Digital Materiality in Museum Exhibitions: Affordances for Meaning-Making
2025 (English)In: London Heritages 2025: Critical Questions - Contemporary Practice, London: AMPS - Architechture, Media, Politics, Society , 2025Conference paper, Oral presentation with published abstract (Refereed)
Sustainable development
Ecological sustainability, Social sustainability
Abstract [en]
Prompted by an interest in the widespread and transformative impact digitization has had on museum practices in recent years, (cf. Arvantis & Zuanni, 2021; Vermehren et al, 2021), this 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 decision-making 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.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
London: AMPS - Architechture, Media, Politics, Society , 2025.
Keywords [en]
museum exhibitions, digital media, multimodality, affordance
National Category
Educational Sciences
Research subject
Forskningsområden, Visuella kulturer och lärande
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:konstfack:diva-10491OAI: oai:DiVA.org:konstfack-10491DiVA, id: diva2:1978522
Conference
London Heritages 2025: Critical Questions - Contemporary Practice, University of Greenwich, June 25-27, 2025
Projects
Utställningars materialitet: Digitaliseringens betydelse för meningsskapande
Note
En sk procceding är, enligt uppgift, under arbete. För närvarande finns abstracts och program tillgängliga via länkarna ovan.
2025-06-272025-06-272025-09-26Bibliographically approved