New Media For Museums
New Media For Museums
This document is a research on the use of new media in museums and its purpose is to provide the context
for my major project. It is divided into three parts; the research process, the report and the bibliography.
Theme
Literature
Study
Writing
definition
review
Theme Definition: During this step I studied new media with the book of Lev Manovich, “The Language of
New Media” (2005, MIT Press) as well as how they have been used in advertising with the Paul Springer’s
“Ads to Icons” (2007, Kogan Page), since my initial interest was the use of new media in advertising.
Afterwards, visiting a couple of museums which use new media, I did a primary research on how this
technology is being used in exhibition spaces. I finally decided to study the contribution of new media to
museums, as this is usually for educational purposes, and education is another area of interest for me.
Study: Here I studied the resources suggested from the literature review. However, there were times where I
needed to go back and research a specific area which was not well explored in the literature review. I used the
skim-reading technique as well as going through the book’s contents to save time by studying only the parts
close to my topic. By the end of my study, I knew which parts of the resources I was going to include in the
essay.
Writing: At that part of my research, I made a clear structure of the essay and composed the texts selected
from my study with my own findings and observations in an order so that the essay will be grasp with
coherence.
Literature Review
Questions and evaluation criteria
The main question of this literature review is “How do museums take advantage of the emergence of new
media?”. For the needs of this research this question is divided into two subcategories which examine the use
of new media regarding learning, “How new media facilitate learning in museums?”, and regarding mobile
devices, “How mobile devices are used to serve a museums needs?” All the resources have been evaluated by
the criteria of argumentation, ability to track evidence and by the author’s credibility.
Mobile-devices in museums
For the use of mobile devices in the museums “The Electronic Guidebook: Using Portable Devices and A
Wireless Web-Based Network To Extend The Museum Experience” is an analysis of how this technology can
be used in museums to facilitate their needs. The use of the mobile devices can be also examined through
representative case studies. “The design of Prisoner Escape from the Tower : an interactive location
aware historical game” (Reid, 2007) is one of them while the case about the iPhone application of the
National Gallery could be examined through a couple of articles from online journals; “Gallery launches
"Love Art" iPhone application.” (Elliot, 2009), “Love Art: The National Gallery review” (Williams, 2009).
Part B. New media in museums
This report examines the use of new media in museums. Firstly, it is analyzed what is meant by the term
“new media” and then follows a summary of how this technology has been used in museums. The subject of
this report is examined in two different aspects; by purpose and by device. Both of them include case studies
of projects which were distinguished either because of their success or innovation. As a conclusion there is a
summary of the topics analyzed in the report along with some observations.
Case Studies
From all the examples stated above, in which technology contributed to an easier and more pleasant
learning, some cases could be distinguished, either because of their success, for example the audio tour, or
due to the innovation and uniqueness in both conceptual as well as physical level. Some of these cases are
analyzed below. These are firstly the use of the audio tour, then “Smarthistory” a website project which
provides in an innovative way the wealth of MoMA in artworks and information regarding the history of art,
as well as “Archie” a prototype of gaming in museums using mobile devices.
Smarthistory
Taking advantage of the World Wide Web and the abilities databases offer regarding data manipulation
MoMA launched “Smarthistory”, a Webby Award Winner website for 2009. According to Lotte Meijer, one of
its creators, “Smarthistory” is an online multimedia art history ‘web-book’ developed by New York art
historians and professors Steven Zucker en Beth Harris as an enhancement or even replacement of the
traditional static art history text book. The website discusses over 200 of the high points of Western art
history from antiquity until today, in text, audio, and more than 150 videos. The website is aimed at both
goal-oriented and casual users, by allowing a multitude of ways to find the content. The user can quickly
search by period, style or artist name, or browse through thumbnails of the artworks in the image browser on
every page. On the artwork pages, the text and videos are joined by a map that quickly places the artwork in a
time and place, links to other interesting websites and photos of the artwork that were contributed to
“Smarthistory”’s Flickr pool (museummedia.nl, § Case Study 7: MoMA WIFI and Smarthistory).
“Smarthistory” is available both for all the internet users as well as for the museum’s audience via its special
version for mobile devices.
Archie
Archie
is
a
mobile
guide
system
that
uses
a
social-‐constructivist
approach
to
enhance
the
learning
experience
for
museum
visitors.
The
implementation
focuses
on
conveying
the
key
messages
of
the
museum
narrative
by
means
of
mobile
games
that
relate
more
to
computer
games
than
to
classic
’edutainment’.
Archie
stimulates
collaborative
learning
activities
by
encouraging
its
users
to
communicate
each
other.
The
effectiveness
of
Archie
has
been
validated
by
extensive
user
tests,
as
over
400
participants
used
the
mobile
guide
and
evaluated
it
on
different
aspects
such
as
usability,
attractiveness
and
learning
effects. One of the conclusions from these
evaluations was an increased motivation for learning about cultural heritage by youngsters (Luyten, et al.,
2008).
Conclusion
New
media
is
an
electronic
communication
technology
which
since
its
emergence
is
being
used
in
exhibition
spaces
serving
a
variety
of
purposes
in
countless
forms.
New
media
give
the
opportunity
to
museums
to
offer
to
their
audience
a
captivating
interactive
experience
through
which
one
of
the
main
aims
of
every
museum,
learning,
is
achieve
in
the
most
pleasant
of
ways.
From
a
medium
point
of
view,
mobile
devices
combined
with
technologies
such
as
the
internet
and
GPS
are
widely
used
in
the
museums
due
to
their
great
advantage
of
portability.
Concluding,
in
this
report
it
is
proven
that
whenever
there
is
a
new
technology
invented
museums
research
and
develop
ways
so
that
it
can
serve
their
needs.
Part C. Resources
Bibliography
Manovic, Lev. (2001) The Language of new media. Massachusetts. MIT Press.
Hooper-‐Greenhill,
Eilean,
ed.
(1995)
New
technologies
for
museum
communication.
London.
Museum,
Media,
Message,
Routledge.
Meijer, Charlotte. (2005) New Media, New Museums?. Amsterdam. University of Amsterdam.
Parman, Alice. (February 2006) The Museum’s Community Role. Culture Work. Vol.10, no.1.
Hooper-‐Greenhill, Eilean. (1994) The educational role of the Museum. London. Routledge.
Mäkinen, Erno. Patomäki, Saija. Raisamo, Roope. (2002) Experiences on a multimodal information kiosk
with an interactive agent. New York. ACM.
Luyten, Kris. Schroyen, Jolien. Robert, Karel. Gabriels, Kris. Teunkens, Daniel. Coninx, Karin. Flerackers,
Eddy. Manshoven, Elke. (2008) Collaborative Gaming in the Gallo-Roman Museum to Increase
Attractiveness of Learning Cultural Heritage for Youngsters. Belgium. Hasselt University.
Fisher, Jennifer. (2004) Speeches of Display: Museum Audioguides by Artists. In: Drobnick, Jim. Aural
Cultures. (2004) Canada. YYZ Books.
Pearson, Aria. Escape Old London's Most Feared Prison — Guided by GPS. Wired Magazine (San Fransisco).
15 November 2007.
Reid, Josephine. Clayton, Ben. Melamed, Tom. Hull, Richard. Stenton, Phil. Peirce, Aileen. Gidlow, Chris.
Holmes, Susan. (2007) The design of Prisoner Escape from the Tower : an interactive location aware
historical game [online] London. Tate's Handheld Conference. Available from:
http://tatehandheldconference.pbworks.com/f/DesigningPrisonersv3.doc
Sember, Robert. Spasojevic, Mirjana, (2002) The Electronic Guidebook: Using Portable Devices and A
Wireless Web-Based Network To Extend The Museum Experience. California. US Department of Education,
Educational Resources Information Center. April 2002.
Elliott, Amy-Mae. (2009) National Gallery launches "Love Art" iPhone app. [online] UK. Pocket-lint.
Available from: http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/25193/national-gallery-love-art-iphone-app
Williams, Andrew. (2009) Love Art: The National Gallery review [online] London. Know Your Mobile.
Available from: http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/25193/national-gallery-love-art-iphone-app
References
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/computing
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/media
http://searchsoa.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid26_gci213507,00.html
http://museummedia.nl/case-studies/case-study-7-moma-wifi/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_tour