placemaking in the digital age
DESCRIPTION
This presentation by Susana Bautista, Adjunct Faculty, Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism, University of Southern California - explores the notion of museums and placemaking, and how digital technologies are enabling museums to mark their places in new and innovative ways. When museums think about technology today, they must also think about place. A few questions to ask are: What are the new places that museums are occupying in the digital age? How do museums act with their visitors in these new places? How do these “new” places connect with the “old” places? What new places are museum visitors occupying, and what are they doing there? How do museums “make” place, and is there a hub? Placemaking has existed from Stonehenge to the Acropolis, and to monumental buildings centrally placed within a community such as The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Getty Center; and museums historically have had branches or satellites, programs within the community, and community partners. What is new is how technology allows us to better understand the networked museum experience, to engage its global community of visitors and users, and to connect physical and online places, mobile and fixed experiences.TRANSCRIPT
PLACEMAKING IN THE DIGITAL AGE
Susana Smith Bautista, Ph,D.
University of Southern California
November 22, 2013
How digital technology enables museums to mark their places in new and innovative ways.
Technology frees us from the burden of identifying place as permanent, fixed, and physical to embrace a new notion of place as mobile, intangible, experiential, and changing.
Questions
• What are the new places that museums are occupying in the digital age?
• How do museums act with their visitors in these new places? How do these “new” places connect with the “old” places?
• What are the new places that museum audiences are occupying, and what are they doing there?
• How do museums “make” place, and is there a homebase?
What is Placemaking?
1. Marking your place2. Setting boundaries3. Creating destinations4. Shaping public space5. Creating and bonding community6. Community-driven, collaborative, sociable7. Context-sensitive and culturally aware
Project for Public SpacesArtPlace America
Placemaking in the Analog Age
Museums and Placemaking
Building museums to create place
Museums creating their own place
Chicago Art Institute, 1900 The Getty Center, 1997
There are 2 main reasons why Place has receded for the modern museum
1) due to technology 2) due to the primacy of experience
Both are related, as new digital technologies allow for new kinds of experiences, a continuous cycle of dependence.
What is Museum Experience?
ParticipatoryInteractiveImmersiveUser-generatedCollaborativeGamesIndividualCreates memoryLong lasting
How is PLACE different in the Digital Age?
“a space of flows”(Manuel Castells, 2000)
“rhythms”(Henri Lefebvre, 1974)
“locality”(Eric Gordon & Adriana de Souza e Silva, 2011)
“an event”(Edward Casey, 1996)
“an itinerary…a series of encounters and
translations”
(James Clifford, 1997)
“the experiential museum”(Hilda Hein, 2006)
“chronotope”(Mikhail Bakhtin, 1937)
“practiced place”(De Certeau, 1984)
TOPOS place
ATOPIA out of place, improper
UTOPIA not a place, nowhere
TELETOPIA to be telepresent technological globalization
Teletopia is replacing atopia and utopia (Virilio, 1997)
The “omnilocality” of place (Casey)
The case of the Guggenheim
in search of a place…
VeniceNew York City
Las VegasBilbaoBerlin
Abu DhabiHelsinki
GuadalajaraRio de Janeiro
Taichung
© Balsamo and Bautista 2011
The Distributed MuseumMusée imaginaire (museum without walls) – André Malraux (1967)
Deterritorialized hyperspace networks – Paul Virilio (1997)
The Distributed Museum
Moveable Museum Program, AMNH
Folk and Craft Art Museum, Los Angeles
“Since visitors do not make meaning from museums solely within the four walls of the institution, effective digital media experiences require situating the experience within the broader context of the lives, the community, and the society in which visitors live and interact.” - Falk & Dierking (2008)
Walters MuseumOff the Wall
Tate Art Maps, 2012-2014
Asian Art Museum at SFO Airport
Building Community
With practically every museum today having its own website, community now takes on a global perspective through the ability to reach anyone, anywhere, and at any time with an Internet connection.
“New communities are continually made possible by the innovations of new communication technologies, yet as these new communities form, fears surface that they will undermine existing networks of connectivity, the family and the neighborhood” – Marita Sturken & Douglas Thomas (2004)
Mapping your Global Community
Interactive mapsData visualization
To understand a museum in the digital age is to understand how its online & global community is related to the physical & local community, and to all the points and flows of interaction within its distributed network.
Social Media
Going to the places where your
audience is
Connecting your online and
physical places
Virtual Worlds
Place no longer implies physicality
Connecting back to the physical
Mobile Technologies
“Now that our devices are location aware, we are much better positioned to be location aware ourselves”
- Gordon & de Souza e Silva (2011)
The re-emergence of Place in the Digital Age as Experience
The re-materialization of digital techniques (Bruno Latour, 2011)
“The expansion of digitality has enormously increased the material dimension of networks: The more digital, the less virtual and the more
material a given activity becomes”
“People still want a sense of place, a sense of belonging, in a physical way”
– Katie Hafner (2004), Technological Visions
…but still grounded in the physical and local
“It is an ancient tradition of moving monoliths to mark a place. The idea is that LACMA’s campus really is a center for Los Angeles, a cultural center, a multicultural center, and this rock will mark it very physically, in a very timeless and light manner as you walk under it.”
– Michael Govan (2011)
“It may be a revival of localism, or a reaction against a world becoming too global and too plugged-in. Face-to-face and participatory experiences, especially in unexpected places, can serve as a counterweight to digital, virtual experiences.”
- TrendsWatch 2012, AAM
Susana Smith Bautista, [email protected]