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.
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.
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.
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.
