Museums and Digital Cultures

2021/2022

Type: Mago-Lego

Delivered by: Institute of Media

When: 3 module

Open to: students of all HSE University campuses

Instructors: Natalia Grincheva

Language: English

ECTS credits: 3

Contact hours: 32

Full Syllabus

Abstract

This course explores new practices, activities, and potentials of contemporary museums in relation to such complex processes as digitalization and datafication. It equips students with foundational analytical tools and theoretical knowledge to critically analyze different practices and phenomena in digital museology. The course offers an opportunity to explore 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. Investigating how digital technologies reconfigured, reshaped, challenged, and enhanced museums, the course traces the evolution of museum digitalization from a mere online representation up to the employment of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in museums.

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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.
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.

Course Contents

Museums and digital cultures: Unpacking digitalism
Digital object: Transformation, representation, and authenticity
Digital collections: Access and repatriation
Museum spaces: Across digital and physical realities
Digital audiences: From engagement to activism
Museums on the social Web
Museums through mobile apps and AR
Virtual reality and museums
Artificial Intelligence in museums

Assessment Elements

Seminar Presentation/Facilitation
Final Quiz
Final project
Final project presentation is a group - led activity. Throughout the semester students will work in small groups (6 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

2021/2022 3rd module
0.5 * Final project + 0.2 * Final Quiz + 0.3 * Seminar Presentation/Facilitation

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.
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
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

Course Syllabus