Кто читает:: Институт медиа

Статус:: Курс по выбору

Когда читается:: 3-й курс, 1, 2 модуль

Преподаватель

Гринчева Наталья Михайловна

Full Syllabus

Abstract

This course explores new practices, activities, and potentials of contemporary museums in relation to such complex processes as digitalization and datafication that transcend several levels of human life from cultural, to economic to political. The course consists of two key parts delivered through two respective modules. The first module equips students with foundational analytical tools and theoretical knowledge to critically analyze different practices and phenomena in digital museology. It introduces them to a wide range of museum practices that emerge in the digital age on several levels of institutional transformations from museum objects’ digital conservation to assembling digital exhibitions to preservation of digital arts. It looks at how digital technologies reconfigured, reshaped, challenged, or enhanced museums’ collections, spaces and audiences’ experiences in the 21st century. The second module is devoted to illustrating these digital cultural phenomena and museum practices through case study explorations and analyses. These focused explorations trace the development of new technologies implemented in museums from mere web and mobiles applications up to the employment of Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Learning Objectives

The course aims to introduce students to foundational theories in digital cultures and explore their relationships to contemporary museology
Students will master key approaches to understand, explore and critically analyze digital practices of museums, reconfiguring their collections, spaces and audiences
Students will learn to recognize and analyze various digital phenomena transforming museums into new distributed, interactive, participatory, data-driven and AI enhanced institutions
Students will develop a necessary vocabulary and conceptual understanding of digital cultures to engage in debates related to contemporary museums as well as ethical, social and cultural implications of their uses of digital technologies

Expected Learning Outcomes

Students are able to define digitalism, outline and differentiate across foundational characteristics and phenomena of contemporary digital cultures and apply them to the analysis of contemporary museums.
Students are able to define and analyze electronic surrogates of museums’ artefacts and discuss their characteristics in relation to such phenomena as materiality vs virtuality, authenticity and meaning construction.
Students are able to analyze digital museum exhibitions and digital heritage collections as important sites of creating museum narratives and discuss them in relation to issues of democratic access and cultural repatriation.
Students are able to identify, differentiate across and analyze multiple museum manifestations, including but not limited to electronically enabled physical spaces, online representations and virtual reality simulations.
Students are able to characterize and analyze museum online and virtual audiences applying critically lenses of social theories in relation to such digital phenomena as online engagement, participation, interactivity and activism.
Students are able to differentiate between electronic surrogates and born-digital museum objects. They can critically reflect on and discuss existing practices of creation, presentation, exhibition, collection, and preservation of digital arts.
Students are able to critically analyze museums and their activities on the Internet. They can deconstruct museums’ cultural, social, and political narratives created through different digital tools on the social web.
Students are able to discuss and critically reflect on challenges and opportunities brought to museum by innovative technologies of Augment Realities. They can analyze case studies demonstrating museums’ use of mobile apps and AR technologies.
Students are able to analyze various VR applications employed by museums to deliver new interactive cultural experiences. They can critically reflect on how VR technologies enable a development of such digital phenomenon as personal immersion.
Students are able to analyze how complex processes of datafication change museums on several levels of their existence. They can differentiate across and characterize the uses of big data in museums from celebration and conservation of new arts, to curatorial work, to management and audience development.
Students are able to explore and analyze the practical uses of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies in museums. They can discuss AI possibilities in relation to such critical issues as human-computer interaction and robotics.

Course Contents

Museums and digital cultures: Unpacking digitalism
This topic defines digitalism and introduces students to foundational characteristics and phenomena of contemporary digital cultures. It situates social and cultural practices of museums within the ongoing and rapidly growing processes of digitalization and datafication of the society.
Digital object: Transformation, representation, and authenticity
This topic engages students in exploration of digital objects, or electronic surrogates of museums’ artefacts. It discusses complex processes of objects’ transformation from material to virtual state of being and analyzes how it effects or reshapes museum objects’ representation narratives and authenticity.
Digital collections: Access and repatriation
This topic is devoted to explorations of museum digital collections and exhibitions as an enhanced and technologically enabled form of creating museum narratives and re/constructing meanings, reaching much wider and more diverse audiences on the global scale. It discusses how digital heritage collections become open virtual spaces of storytelling and critically analyzes if digital repatriation is a meaningful way to return cultural heritage back to source communities.
Museum spaces: Across digital and physical realities
This topic explores a museum transformation in the 21st century from an onsite institution with strictly defined boundaries to a transcended phenomenon with no clear borders between physical and virtual worlds. It introduces students to multiple museum manifestations across electronically enabled physical spaces, online representations and virtual reality simulations.
Digital audiences: From engagement to activism
This topic explores online and virtual museum goers who connect to contemporary museums through Internet, social media or mobile applications. It critically reflects on various social phenomena, redefining the notion of audience in the digital age, including engagement, participation, interactivity, and online activism.
Digital arts: A life cycle and expectancy of born-digital artefacts
This topic discusses a phenomenon of born-digital artefacts that have no analogues in the material world. It explores how contemporary museums deal with such digital art objects and investigates existing practices of creation, presentation, exhibition, collection, and preservation of digital arts.
Museums on the social Web
This topic discusses and explores various digital projects and programs, virtual installations, and online campaigns, implemented by contemporary museums on the Internet. It focuses on the qualitative shift in constructing a museum image and identity on the social web rather than in traditional onsite setting.
Museums through mobile apps and AR
This topic examines various practices of museums performed through mobile applications, particularly focusing on Augment Realities (AR) capabilities. This technology enhances explorations of museums’ collections and artefacts and significantly increases their mass audience appeal and interactivity, facilitating more democratic approaches in meaning construction and engaging visitors on the next quality level.
Virtual reality and museums
This topic investigates the application of Virtual Realities (VR) technologies in different museum exhibitions, installations and community engagement practices. It critically analyses the use of VR in contemporary museums in relation to such phenomenon as immersive cultural experiences. This new interactive way of engagement with museum content allows visitors to explore the world of arts, science or history through personal immersion enhancing perceptions and learning.
Big data as/in museums
This topic explores datafication processes that significantly affect and reshape contemporary museums on various levels of their engagement with society. Not only it considers the emergence of data arts and different challenges in its preservation and conservation. It also explores museums as the very agency of big data generation and interrogates how these data sets could be used to enhance museum management and curatorial work.
Artificial Intelligence in museums
This topic explores unlimited cultural potentials as well as educational, research and engagements possibilities brought to museums by Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies. It surveys and critically reflects on various practices of utilizing AI technologies in museums to explore their impacts upon contemporary art, culture and society.

Assessment Elements

Participation
Online seminar participation constitutes an important part of the grade. It includes proper attendance (checked and recorded for each online Seminar) and active participation in group exercises, discussions, and online activities, especially on the Discussion board.
Quizzes & Tests
Throughout the course students will pass 5 online quizzes and 5 case study tests (worth 4% each of the total mark). Online quizzes and case study tests are designed to evaluate students’ knowledge received through required readings (only one article or a book chapter for each class). Students are offered to pass online quizzes and tests any time at their convenience, but no later than 3 hours before the online seminar.
Final project presentation
Final project presentation is a group - led activity. Throughout the semester students will work in small groups (5 persons max) to develop their final project presentations, which must be delivered online at the final seminar session on Week 14 in the second module. Final project is a focused case study and analysis of a particular museum and its digital program. Students should choose a concrete museum from any country and develop a detailed analysis of its specific digital program/project/campaign or activity, illustrative of critical issues explored in the course.

Interim Assessment

Interim assessment (2 module)
0.5 * Final project presentation + 0.15 * Participation + 0.35 * Quizzes & Tests

Bibliography

Recommended Core Bibliography

Akker, C. van den, & Legêne, S. (2016). Museums in a Digital Culture. Amsterdam University Press.
Ghouaiel, N., Garbaya, S., Cieutat, J.-M., & Jessel, J.-P. (2016). Mobile Augmented Reality in Museums : Towards Enhancing Visitor’s Learning Experience.
Grau, O., Coones, W., & Rühse, V. (2017). Museum and Archive on the Move : Changing Cultural Institutions in the Digital Era. De Gruyter.
Maria Shehade, & Theopisti Stylianou-Lambert. (2020). Virtual Reality in Museums: Exploring the Experiences of Museum Professionals. https://doi.org/10.3390/app10114031
Tula Giannini, & Jonathan P. Bowen. (2019). Museums and Digital Culture : New Perspectives and Research (Vol. 1st ed. 2019). Springer.

Recommended Additional Bibliography

Allen, K. R. (2016). Building Bridges Between the Virtual and Real: A Study of Augmented and Virtual Realities in the Museum Space and the Collaborations That Produce Them.
Cassidy, C. A., Fabola, A. E., Miller, A., Weil, K., Urbina, S., Antas, M., & Cummins, A. (2019). Digital pathways in community museums. https://doi.org/10.1111/muse.12198
Chrisman, L. M. (2014). Interactive Technology & Institutional Change: A Case Study of Gallery One and the Cleveland Museum of Art.
Digital Arts 2019. (2019).
Ghouaiel, N., Garbaya, S., Cieutat, J.-M., & Jessel, J.-P. (2017). Mobile Augmented Reality in Museums : Towards Enhancing Visitor’s Learning Experience. International Journal of Virtual Reality, 17(1), 21–31. https://doi.org/10.20870/ijvr.2017.17.1.2885
Noelia Vallez, Stephan Krauss, Jose Luis Espinosa-Aranda, Alain Pagani, Kasra Seirafi, & Oscar Deniz. (2020). Automatic Museum Audio Guide. https://doi.org/10.3390/s20030779
Orlandi, S. D., Calandra, G., Ferrara, V., Marras, A. M., Radice, S., Bertacchini, E., Nizzo, V., & Maffei, T. (2019). Web Strategy in Museums: An Italian Survey Stimulates New Visions. https://doi.org/10.1111/muse.12194
Parry, R. (2010). Museums in a Digital Age. Routledge.
PEIM, N. (2007). Walter Benjamin in the Age of Digital Reproduction: Aura in Education: A Rereading of ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.’ Journal of Philosophy of Education, 41(3), 363–380. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9752.2007.00579.x

Бакалаврская программа «Медиакоммуникации»

Museums and Digital Cultures