Digitization has had a transformative impact on museum practices in recent years, including the work with exhibitions (cf. Arvantis & Zuanni, 2021; Vermehren et al, 2021). Digital media make it possible for more people to take part in cultural heritage, by making available objects and remains of a sensitive nature that could not otherwise be shown publicly. It opens up new forms of communication that can make it possible for groups of visitors with different needs to learn about the past (Galani & Kidd, 2020; Kyriakou & Hermon, 2018). New questions can potentially be asked when cultural heritage is made digital.

The paper presents an ongoing research project on digital materialities in museum exhibitions. Focusing on materiality, the project seeks to understand the affordances for meaning-making of digital media in relation to the epistemological commitments of modes, media, and material expression (cf. Bezemer & Kress; Björkvall & Karlsson, 2011; Lindstrand, 2022). The paper includes data from a series of workshops at museums that are part of the Swedish National Maritime and Transport Museums; Vasa Museum, Vrak - museum of Wrecks, Naval Museum, and Maritime Museum. The workshops were guided by key theoretical underpinnings from multimodal social semiotics. Based on empirical research into a wide variety of cases, we aim to offer a meta-language for assessing digital materiality which can be used as a basis for scientific analyses, as well as a tool for cross-professional discussions and informed decisionmaking in exhibition design. We claim that the digital makes objects available in a specific form and with a specific (simulated) materiality which adds discursive layers to the representations. It contributes to the possibility of adding shifts in how the visitor is positioned, as well as shifts in presentations. Aesthetical enhancement contributes to making the digital salient and a resource in the museum’s meta-representation of self. The digital may also be used to express epistemic modality. It is a plastic material that is open and flexible. Depending on the modes it ”mimics”, it assumes corresponding properties and brings the equivalent possibilities, hindrances, and epistemological framing in communication. The project is funded by The Swedish National Heritage Board and will run for three years, 2023-2025.