“The Immersive Cultural Museum Experience – Creating
Context and Story with New Media Technology”
Maggie Burnette Stogner, American University, USA
Abstract: This paper explores a range of immersive and experiential media technologies and how they
are being used to engage visitors in narrative context for cultural and historical artifacts. The “onsite” experience is changing, particularly in cultural museums. This paper focuses on the use of advanced digital media technologies in creating immersive, story-driven visitor experiences, and explores
how new media technologies are being used to create cultural context and narratives. It raises issues
of representation, authenticity, integrity, and inclusivity.
Keywords: Immersive, Experiential, Cultural, Case Study, New Media Technology, Media Technology
Hypothesis
T
WENTY-FIRST CENTURY MEDIA technologies have excellent potential to
create immersive storytelling for cultural exhibitions by heightening sensory engagement and by forging deeper cognitive and emotional contextual connections with
artifacts and objects. These new immersive techniques can attract more diverse and
younger audiences, increase accessibility to cultural experience, enrich visitor engagement,
lengthen memory retention, and inspire new ways to tell and share cultural stories. The effective use of these technologies in representing culture must take into consideration best
practices including quality of content, authenticity, and representation.
Representing Culture in the Digital Age
A heated debate over how to contextualize artifacts and objects has raged for decades in the
museum world. In the early 1900s, “…some critics bemoaned the sensationalist leanings of
turn-of-the-century museums, others maintained that museums were inaccessible to the
general public due to their overly scholarly preoccupations” (Griffiths, 1999).
Today’s increasing use of digital technology has fueled the controversy once again. Many
cultural museums1 continue to display objects as rarified items in display cases, with small
text labels typically interpreted by well-established academic specialists. They voice concern
that digital technology undercuts true learning by converting education into edutainment
and transforming the traditional museum into a theme park. Others have embraced the use
of new media technologies for their potential to make exhibitions accessible to more diverse
audiences, boost attendance, and attract more revenue. The centuries-old debate continues
and one might think little has changed, but not so. Unlike the dioramas, stereoscopic photos,
and filmstrips of yore, today’s ubiquitous explosion of digital technologies has reached a
1
For the purposes of this paper, this includes art, history, archaeology, ethnography, and other museums that represent human heritage.
The International Journal of the Inclusive Museum
Volume 3, Number 3, 2011, http://museum-journal.com/, ISSN 1835-2014
© Common Ground, Maggie Burnette Stogner, All Rights Reserved, Permissions:
[email protected]
THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF THE INCLUSIVE MUSEUM
tipping point. These new communication devices are the pens, pencils and printing presses
of future generations, and are evolving as essential tools of cultural representation and interpretation. They are the medium and, as Marshall McLuhan would have said, the message,
of museums in the new millennia (Innis 1951). If museums are to engage a broad range of
the public in today’s media-saturated world, it will require understanding and embracing
twenty-first century media technologies.
This engagement is critical at a time when cultural museum attendance is seriously declining. A new report from the Center of the Future of Museums points out that museums in the
U.S. are increasingly out of sync with their demographics (Center for the Future of Museums
2010). “The U.S. population is shifting rapidly and within four decades the group that has
historically constituted the core audience for museums—non-Hispanic whites—will be a
minority of the population.” In addition to shifting ethnic demographics, the age of museumgoers is increasingly older than the average U.S. adult. According to a study by the National
Endowment of the Arts, adults age 45-54, traditionally the core audience of art museumgoers,
dropped nearly thirty percent between 2002 and 2008 (NEA 2008). Research suggests that
a different approach is needed to appeal to visitors today. Younger generations learn in very
different styles than the traditional “passive observer” approach offered by many cultural
museums. They are growing up in a media-rich, networked society and have different expectations. The Millennials, ages 8 to 28, tend to be team-oriented, collaborative, and “active
users of culture” rather than “passive consumers” (Howe, 2006).
For Americans under 30, there’s a structural shift in which consumers drive narrative,
asserts a study by the Center for the Future of Museums. The study projects future trends
and demographics, and predicts a rising visitor demand for “immersive interactive programming and an emerging you-as-protagonist concept” (Center for the Future of Museums 2008).
This is in keeping with today’s communication paradigm shift and the integration of social
networking with digital media creation and consumption. Going forward, museums must
determine how to mentor future generations in interpreting past and present cultures. Cultural
storytelling using new immersive design techniques is emerging as a powerful tool.
The Value of Sensory Immersion
In 1980, the Oakland Museum in Oakland, California hosted an exhibition on realism that
included a premiere screening of documentary filmmaker Les Blank’s Garlic Is as Good as
Ten Mothers. During the screening, museum personnel blew fumes of roasting garlic through
the ventilation system of the theater, creating a hyper realistic experience as we watched
famous chef Alice Waters chop garlic and a sausage maker smash dozens of pungent cloves
into a vat of meat. The smell itself and the collective reaction of the audience as we emerged
from the theater reeking of garlic, gave this experience a very long memory tail. There is no
doubt that this sensory immersion succeeded in heightening the audience’s connection
throughout the rest of the exhibition.
The concept that multi-sensory immersion can be used to engage audiences and heighten
emotional experience is not new. It has been used in cultural rites and religious ceremonies
for millennia. In the past century, populist museums have used dioramas, film projections,
sound effects, voice tracks, and the occasional smoke and mirrors to contextualize cultural
artifacts and historical objects with immersive atmospheres. They have drawn on the staging
and mise -en-scene techniques commonly used in theater and film. They have at times dared
118
MAGGIE BURNETTE STOGNER
to use cutting edge technologies, such as stereoscopic 3D when it was first popularized in
the 1840s, to appeal to a wider audience.
Many studies have established that multi-sensory immersion increases emotional engagement and that this connection, in turn, creates more profound and memorable experiences.
In museum environments, “…museum experiences can be deeply embedded in visitors’
memories with potential for significant learning” (Falk & Dierking, 2009). A recent visitors’
study of the California Science Center’s “Goose Bumps: The Science of Fear” exhibition
found that from the visitors’ perspective, the experience was as much about feelings and
emotion as about knowledge and cognition. The study found evidence, “…that elevated
emotional arousal positively affected cognition and memory” (Falk et al, 2009). An earlier,
in-depth study found that, “Although cognitive processes were long considered to be separate
from emotion, current research has indicated that these processes are inextricably intertwined.”
The study concludes that emotions have been linked to both decision-making and memory,
and that they are likely “…impacting the experiences with which visitors choose to engage,
the memories they make, and ultimately the learning that takes place” (Damasio, 1995).
Immersive experiences that engage the senses create a heightened emotional and cognitive
connection that ignites the imagination. In today’s multi-tasking, information-overloaded
era of distraction, immersive museum environments offer another compelling advantage.
They provide discrete experiences free from external disruptions, which enable the visitor
to relate more fully and mindfully to the content at hand.
The Power of Immersive Storytelling
Narrative is a powerful immersive tool in and of itself, particularly when presented in a
multi-sensory environment. Who hasn’t been spellbound by a scary ghost story around the
campfire? The wind in the trees, the eerie hoot of a night owl, long shadows flickering by
the fire’s flame all help to create an atmosphere that heightens the listeners’ fear and excitement.
Artifacts are at the core of cultural exhibitions and, through these objects, the stories of
yore are conveyed. Silverman states, “…humans share a basic need to express the meanings
we make by telling them, often in the form of stories” (Silverman, 1995). However, if little
more than the objects’ title, date of origin, and materials are provided, there is a lost opportunity to forge a meaningful emotional connection with visitors. An effective immersive
narrative not only shapes the exhibition design, it provides a bridge between the visitor’s
own life experiences and the objects that represent another time and place. Perhaps most
significantly, this personal connection makes visitors care.
Immersive storytelling in a museum environment depends on the same concept of “suspension of disbelief” as a good movie. It lures the audience into the narrative of another time
and place, and plunges us into an alternate world in which we forget about the distractions
and worries of our daily lives. We become engrossed in the life and lifestyle of this other
world; we become part of it. “Given the right kind of imagery our mind can empathically
enter the screen and if it does the resulting experience is deeply immersive” (Coulter-Smith,
2006). In the case of cultural exhibitions, a meaningful story enhanced with multi-sensory
immersion can activate visitors’ imaginations, transporting them to the life and times of ancient cultures and historical events.
119
THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF THE INCLUSIVE MUSEUM
Visitors bring their own life experiences to these narratives and, through a heightened
state of immersion, engage in a visceral exploration of personal relevance and meaning.
“…the impact of museums is best understood via the meanings visitors make and negotiate
in the long-term. This provides critical insights into what a museum visit means and how its
impact is negotiated within time and space” (Schorch, 2009). The most memorable immersive
stories transcend cultural differences by resonating with our common humanity.
Visitor as Character
In an immersive museum experience, representational characters are frequently woven into
the narrative and contextual content of the exhibition. Many museums use a simple combination of archival imagery and audio to represent historical characters. Digital media technologies are enabling new approaches: In Real Pirates (see example later in this paper), lifelike mannequins of Captain Sam Bellamy and several crew members take visitors through
the narrative of the pirate ship with immersive voice recordings.2 The Abraham Lincoln
Presidential Museum in Springfield, Illinois uses a holographic technique to bring alive the
ghost of Abe Lincoln in the presidential library. In Cleopatra: The Search for the Last Queen
of Egypt, the audio guide is narrated in the voice of Cleopatra, who takes visitors on an intimate tour through ancient artifacts representing the highlights of her life.
The idea of using characters to engage audiences is at the core of storytelling. In museum
exhibitions, there is a natural opportunity for visitors to become part of the narrative by
putting themselves in character roles. The simple act of a visitor’s movement through the
exhibition space physically immerses them within the story as it unfolds and comes alive.
One excellent example of an active role can be found at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
where visitors choose a passport identity of a real Holocaust victim and follow through the
exhibition in that person’s footsteps. Hein’s research on active learning in museum environments reveals that, “…active participation of the mind in learning, and recognition that the
process of learning is not simple addition of items into some sort of mental data bank but a
transformation of schemas in which the learner plays an active role and which involves
making sense out of a range of phenomena presented to the mind” (Hein, 1995). The more
defined and active the character role, the more deeply engrossed the visitors are likely to be
in the exhibition narrative.
Gone are the days of one-object-label-size fits all. Visitors bring a vast range of personal
cultural experience and expectations to today’s museums. Through the use of new media
technologies, visitors can tailor their learning experience and character roles according to
their interests, needs, and abilities. Falk suggests we “…stop thinking about visitors as
definable by some permanent quality or attribute such as age or race/ethnicity. Instead, we
need to come to appreciate that every visitor is a unique individual, each capable of having
a wide range of very different kinds of visitor experiences” (Falk, CMT 2009).
The immersive, narrative-driven exhibitions for which I’ve created and produced contextualizing media suggest a continuum of visitor roles ranging from passive to active to interactive. In a typical passive role, a visitor strolls through the exhibition as a spectator/observer.
In a moderately active role, the visitor participates in the narrative as a time-traveler, explorer
2
The content of the voice recordings were based on historical transcripts and authenticated dialects from the early
1700s.
120
MAGGIE BURNETTE STOGNER
or discoverer. In a highly active, interactive, and/or networked role, the visitor might contribute his or her own experiences or mediate information in the form of historian, archaeologist
or art curator.
Additional qualitative textural analysis from case studies indicate a correlation between the
use of media technologies in cultural exhibitions and the role of visitors, wherein those exhibitions using new media technologies tended to engage visitors in more active roles. For
example, multi-use touch tables encouraged self-directed explorations of multiple layers of
information, both individually and collectively; networked multi-media devices enabled
visitors to collect time-shifted information to websites for extended learning opportunities;
and more advanced technologies incorporate visitor’s cognitive and emotional responses
into contextualized experiences. These and other media technologies spur the use of activeengagement in immersive design concepts.
Case Studies and Examples
In any emerging field, there are many ways to frame, categorize, and label new advances
and the descriptive lexicon evolves over time. For the purposes of this survey, I have categorized immersive design models in the following ways:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Experiential Immersion
Narrative Immersion
Theater Immersion
Interactive Immersion
Virtual Immersion
Many exhibitions use combinations of these immersive approaches within the same area or
installation. As explored earlier in this paper, immersive experiences are defined by the
media technologies and conceptual design, as well as by the role of the visitor.
Experiential Immersion
Experiential immersion without narrative is purely sensory, but can be highly effective in
stimulating an emotional connection with extensive retention value. In fact, this type of immersion can be highly provocative. When touring the Alcatraz Prison in San Francisco, the
docent was a former prison inmate who instructed each of us to step into a solitary cell and
close the door. Just one minute spent in the dark, dank space haunted by the smells of corporal confinement produced an unforgettable experience. No narrative was needed. The
Rothko Chapel in Houston, Texas is another illuminating example. The natural light from
high windows plays across the artist’s large purple paintings, creating a form of meditative
visual music that reflects nature’s calm and stormy moments. Visitors bring their own interpretive meaning to this contemplative experience. Mine, and that of others, was a lasting
121
THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF THE INCLUSIVE MUSEUM
sense of inspiration. Both of these examples are effectively in situ but today’s digital technologies are increasingly able to recreate simulated experiences off-site (see virtual examples
below).
Narrative Immersion
Over the past five years, I have created media for several world-touring traveling exhibitions
that are excellent examples of narrative-driven immersive experiences. They are designed
as experiential stories through which the visitor moves. Multi-sensory media is integrated
with designed environments to provide rich contextual connections with the artifacts.
Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs - Sponsored by National Geographic
and Art and Exhibitions International, this traveling exhibition opened in 2005 in Los Angeles,
toured throughout the US, including a non-museum venue in New York City’s Times Square,
London, and Australia. An introductory high-definition video, narrated by Egyptian actor
Omar Sharif, plays on multiple screens with surround sound, transporting visitors to the
world of Tutankhamun. The curtains open to reveal a beautifully lit, signature artifact and
visitors are drawn into a journey through 18th dynasty ancient Egypt, experiencing the boy
king’s rise to power, learning about his ancestors, witnessing the 1922 discovery of his tomb,
and exploring the cause of his demise through modern scientific analysis of his mummy.
Visitors move through the exhibition in the role of observer, explorer, discoverer, archaeologist, and scientist. High definition videos, photomurals, archival imagery, 3D computer animations, and music serve to bring alive and contextualize the artifacts that represent this
amazing ancient culture.
Top-down projection of archival photos of Howard Carter’s discovery of Tutankhuman’s
mummy show the exact in situ location of artifacts displayed in this gallery (courtesy of
AEI)
122
MAGGIE BURNETTE STOGNER
A second exhibition, Tutankhamun: the Golden King and the Great Pharaohs, uses many
of the same design techniques. A multiscreen, high definition introductory video, narrated
by Harrison Ford, sets the mood and atmosphere. It transports visitors to the world of the
great pharaohs of Ancient Egypt, and then doors open to reveal a replica of an ancient
causeway through which visitors begin their journey. This exhibition, representing 3,000
years of artifacts from ancient Egypt, premiered in November 2008 in Atlanta, Georgia and
is touring throughout the U.S. It includes a full range of integrative media, including animated
video labels for signature artifacts and a simulated CT-Scan machine to reveal details about
Tutankhuman’s mummy. The digital technology woven throughout this exhibition provides
a multi-layered experience, easily tailored by the visitor.
Using authentic data, a simulated Cat-Scan of Tutankhamun’s Mummy highlights scientific
findings, including Tutankhamun’s impacted wisdom tooth, embalming resin at the base of
his skull, and signs of an infection below the knee (photo: Maggie Burnette Stogner)
Real Pirates: the Untold Story of the Whydah, from Slave Ship to Pirate Ship presents an
extraordinary collection of artifacts that are contextualized by immersive sets and integrative
media technologies. Approximately 16,000 square feet, the exhibition opened in 2007 at
The Franklin Institute in Philadelphia and is traveling throughout the U.S. It reveals the story
of the first authenticated pirate ship to be discovered in the U.S., and includes the ship’s
slave and pirate histories, as well as the ship’s discovery off the shores of Cape Cod over
250 years later. The immersive design places artifacts, as though in situ, on the ocean floor,
within a reconstruction of the ship, and other environments. Life-like figures representing
Captain Sam Bellamy and several crew, high-definition videos, integrated computer anima-
123
THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF THE INCLUSIVE MUSEUM
tions, music, voice and soundscapes, combine to contextualize the artifacts and provide a
rich immersive experience. A team of eleven scholars, transcripts from the 1717 trial of six
pirates who survived the shipwreck, scientific studies of the artifacts, and other historical
data ensured a high level of authenticity throughout the exhibition.
There are many other examples of Narrative Immersion. One that stands out for the authenticity of its immersive design approach is the Greatest Generation Exhibit, Minnesota
History Center, St. Paul. A gallery called “This Must Be Hell” invites visitors to enter the
fuselage of a real World War II era Douglas C-47 and imagine themselves in the role of the
paratroopers who once sat on these very benches. A16-channel sound system, video projection, and visual effects outside the plane windows immerse visitors in a realistic representation
of a WWII invasion. Visitors hear real stories from WWII veterans about the D-Day jump
on Normandy. Immersed in a genuine physical environment creates a powerful emotional
connection to the veterans’ accounts of life and death during wartime.
Theater Immersion
Surround screen technology, high definition video, and digital audio combine to create
powerful immersive experiences that are increasingly used to plunge visitors into the life
and times of another environment. They are often used to emotionally prime visitors at the
beginning of an exhibition, to heighten visitors’ contextual connection to artifacts and objects,
and to expand visitors’ empathetic understanding of an exhibition. The use of 3D has recently
resurfaced, and has paved the way for the new 4D immersive experience, which enhances
the immersive experience with tangible elements such as moving seats, wind, bubbles, and
mist. The Newseum in Washington DC installed one of the earliest permanent 4D theaters
to relate the historical highlights of journalism. The Visitor Center in Edinburgh, Scotland
opened its permanent 4D theater with the program “Our Dynamic Earth”, a stereoscopic 3D,
lighting, audio, wind, snow and aroma extravaganza. In a déjà vu of a hundred years ago,
critics bemoan the high cost and sensationalism of the mega-sensory theatrical experiences.
However, the trend appears to be catching on. “Planet Earth 4D” produced by the
BBC/Discovery Channel/NHK in association with the CBC is just one of several broadcast
companies that are beginning to produce 3D and 4D programming simultaneously with their
regular 2D television programming.
124
MAGGIE BURNETTE STOGNER
(Fulldome theater. Photo courtesy of NMAI)
IMAX and IMAX 3-D theaters and programs are also expanding, as well as OMNIMAX
and other surround screen technologies. Digital media advances have dramatically enhanced
large screen resolution and lowered costs, opening the way for a plethora of new designs.
One specific category is the dome theater. An early example is the Smithsonian’s American
Indian Museum (NMAI) “fulldome,” designed by Global Immersion in the U.K. and first
installed in 2004. It was subsequently upgraded in November 2009. A 120-seat circular
theater immerses visitors in a 13-minute presentation titled ‘Who We Are’ about contemporary
Native American lifestyles. The overhead dome simulates the sky. On the floor below, in
the center of the theater, a video campfire flickers. Video screens placed above the digital
campfire project stories to the audience. Visitors’ attention is directed to three levels of
content simultaneously: the fire-pit, the video screens at eye-level, and the dome screen
above. The Fraunhofer Institute has also developed a dome screen but, unlike the passive
experience of NMAI’s dome, this one includes an interactive component that enables visitors
to participate in the creation of content. Still in developmental stages, it will be interesting
to see how this interactive, immersive design evolves.
Interactive Immersion
The potential for interactive and participatory immersive design is tremendous. Network
and wireless technologies, Twitter and instant messaging, social networking and crowdsourcing, are among new technologies that are finding their way into museum environments.
They are enabling a substantial change in the role of the visitor from passive viewer to active
participant. Their use, like the technology, is nascent. As these technologies evolve, they
will enable increasingly meaningful levels of visitor participation and contribution.
125
THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF THE INCLUSIVE MUSEUM
(Grammy Museum’s interactive digital drum set. Photo: Maggie Burnette Stogner)
Cultural museums are beginning to see the value of interactive and participatory technologies,
particularly to engage younger and more diverse audiences, as well as to extend the learning
experience off-site. One example is multi-use touch tables, which engage visitors in a collective tactile, exploratory experience. The new Grammy Museum in Los Angeles, CA introduces visitors to an extraordinary amount of multi-layered content covering nearly a
century of musicians and genres. Visitors can select text information and music samples,
which may be listened to individually or in pairs. Similar collective listening stations are
offered throughout the museum. Small rooms simulate music studios that enable 4 to 6 visitors to learn collectively as they interact with variety of music genres. Digitally enhanced
instruments provide visitors the opportunity to play along with different songs while hearing
the results through headphones (no doubt a relief for other visitors).
In its recent exhibition, ‘From Memory to Action’, the US Holocaust Memorial Museum
in Washington DC introduced a combination multi-user touch table with video screens
overhead of testimonials and eyewitness accounts of genocide. Visitors use the Eyewitness
Interactive table to explore deeper and, if desired, to save selected stories which they can
then send to the museum website to be accessed and shared at a later time. Visitors are participating in the living history of these important eyewitness accounts.
Museums are also experimenting with new media technologies that enable visitors to
contribute and share their own experiences real-time. An excellent example of how this unfolds within an immersive design was inspired by the story of Alice Through the Looking
Glass. Step into the Painting, at The Hunt Museum, Limerick, Ireland playfully takes visitors
inside the story of a painting, providing an immersive exploration of creativity. The installation is based on a still life painting by Patrick Hennessey selected from the permanent collection of Limerick City Gallery of Art in Ireland. It reconstructs the original still life as a
three dimensional set, inviting the spectator to step right into the painting. Three interactive
video projections surrounding the set allow the visitor to become part of a series of ever
changing new digital, still life artworks, which represent contemporary interpretations of
126
MAGGIE BURNETTE STOGNER
the classical painting genre. The developers of the installation, Anne Cleary and Dennis
Connolly, strove to use creative immersive experiences to explore cultural phenomena.
(Photo: courtesy of The Limerick Museum)
Virtual Immersion
This large and varied category is benefiting from the rapid growth of well-funded video
gaming, animation and theme park industries. Augmented virtual reality experiences have
the advantage of transcending the physical and temporal, enabling visitors to explore historical and archaeological sites based on real data. VR goggles have been in development for
over twenty years – my first experience with them was at a TED (Technology, Entertainment/Education and Design) conference in 1990. They have come a long way thanks to advancing digital imagery, compression, and mapping technologies. Fairly new on the horizon
are augmented VR models such as the “Virtusphere” that enable visitors to explore threedimensional imagery using VR goggles while walking within a suspended rolling ball.
Computer-generated re-creations of archaeological and historical sites have also greatly
advanced. 3D fly-through models can be created and displayed on large screens or small,
with interactive devices that allow individuals to explore a site. More recently, video gaming
control sets are used to enable collective exploration. Users can assume the role of archaeologist, historian, or a character in that time period. The highly acclaimed Rome Reborn,
which debuted in 2007, is one of the largest archaeological simulations created to date. A
complex virtual representation of Rome in 400 A.D., organized by Bernard Frischer, head
of the Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities, University of Virginia, was
sourced from ancient maps and building data and involved over 100 experts. This virtual
3D model was then licensed to create a commercial version, Rewind Rome, which added
Asterix-like characters and, in the words of creator Joel Myers “digital grit.” The characters
and their voices are distinctly comic book like. Myers said of the original, scholarly model:
“It’s not lived in at all -- there’s no graffiti, no mud on the walls, no hustle and bustle,”
127
THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF THE INCLUSIVE MUSEUM
Myers says. “There’s no story to it.” 3 Myers’ version raises issues, however, of representation
and authenticity. The dialog and characters are not grounded in historical scholarship.
Another example is the Museo Archeologico Virtuale, which has over 70 multimedia installations. What it doesn’t have are any artifacts. Virtual media is used to immerse visitors
in the life and times of nearby Pompeii and Herculaneum in their heyday, before Vesuvius
erupted in 79 A.D. MAV’s website boasts that visitors can “channel [their] inner Indiana
Jones. . . You do the discovering here: Your footsteps scatter virtual dust along the floor to
expose intricate mosaics from Pompeii's House of the Faun, and your fingertips wipe away
a misted glass to reveal a woman bathing after a visit to the caldarium.”4 It remains to be
seen if this virtual museum experience motivates visitors to go to the actual ruins of Pompeii
and Herculaneum, or if it becomes a replacement of the in situ experience. It fuels the debate
over what constitutes a museum. Is a virtual representation, in which there are no real objects,
a museum at all?
What will virtual reality look like in the future? “One can only guess however, it would
be safe to say that it will include total immersion of the participant in a 3-D augmented
reality with holographic images and wave frequency interactions with the Bio-system of the
individual or individuals who are participating” (Winslow, 2007). This may sound like an
excerpt from a science fiction novel, but new media technologies are advancing at astonishing
rates.
Summary
Culture is all about our human stories. It is how we, as humans, share who we are, what we
believe in, what we fear or love, what we hope for, how we live. We have communicated
our culture through multimedia storytelling from the earliest cave drawings and stories
around the fire-pit. Immersive media technologies are an evolving means to tell and share
those stories. Museums can benefit from embracing new media technology not for its own
sake but for the ways in which it offers new opportunities to contextualize and foster meaningful connections with the artifacts of our collective world heritage. Use of 21st century
immersive media technologies can make available, both on site and virtually, cultural experiences and information to those who do not have the means to access them, or who simply
do not feel welcome at venerable institutions. Ideally, “...museums can provide a reassuring
setting for visitors to interact with art, with their heritage -- and with one another” (Cemblast,
2009).
A word about best practices: the old computer programming term GIGO (garbage-in,
garbage-out) still applies today. New media technologies are tools with which to create,
share, and archive content. But the content is only as valid as the source from which it is
derived. Immersive environments can significantly enhance how we contextualize, represent,
and interpret history and culture, but they can also misinform, obscure and detract from actual objects and artifacts. “Museums play a more critical role than ever as purveyors of the
authentic, addressing a human desire for the real as the wonders of technology march us towards the opposite path” (Center for the Future of Museums 2008). Best practices of representation, authenticity, veracity, and diversity are critical if museums are to avoid reducing
3
4
www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/rome_reborn
www.museomav.it
128
MAGGIE BURNETTE STOGNER
the cultural experience to a Disney or Las Vegas-like caricature. Today’s new media technologies have tremendous potential to enliven and give meaning to ancient cultures and historical events of the past, but they must be used with a strong commitment to content research
and quality.
References
Cemblast, R. ARTnews, Reshaping the Art Museum, June 2009
Center for the Future of Museums 2008. Museums & Society 2034: Trends and Potential Futures.
Prepared for the American Association for Museums by Reach Advisors.
Center for the Future of Museums 2010. Demographic Transformation and the Future of Museums.
Prepared for AAM by the Cultural Policy Center at the University of Chicago.
Coulter-Smith, G. 2006. Deconstructing Installation Art, Chapter 2 “Immersion in a field of distance”
CASAID Publishing.
Damasio, A.R. (1995) Descartes’ error: Emotion, reason and the human brain. New York: Penguin
Group.
Falk, J. H., Gillespie, K. L., Kelly, L. D., Niedbalski, A., The Role of Emotion in Free-Choice Learning,
22nd Annual Visitor Studies Association Conference, July 2009
Falk, J.H. and Dierking, L.D. 1992. The Museum Experience, Washington DC: Whalesback Books
Falk, J.H. Proceedings of CMT2009/A/003, The Learning Tourist: The Role of Identity-Related Visitor
Motivations, p38.
Griffiths, A. 1999. Media technology and museum display: A century of accommodation and conflict.
Paper presented at the MIT Communications Forum, Dec. 19.
Hein, G. E. 1995. Learning in the Museum, p23. [Also, see Roschelle (1995)]
Howe, N., & Strauss, W. (2006). Millennials and the pop culture: Strategies for a new generation of
consumers in music, movies, television, the Internet, and video games. Great Falls, VA: LifeCourse Associates.
Innis, H. A. 1951. The Bias of Communication. Toronto, Buffalo, London: University of Toronto Press.
National Endowment of the Arts 2008. 2008 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts, Prepared by
Kevin Williams and David Keen, BBC Research & Consulting, Denver, CO
The Smithsonian Magazine, Bernard Frischer, head of the Institute for Advanced Technology in the
Humanities, University of Virginia, organized the project. www.smithsonianmag.com/historyarchaeology/rome_reborn
Schorch, P. July 2009. “What Does a Museum Mean? A Narrative Approach to Museum Impact.”
22nd Annual Visitors Studies Assoc. Conference.
Silverman. L.H. (1995) “Visitor meaning-making in museums for a new age.” Curator: The Museum
Journal 38(3), p162
Winslow, L. 2007, Trends in Augmented and Virtual Reality (VR)
129
THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF THE INCLUSIVE MUSEUM
About the Author
Maggie Burnette Stogner
I come from a lengthy career as a documentary filmmaker, with a few forages into interactive
multimedia in the 1990s at Apple Computer and my own company 100th Monkey Media.
From 1995 to 2004, I was a producer and then Senior Producer of National Geographic’s
weekly documentary series “Explorer” and “Ultimate Explorer”. In 2005, I founded Blue
Bear Films, a media design and production company that has produced the media technology
for large traveling exhibitions such as “Tutankhamun: The Golden King and the Great
Pharaohs”, “Afghanistan: Hidden Treasures”, and “Real Pirates: the Untold Story of the
Whydah from Slave Ship to Pirate Ship”, among many others. I am also a faculty member
of the Film and Media Arts department at American University in Washington DC. My
graduate degree is from Stanford University in Communication, specializing in Documentary
Film.
130
Copyright of International Journal of the Inclusive Museum is the property of Common Ground Publishing and
its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's
express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.