually promote democratisation of heritage or reinforce existing hegemony? It is meaningless to state that everything can or should be digitised due to the varied approaches, and implicit bias towards tangible heritage. The role of digitisation in the democratisation of heritage needs to be better understood.

Development of ICT initiatives have often been driven by technological possibility rather than societal need, so questions regarding the nature and process of digital interaction, in terms of whose heritage is accessible, affect the very issues of democratisation digitisation appears to promote.

Exploration of who commissions digitisation and interaction, as well as training and research funding, would bring light to how heritage is appropriated and represented, and digitisation’s impact on ‘democratic’ heritage.

An interdisciplinary team  of media artists, graphic  designers and programmers together with a literary expert created 11 interactive installations which form the major part of the exhibition organized by the prestigious Petőfi Literary  Museum in Budapest, to celebrate the Hungarian poet Sándor Weöres. It was a challenge to create an engaging experience around the heritage of a poet – unlike looking at his pen and other objects, or having (longish)  texts on display, which have been the common practice in literary musea. Most of the 11 interactive installations allow to play around with some poems, in this way making the „viewer” and „reader” an active co-creator (which is actually essential in understanding poetry).  One can „blow” a poem and see how dancing letters settle into meaningful lines, or take into hand (3d printed versions of)  poems and feel  under fingertips the metric and melody. Another installation invites the visitor to patch poems by carefully moving vagabonded words to their places holding them in their palm. Yet another installation allows the visitor to create new poems by stitching the original 16 words in different orders – and make the verdict if and why their version (too) is a poem.

In the talk the  each of the 11 installations  will be demonstrated by videos. Then the technology will be outlined, and discussed how they are related to the very nature of the heritage of the poet. 

Visitors spend much more time with the exhibition than in „traditional” exhibitions, and seem to enjoy the playful and cheerful (and unexpected) encounters. Moreover, they seem to learn and get seriously interested. Often spontaneous discussions groups emerge  to unveil the „secrets” of the magical effects, and the related poetical phenomena. The feedback from both visitors on spot and from the public and academic media are overwhelmingly positive. 

A pop-up Museum with a collection of curated projects and creative spaces designing a community “How, exactly, can a museum appear and then disappear? That’s a question we asked ourselves many times when TCC was just an idea ” In thinking about the pop-up phenomenon in the retail world, we saw the subtle brilliance of the movement. In creating The Chill Concept (TCC), based on this model, we have not run, but sprinted to conceptualize, construct and open the world’s first pop-up museum. The notion of a space, existing for just a brief period, seemed antithetical to any good business practice, which holds that brand loyalty and repeat customers are at the root of success. How could you have either if your business intentionally disappeared a short time after opening? However, pop-uppers are not seeking loyalty. They seek clients who want to experience something now because it won’t be there tomorrow. This model embodies innovation and rethinking in uncertain economic times. We didn't doubt whether this new business would work – we had seen it succeed in other areas. Pop-up shops? Sure. So, why not pop-up museums? By trying to quantify the shelf life of contemporary art, and wondering if one could even game the system, we realized that the answer was not in the theoretical pondering, but in the doing. We had to act. So we jumped at the chance to create a real-life pop-up museum, TCC, in one of the region's most dynamic art districts - Wynwood, in Miami, Fl.

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.

In response to general trends in society and media, museums are currently undertaking digital initiatives to adapt to these new developments and so retain their relevance for users of the future within their context of education, mediation and entertainment.

From the perspective of the Frankfurt Museum of Applied Arts and its Orange Hive Agency, the challenges that are arising within the framework of a museum’s expansion to a “content brand“ have manifested themselves in the following areas:

• Digitalization should not be understood as an end in itself, but primarily as a channel for “individualizable” contents which a user otherwise could not identify for themself within the vast availability of information.
• Digital resources must moreover be furnished with an independent, sensorial quality in order to create a long-term emotional relationship between the user and the museum.
  A museum that strives beyond the artifact and becomes a reinforcer of individual, personal themes has the potential to touch people directly as an enabler and companion in people’s lives.
• The artificial boundary which presently exists between the physical and digital visitor of a museum needs to be dissolved as people themselves do not make such distinctions anymore.

In the future, the question as to how a museum feels to its visitors should therefore be no longer dependent on which form of access to its contents they choose. Digital access channels are rapidly increasing what is already true of the physical museum visit, namely that every visitor is different, as is every one of their visits.

Within a framework of holistically viewing the area of conflict between “How does the museum communicate?” and “How does the individual visitor perceive it?” all potential points of connection should find an opportunity to create and multiply cultural values: Content plus Context generates Contact.

A “communicative relationship” can thus be formed where the roles of sender and recipient are constantly alternating and both sides consequently become interwoven: the institution creates the thematic framework and through participation the visitor brings the museum alive.

In the spring of 2013 Moderna museet in Stockholm held an exhibition with the Swedish artist Hilma af Klint. In her artistry af Klint was influenced by spiritism, theosophy and anthroposophy and while she lived she refused to show her abstract paintings, claiming that the world was not ready to understand their significance. Therefore, claims Moderna museet, af Klint never became a world-famous artist, even though her artistic achievements can be compared to the ones of Kandinsky and Mondrian.

In connection to the exhibition Moderna museet launched the campaign “Hilma af Klint – Help us update the history of art!” that aimed to make the artist known to the rest of the world. On the museum’s website af Klint was described as a pioneer within abstract art, and the visitor of the website was encouraged to spread knowledge about the artist using digital- and social media. The campaign made it possible for the museum to establish a dialogue with its visitors, and the initiative seems to have been much appreciated by the museum audience. 

In recent years a growing number of museums’ Q&A-websites, services and online events have emerged. The Finnish Museum of Photography introduced its “Ask the Museum” (in Finnish “Kysy museolta”) online service in 2011. A step further was taken in January 2013, when six other museums adopted the service and the common main page for “Ask the Museum” network in Finland was launched. 

The idea of the service is simple: anyone can send a question to a participating museum related to its field of expertise and the member of museum staff who knows most about the subject answers within a week. Most of the questions and answers are published on the participating museum’s own “Ask the Museum” website. Images can be attached both to questions and answers. The public can also browse and search the published answers, comment them and share their knowledge about the subject. Each museum’s own “Ask the Museum” website gradually builds up to be a public data bank of the museum’s field of expertise. 

“Ask the Museum” system also includes a possibility to collect data related to the museum’s field of expertise for museum’s internal use: each participating museum has its own backend which can be used as a database for recording knowledge which is not directly about museum’s collections or objects – that is intangible heritage, even museum’s tacit knowledge.

The launch in January 2013 was preceded by a project in which seven Finnish museums developed the system together with Flo Apps Ltd and Kide Concepts. The Finnish Museum of Photography coordinated the project. The aim of the project was to achieve a Q&A tool that can be brought into use in several Finnish museums or even nationwide. At the moment the “Ask the Museum” network is negotiating with The Finnish National Board of Antiquities (NBA) for the NBA to assume the responsibility to develop the system further and to coordinate the process in which new museums adopt the system.

My research investigates learning as a creative and experiential exchange in gallery settings between museums and their visitors. It looks at how creative practitioners mediate between museums and their visitors, by creating interpretative handling objects to provide visitors with possibilities for sensory exploration, leading to new ways to connect with artefacts on display. Grounded in a review of relevant theory and practice, the study looks specifically at artist-created interpretive handling objects and their potential to enhance visitor learning though creative, participatory and tactile experiences. The case study describes the use of the Object Dialogue Box created by the artistic partnership hedsor, in which data from observations and interviews are analysed using activity theory. The analysis informs how such a tool as the Object Dialogue Box mediates visitors' experiential learning in relation to artefacts in gallery settings. My observation looks at how the activity is mediated by the facilitator and how meaning-making takes place through it. Interviews with the relevant actors such as the museum staff and the creative practitioners provide insights on the making and implementation process. It emphasises what kind of opportunities and challenges the 'interpretive and experiential tool' represents for both museums and visitors. Finally, stimulating experiential learning in museum galleries using object-based interpretation was found to contribute to visitor engagement, and create new insights into the artefacts on display.

Ballade of Women is an interactive exhibition that aims at exploring human rights from a female perspective. It leverages on the concept of engagement through embodiment. Visitors of the exhibition are actors of the dynamic landscape that shapes around them and because of them. Visitors, through their sensitivity, interact with the installation in a continuous, dynamic and meaningful dialogue. They learn, grow and form a stance, because they are actively engaged with the content through their experience in this dynamic space.

In one space, three original paintings are presented. Each painting is linked to a theme in women’s rights. In another space, an interactive installation that plays and elaborates on these themes is located. In the installation, representations of these three painting are fragmented and float in the space, much as the information we have about their subjects has been fragmented through history.

Set on rotating spindles, these fragments resist attempts by the viewer to capture them as a whole. These screens only provide a complete view of the paintings at selected times and from specific viewpoints. When the screens are positioned in a fragmented way, they display media coming from online groups, discussing issues addressed in the exhibition. The screens’ movement is influenced by the physical presence of observers and by the online discussions. Software continuously monitors online discussions and news related to the treated themes, forming an input for the installation and influencing the speed of movements. In addition, a soundscape allows the viewer to pick up fragments of selected poems related to the three themes. Verses are whispered and vanish, immediately after being heard.

This dynamic experience suggests that each of us can contribute to compose a harmonious picture of the complex and controversial world of women's rights, by approaching it, and by being confronted with points of view of other people, facing the same topics from different perspectives all over the world.

Facebook has quickly become the most popular social network site (SNS). The site is hailed for affording dialogue and interaction and thus represents a golden opportunity for museums to engage with the public. Many museums have seized this opportunity with varying degrees of success in terms of the quality and quantity of the interaction achieved.

Previous research into interaction on Facebook has primarily emphasized identity and self-representation in relation to interpersonal communication. We wish to expand this body of research by focusing on the communicative actions and patterns in institutional communication as it occurs on the Facebook walls of Danish museums. 

We do this by applying a tailored version of Conversation Analysis (CA) to a corpus of activities from the Facebook wall of nine museums of different type and size collected during four consecutive weeks. This model enables us to identify the types of communicative actions initiated by the museums and how users respond to these actions. 

We argue that the communicative actions display a considerable variety ranging from more traditional institutional online communication to more interpersonal genres. Achieving interaction is not easily done and museums must learn to adapt to interpersonal patterns of communication in order to succeed. We discuss why some communicative actions seem to generate more interaction than others and point to some implications for further practice in and research about institutional communication of museums on Facebook.

This paper will report on the ongoing work carried out by V-Must, a Network of Excellence, funded by the European FP in its efforts to rethink the VM.  The Network has been active in identifying, and mapping tools, and services that define and support VMs in the heritage sector.  V-MUST.NET is coordinated by CNR and includes 18 Partners from 13 countries, and Associated Members.  The Network was launched 1st of February 2011 and continues through to 31st of January 2015.

Drawing on a series of reports and publications prepared by the Network, http://www.v-must.net/library/publications, we will continue to reflect on the VM (VM) from a variety of perspectives.

This paper will look at the responsive screen – where not only is the screen dynamically re-sizing itself for the numerous platforms – In-house large screens, PC, mobile, and tablet - but will more critically consider the response of the user/visitor who will be encountering the Museum before, and after the visit as well as during the actual visit.  What kinds of implications will this have on the visit and visitor, and how can the Museum prepare for these different kinds of scenarios?

Through a series of three case studies we attempt to define the VM as we re-visit the core concept of the museum ethos as it reaches out to meet its visitor. Introducing the visitor to the exhibition, even before the physical visit – in an exceptionally well-honed marketing scenario we will discuss the virtual bear hug – where the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery in Washington wraps its electronic arms around the future visitor to the exhibition Yoga: The Art of Transformation.  The deluge of visitor/museum scenarios, including promoting the show over numerous social networks and enticing invitations to ‘use’ the exhibition in novel ways aims to introduce the visitors to the exhibition which opened October 19, 2013-  well before the red ribbon was cut.  The second case study describes an engaging scenario of electronic delivery that accompanies the visitor during the visit and describes the CMA CollectionWall, a 40-foot multi-touch MicroTile Collection Wall that dramatically visualizes all the works currently on view in CMA’s permanent collection galleries, plus some that are in storage— over 3,800 works of art.  The third VM scenario, Ask Jacques Lipchitz a Question, authored by the Israel Museum, Jerusalem can be enjoyed after the visit and serves, in a novel way to augment and enhance the experience and maintain the connection between the Museum and the visitor opening up opportunities to ‘meet the artist’ and ‘hear his voice’ – even after his own death.

For portable tablet resources to be efficient and relevant tools for participatory learning, their adoption and didactic substance need to be developed with a dual view to learners’ socio-cultural contexts of learning and to institutional objectives for adoption. I substantiate my claim through analysis of a media-ethnographic study on the introduction of iPads at three Danish natural science museums − all with didactic concepts centered on user-generated video-productions.

Digital mobile and social media technologies have long been associated with the promise of providing valuable and unique new opportunities for enhancing and supporting participatory learning experiences in museums (Drotner & Schrøder 2013; Giaccardi 2012; Simon 2010; Tallon & Walker 2008). Recently, portable tablets have been a central focus in Danish political and learning discourses and many museums now experiment with ways in which iPads can deliver the assumed dissemination and experience results.

This presentation discusses museums’ use of iPads from a user-led perspective and, in particular, the mismatch between the call for museums to use these technologies as tools to embrace or even challenge young users’ expectations and the user experience realities. Based on my preliminary analysis, I present two issues surrounding the differences between users’ reflections on the user experience as compared to the content and communication purposes intended by the museums. Firstly, users’ prior knowledge and experiences raise the bar for user expectations, reinforcing the need for contextual grounding and justification on the use of tablets. Secondly, use of iPads in some instances enhances the classroom feel to the visit seen from the young users’ perspective. By way of conclusion, it is argued that even though didactic focus on creators is obvious, it has profound impact on conceptual framing and how natural science and media production and dissemination themes are balanced.

This project presentation will describe the first results of an ongoing experimental action conducted within the frame of the European FP7 research project “MeLa- Museums in an age of migration” (www.mela-project.eu) about the topic of new museum technologies (Allen, Lupo, 2012), in the religious museum “Museo Diocesano” in Milano.

The “representation” of religious issues in the public discourse of contemporary society seems to be an awkward question, especially in the attempt of museums and cultural institutions to deal with multiculturalism and intercultural dialogue: problems in contesting identities, confronting or questioning on diversities, dialoguing among identities and diversities are even amplified when the subjects of discussion are religious issues in museums.

This experimental action has the aim to discuss and verify the intercultural potential of religion and its role as a privileged ‘place’ for the encounters of different religions within the Museo Diocesano involving limited groups of people of different religions (not catholic) in a guided test visit of ad hoc conceived contents. Based on a collaboration between the Design dept. of Milano Politecnico and ITIA-Institute for industrial technology and automation of CNR (National Research Council), it consists in the design of a visitor experience transforming the contemplative fruition in an interactive and contributive visit, possibly enabling intercultural dialogue too, by the use of digital technologies: i.e. the design of video narrations about some selected items of the museum property stimulating a multifaceted interpretation; the development of a digital interface and platform to enable comments, contributions with analogous issues and to facilitate the connections and relations among visitors; the intangible redesign of the space experience by requiring the visitors to perform “religiously coherent” gestures to activate the contents.

The test is going to be conducted with two different types of users: experts, or “super-users”, meaning persons with a deep knowledge of their own religion (priest, theologians…) who will contribute with their religious point of view, and general public (second generation immigrants, and intercultural community resident in Milano). The reaction of visitors will be evaluated and the role of technologies in supporting forms of intercultural confrontation and understanding during the tests.

The presentation will show the interactive features and the visitors participation and will discuss the way in which this experimental action could eventually inform curation within the museum, providing new information and materials for creating new parallel narrations and perspectives within the current Museo Diocesano intercultural interpretative strategies.

Museums are reaching for new audiences using new tools and new media. Digital media is used by the museums to increase accessibility, to explore new ways of communication and new approaches to the museum content. Esa ja esineet (Oswald and the Objects) is a teaching materials package on the internet designed for pre-school children and first and second graders. The website, published in Finnish and in Swedish, offers activities for young children relating to a selection of classic items of Finnish design. Esa ja esineet takes a new approach to accessibility, combining together learning in the museum with online discussion channels. The website provides digital access to the collections of Design Museum Helsinki and allows experience sharing and discussion between participating kindergartens, children and the museum. Some objects from the collections are used for hands-on study and can be borrowed from the museum.

The project presentation will describe how this service is used to improve the engagement of new audiences. It will also discuss the challenges of using museum collections and archives and producing innovative digital services based on Finnish design and its history.

As the inclusion of New Media is fast becoming an established component of the exhibition development process, a stark division is becoming apparent between a small number of big, often national, museums with the capacity to maintain in-house digital media departments, and the vast majority of museums which must outsource digital technology projects. The University of Amsterdam’s Allard Pierson Museum is exploring new, low-budget ways in which smaller museums can develop digital installations in-house. The museum’s collaborative research programs and technical partners from European universities have created opportunities to test and evaluate developing technologies. This paper covers two such technologies: an Augmented Reality (AR) iPad application and Leap Motion technology.  Both were implemented in a new Ancient Egypt exhibition in July 2013. The AR software gives museums unprecedented access to content creation and implementation without requiring specialized knowledge or outsourcing by providing an internet-based template. Sensor-based Leap Motion technology was used by the Allard Pierson Museum as a low-cost tool for offering visitors digital interactions with physical objects. In both cases, the museum is working with beta versions of the software and remains in constant dialogue with the developers to fix problems and deliver feedback, also after the installations were released to the public. This paper compares the overall effectiveness of both technologies, examining the benefits and consequences of working with beta technology for smaller museums. In order to better understand the impact of this way of working, we identified two areas of research. First, we evaluated the ease of use of the two technologies for the museum itself, including limitations, and the potential for other museums and future use. Second, we analyzed visitor responses to and experiences with the new technologies. Our observations were supplemented with visitor interviews and evaluation forms in order to obtain quantifiable feedback.

Few museums on Facebook succeed in generating engaging content that creates awareness. We often choose to promote events and exhibitions rather than engage in conversations. However, success on Facebook is not achieved using the social medium as just another marketing platform.

Based on a comparative analysis of three very different museums, all with different audiences and communicative purposes, we present a best practice for museums on Facebook.

Analysing the Facebook pages of an art museum (SMK/National Gallery of Denmark), a history museum (National Museum of Denmark) and a scientific museum (Experimentarium), it becomes possible to sum up do’s and don’ts for museums in general on Facebook. The talk will provide useful advice for the everyday work with Facebook such as when should you post an update, what is engaging content and how can we acquire the attention of an ever more demanding audience.

Bikeculture Project aims to develop new models for the promotion of New Belgrade’s cultural heritage, encompassing participatory approach and creation of interactive contents. 

New Belgrade was constructed after the Second World War, when it assumed symbolical meaning as the centre of the newly formed socialist state of Yugoslavia. Once a modernist utopia, organized in harmony with citizens' needs, New Belgrade is, at present-day, changing and starting to function as a business area. Rapid changes are erasing the memory of its history, while the citizens are often not aware of the city's history and heritage.

Using various models and media of interpretation (web site, guided bicycle tours, social media), the project aims to raise citizens’ awareness of the importance of active involvement in preserving common cultural-historical heritage.

Bicycle Tours are offering a frame for non-formal discussions and interpretation of local heritage between curators and participants. In this context, tours can be seen as a tool to incite these discussions and raise interest of people who are not museum-goers to participate. Gathered knowledge grounded both in desk research (literature, archives, Internet) and field research (oral history, communication with tour participants, members of local community, as well as other interested parties) is shared through different participatory platforms. They are also used to communicate and disseminate knowledge about museum collections to wider “non expert” audiences and engage them in its future collection and sharing. Bikeculture Project enables dialogue and sharing of new perspectives on socialist legacy which is often neglected and regarded as dissonant.

The "Light is History" project in Helsinki involved a participatory public museum installation that served as a research object in an urban square where community members anonymously displayed information of their personal artifacts and shared their energy use information for the common wellbeing. The weeklong Installation inspired efforts of energy saving, affected the introspection of owning electrical artifacts and generated physical on-site interaction among visitors and participants. Here, the acts of saving, sharing and display of the community’s objects were facilitated by a composite installation made of recycled materials, microprocessors, and assisted by digital media and social networks. The Project tried to establish that a co-curated and participatory framework built around daily practices could be effective in bringing together local community and has outcomes for sustainability, learning and wellbeing. Through this project, the paper examines lessons learnt that could have implications for museum exhibitions and investigates how methodologies of participation and installation can serve as an example for museums in the future to build sustainable practices around artifacts in their own collections.

Due to the development of Social Media which do not only focus on information distribution, but also on the users and their content, user behavior and needs influence the interface design and functions of online-image-databases. In addition to pre-produced content the user of online-collections expects more exploratory access points, personalization functions as well as the possibility to contribute content, to exchange Information and to communicate (KEIPER, 2009). The EUROPEANA, the Google Art Project and the platform ArtsConnectED of the Minneapolis Institute of Art and the Walker Art Center reveal many different ways of how to meet the above mentioned requirements and needs for individual learners and learning communities. Possibilities and challenges with social media for a participatory or collaborative experience in online-collections will also be emphasized. Most of the European cultural heritage belongs to the public domain but most of it is still not freely available for the public. Heritage communities already use the Internet to exchange and reuse digitized images and further freely available Information about different topics to create knowledge (MEIJER-VAN MENSCH, 2013). Therefore this paper also elaborates on the phenomena of hackathons and open data which show how openness can be a trigger for creative (learning) experiences in museums. What value the content of open data-concepts provides to a museum collection or the meaning of a particular artwork, or if this user-generated-content is useless for a museum, is an ongoing debate which will be discussed in this paper (MURPHY, 2012). Finally, the paper demonstrates how museums can start with open data, why museums should organize hack days, and what attitude the museum staff needs to implement open data-concepts successfully.

What happens when you take the museum “out” of the museum and digitally place it in a different context such as a secondary classroom? What are the challenges when museum staff is not present to disseminate the relevant information? Within the last decades, museums have increasingly taken in the new digital media, which today provide them with opportunities to reach their audiences in new ways. Yet, even though a vast number of museum (education) resources are now offered online, still little research is found in this field, a gap this paper seeks to bridge. Thus, with the point of departure in Leo Vygotsky’s Activity Theory/CHAT Theory as well as Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of ‘habitus’, the paper investigates how Danish secondary school students (15-19 years old) and their teachers perceive and use digital museum learning resources from the two Danish museums Natural History Museum of Denmark and Louisiana Museum of Modern Art. More concretely, the paper will explore the challenges surrounding the students’ and the teachers’ use of the learning resources by using examples from the gathered data, which include interviews with the students and the teachers and video observations in the classrooms. So far, the data shows that the students are facing challenges regarding what can be named ‘the abstract museum’ as they find it difficult to understand the significance of the digital learning resources coming from the museum, especially when the museum is not physically present in the classroom. Furthermore, there seems to be a historical, educational paradox regarding the constructivist paradigm, as the museums’ digital learning offers might not after all offer a diverse and constructivist learning outside of the museum itself. Including these two points, the paper will touch on a series of challenges both the museums and schools involved experience when a museum is ‘beyond control’.

During conventional museum visits, some visitors are passive learners who only accept what is displayed in the museum. Especially in cultural heritage museums, it is important for the visitors to learn the significance of the legacy and form attachment to them to increase awareness of preserve them. We have developed a cultural heritage preservation serious game called “The Guardians” which is designed to be played on mobile devices. Serious game is a game designed with the intention of improving some specific aspect of learning or training. By playing “The Guardians”, players can actively learn about and form attachment to world heritage registered by the UNESCO. Game play of “The Guardians” consists of five distinct stages. First, a player can navigate in the game space and view brief information about both intangible assets and natural heritage. Second, the player can select a specific cultural heritage and actively learn about it then take quizzes about it. Third, the player can play contextual mini-games which protect or repair cultural properties that are in danger. This part shows why the heritage site is in danger and further shows ways to conserve them. Fourth, players around the world can communicate and form on-line communities. They can share their learning and cultural heritage saving experiences and cooperate to reserve them. Last, the game system allows players to donate to the actual cultural heritage that they have saved in the game. Usability test result for “The Guardians” was B+, which indicates that most players understood mechanics and intentions of the serious game. In interviews, the players said that “The Guardians” enabled active learning, increased involvement and engagement in cultural heritage learning experiences. Furthermore, players reported that increased attachment to the heritage was an important factor that lead to donation. 

The massive proliferation of online museum communication in general, and the dramatic uptake of social media in particular, pose fundamental questions to the ways in which museums position themselves in relation to key stakeholder communities (Drotner & Schrøder, 2013, Giaccardi 2012, MedieKultur 2011, Runnel et al. 2013). This presentation addresses this process of re-positioning as follows: how do museums and audiences co-construct one another through Facebook? Audiences are defined as actual and potential museum visitors and a key stakeholder group for online museum communication. Facebook is one of the most popular social media with museums in many parts of the world. On social media such as Facebook, online communication is precisely about interaction and dialogue between the museum and its audiences; but systematic knowledge is still hard to come by providing answers to how much interaction and dialogue exists, and how these modes of online communication are established, upheld and developed.

This presentation will examine a work in progress - designing an exhibition which will connect urban street environment with a zone at the future permanent exhibition of the Estonian National Museum. The preliminary test exhibition “Secret cities” will be opened at spring 2014.

“Secret cities” explores how children and young people create urban space through their everyday practices, looks how they use and experience the city and how public space acquires meanings through usage practices. Exhibition covers both relevant categories in children’s perceptions regarding the cities (freedom, fear, security, experiences, play etc), insights to the sensory aspects of urban space as well as different meanings, functions and practices associated with the space, showing that public space can mean different things for different users. Through outlining a variety of spatial experiences and encouraging usage of the exhibition elements, it offers possibility to experience and rethink one’s own usage of city and engage with urban space in new ways.

The exhibition is developed across three domains: urban space, involving a semi-private residential area, public and open exhibition space in the museum and digital environment which altogether serve as experience and interaction space for the users. Challenges of designing the exhibition have to do with linking both digital and analog practices in a meaningful way across different dimensions. It involves location specific and location free content; it is both open and closed in terms of user interaction; it deals with outdoor space as a fluid and affective environment where the key is enabling meaningful connection between visitors and curated content. A challenge lies within leaving the walled exhibition space and facing the environment which changes according to daily and seasonal rhythms (changing temperature, light conditions etc). Connecting different domains can be conceptualized as negotiations between fixed and mobile dimensions of the exhibition.

School trips in museums are important in introducing young people to museum collections and may have long-term learning impact. At the same time, activities in museum spaces can be challenging for students, who are engaged in complex meaning-making processes. Recently, Charitonos et al. (2012) showed that the use of social and mobile technologies in a school trip - and particularly online interactions - helped in the negotiation and exchange of meaning making among the students and shaped their collective experience at the museum. However, despite the view that mobile technologies are well-situtated to provide links with other contexts and resources for learning, alongside a growing evidence indicating young people’s increasingly pervasive everyday use of digital media (Lenhart et al. 2007; Nielsen, 2011; Livingstone et al. 2011), museums seem to be reluctant to embrace social and mobile technologies in the development of their formal learning programmes. This paper will contribute to the discussion about the role of social and mobile technologies in supporting school trips in museums and engaging young people. 

The paper explores use of social and mobile technologies (Twitter/iPhones) by a Year 9 History class (13-14 years old) from a secondary school in Milton Keynes during a trip to the Museum of London (http://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/). Informed by sociocultural perspectives of learning and based on interview data collected from a number of students (n=11) and their teacher, as well as visitor generated content this paper shows how such technologies can best support young people’s attempts to make sense of their visit experience and extend it beyond the museum. Evidence is provided to show how introduction of social and mobile technologies in a school trip transformed students’ expectations from this visit, as well as their practices in the museum, resulting in diverse experiences among students. These findings enhance our understanding on the role of technologies and draw our attention to the design of technology mediated school trips in museums. 

The exhibition space, NODEM EXPO, is organized at The Museum of Medieval Stockholm. This year’s edition focuses on “New Conception of Museums as Public Spaces and Communication Modes and Interfaces”. The exhibition will showcase the latest, cutting-edge products, exhibitions and services for museums, galleries and heritage sites. Furthermore, within NODEM EXPO there are scheduled poster presentations and demonstrations.

EXHIBITORS

Touch the visitor? Experiences from developing a mobileguide system in Norway

Anette Rattfelt, Laterna Vox, Norway

Advanced Imaging Laboratory, Kyoto University, Japan

Ari Ide-Ektessabi

Audioapps, Sweden

Ludvig Persson

Tim Gustafsson

Expology, Norway

Kari Gjetrang

Fluxguide, Austria

Generate, Interact, Connect: The Future of Digital Guiding

André Seirafi

Tomáš Mikeska

Gagarin, Island

Nils Wiberg

Ixagon AB, Sweden

Axel Jacobson

Ljusdesign AB, Sweden

Innovating LED-lights for museums       

Stefan Gemzell

Stefan Wiktorsson

Jan Gouideo

Nousguide AS, Denmark

Visitor information and communication system for museums and exhibitions

Christian Struckmann Irgens

Thorbjörn Kolbo

OnSpotStory, Sweden

Guides in your phone

Staffan Gerlöw

Stockholm City Museum, Sweden

Sten-Åke Sändh

Talk Of The Town, Sweden

Göran Derefeldt

Yooba AB, Sweden

Using Tablet Apps to Engage and Educate on-site

David Nordin

Untitled Until Titled

Danne Ojeda, School of Art, Design and Media, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

Design Game for Exploration of Mobile Museum Mediation

Rikke Baggesen, University of Copenhagen, Denmark

Evaluating the CULTURA System for Cultural Heritage Collections: What do Researchers of Tomorrow Think?

Alexander Nussbaumer, Knowledge Technologies Institute, Graz University of Technology, Austria

Integrating and Testing the Evaluation Service Equalia for Digital Libraries and Beyond

Alexander Nussbaumer, Graz University of Technology, Knowledge Technologies Institute, Cognitive Science Section, Austria

Interactive Poetry Experiences

Zsófia Ruttkay, Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design,Hungary

Lean Museum Startup: A low budget – low risk approach to transforming cultural institutions

Karsten Gresch, Lean Museum Startup, Germany

Martin Hegel, Museum Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Germany

Meaning Making Experiences by Partnership and Creative Collaboration

Mie Marie Vinther Ellekilde, Meaning Making Experience, Denmark

The exhibition highlights the world in the early 1600s and the ship Vasa's contemporaries. How it looks from other perspectives and other geographical vantage points than Sweden?

The exhibition is flexible and conveys stories and research through knowledge experiences in the form of film, animation and digital interactivity. The Vasa Museum is located in Djurgården, Stockholm, and exhibits the salvaged remains of the 17th century warship Vasa. The Vasa ship sank outside of Stockholm in 1628 on its maiden voyage and was, after many attempts, salvaged in 1961 almost completely intact. 

Ebbe Strandell, Chief Technology Officer, demonstrates how ABBA the Museum has used innovative digital technology and multi-media exhibits about the world-famous pop group. Abba the Museum is dedicated to the legendary Swedish pop group – ABBA, who topped the music charts from 1972 to 1982 and is one of the most successful pop groups in music history. The museum was born out of the ABBAWorld Exhibition that toured several countries during 2009 and 2011. The museum presents the visitor with an opportunity to experience life as a band member through interactive exhibition elements, and to follow the bands’ career and success through exhibits of memorabilia.

The museum features a recording studio – The Polarstudio - where visitors can try the recording equipment, a dance floor, a direct telephone line to the group members, a self-playing piano controlled remotely by Benny Andersson, a stage, and music video recordings. It also showcases everything from stage costumes, original artifacts, concert footage and gold records.

Club Kids 150 years is built around three main nightlife gathering places: the dance floor, bar and toilets. In these particular spots of the exhibition, one can explore the night life's pleasures and its profiles through videos, interviews, sounds and smells. The exhibition is created by artist / club profile Makode Linde together with creative agency EGG and Museum of Spirits.

The museum is focused on the history of wine and spirits and drinking culture in Sweden. The museum’s main exhibition - “Sweden: Spirits of a Nation” - explores the relationship between Swedish culture and alcohol. The exhibit is made to appeal to the visitors’ senses- through elements such as smells, taste sprays as well as audio and visual media and it aims to convey the whole experience of drinking. The exhibit also includes elements surrounding the culture of drinking in Sweden such as drinking songs and the production of alcohol.

The Museum of Spirits also showcases art exhibitions and the Absolut Vodka art collection, which includes artworks by Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, Dan Wolgers, and Linn Fernström.

The Music and Theatre Museum was founded in 1899 and is located in the premises of Old Crown Bakery in Östermalm near the Royal Dramatic theatre. Its collection, which is displayed at the museum, covers both music and theatre and includes instruments, archives and historical artifacts. The collection contains more than 6,000 instruments from Scandinavia and Western Europe.