The World is Already on Exhibit
The experiences exhibition designers produce are realized
through the tools of mediation that connect the visitor to collections, objects and ideas. Of
course, the same definition could be applied to many other forms of communication. Books mediate
between readers and subjects, television and film mediate between viewers and subjects. The Internet
serves both readers and viewers as well as participants, and is revolutionizing the fabric of society. But
what the museum exhibition offers that none of these other things do is direct contact with real objects,
authentic artifacts and specimens or, as in the case of exhibits without collections, experiences
that can’t be had without being inside the museum context. So far this has kept exhibition
designers busy, creating the experiential frameworks that museums exhibitions need to tell a
story, embed a concept or provide a direct experience. But things
are rapidly changing through an explosion of mobile devices and apps for generating and sharing content. Now, almost
anywhere we go, we have the ability to access content over our phones. Not just maps and information
about local businesses but images, stories and videos laid over whatever lies in front of us.
Augmented reality (AR) browsers like Wikitude World Browser put the world on exhibition. Using
a smartphone, Wikitude overlays anything you see through the camera display with interactive
content.
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| Wikitude on a smart phone |
Museums have been experimenting with augmentation like audio tours and mobile devices for years, but
apps like those found on Wikitude point to an eventual content saturation where the world itself can be considered an
exhibition and we are all its curators. An historic record of “everything”
is being constructed “in place”. It emerges out of personal moments of inspiration. Perhaps it is not the individual
image or sound that is important but their conglomerate effect. A temporally stratified atmosphere of content integrated with
the terrain, a sprawling monument of compiled memories. This is a good thing.
It's important that we understand that everything isn’t shallow and fleeting, that every thing and every place
has a history and a story to tell and that we are connected not just laterally in the moment but vertically through time.
It shows that places and things, often taken for granted, are far more than they appear. Of course, it is only a matter
of time before people will begin tagging themselves as points of interest. As twitter and Facebook have shown, people devote
a lot of time to masquerade and self-aggrandizement. But as many wiki-produced projects have shown, the collaborative,
collected input of users can yield profound and surprisingly accurate results. At the same time, museums have started
to utilize this technology to expand their footprint. The Museum of London recently made their app "Street Museum"
available for download on i-tunes. Now with a growing interest in transmedia, a movement away from the idea that a story or subject must be communicated or interacted with through one medium, (a concept
that exhibition designers have been working with for years) we are capable of an even broader range of possibilities for
providing and using a combination of content sources wherever we are.
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| Image from the Museum of London's "Street Museum" app. |
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While this may cause
some exhibition designers to worry, wondering if such devices might be adopted by museums as a primary means of content
delivery, it forces them, in the best possible way, to rethink the tools of the trade. It also opens unlimited territory
for applying their expertise. The world may already be on exhibit, but just as designers transformed exhibitions from an
early cabinet of curiosities to what they are today, this global exhibition is about to get a lot more spectacular. MWB, 2011
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