LET´S GO!

Photographer: Leonard Gren

One of the tendencies I see at the moment within the exhibition media is the development of a culture of participation. Art as a process and artbased learning as a tool to increase the relevance and to reach new groups and targets are parts of this process.

Another development, which also exhibition media has to relate to, is the fast development of the web and social media. Today´s blog adresses a few thoughts I have on the web and how new technology can be part of a participation culture and a tool for communication with the audience.

The central part in an exhibition is the physical meeting between an interpretation, a content and the visitor. The web becomes an interesting tool when we start to think about how we communicate with the visitor and how we want to make him or her involved in the exhibition. At the same time we know that the web forever has changed the conditions for learning. We have entered a new paradigm. Above all this has to do with 2 things;

- Firstly, the new technology makes new forms of interactivity between man and machine possible.
- Secondly, the new technology opens up for new ways of visualisation.

Both these conditions holds possibilities for exhibition media.

Interactivity opens up for new possibilities for the exhibition to keep in contact with the visitor. Facebook, chats and blogs and other social media can work as extensions of the exhibition in time and in room and function both as a way to work in depth with content and as social networks. Interactivity is built on a dialogue and today´s technology offers possibilities for dialogue where only fantasy sets limits. We can offer visually supported discussions where artists, curators, pedagogs and audience can meet in borderless discussions in real time. And remeber, we´ve only seen the beginning of this development of technology.

Visualisation also opens up for a two-way visually supported communication. The exhibition can be presented and thus create a prerequisite for the visitor. It is possible to create virtual visits in the exhibition. Visualisation also opens up for communicative formats as podcasting, rss-feeds and streaming. Packaged technology which makes it possible to offer guided tours in different languages, communication with cell-phones, interviews with the artist presented on the Internet, a presentation of how the exhibition was made and so on. Here it´s possible that economy and resources sets the limit before fantasy.

But, and this is my point, if we want to be relevant for tomorrow´s visitors we have to make this a development of ours. We need to develop methods and interfaces, discuss webetics and didactics and to a larger degree make the visitor a participator in the process which leads up to and surrounds an exhibition. Blow up the room and open up for a greater reality!

Let´s go!