For this week, I read about the Love and Sorrow exhibit in Australia about the psychological and emotional damage of World War I. The exhibit focuses on the story of eight families and utilized a phone app to guide a visitor through the museum. The app is expected to be downloaded prior to entry into the museum. I must wonder at how they accomplish this and how one might view the exhibit without a phone app. As I understand it, the exhibit is highly dependent upon having the app to guide you through the exhibit.<\/p>\n
Upon entering, the visitor must select a single family to follow and download the package about them. They are guided by location on Bluetooth promoting numerous stories and content pop ups. ALthough this whole process seems cool and innovative, it is rather selective in terms\u00a0 of its viewership. What if people do not have a smart phone? What if their phone does not have a particular program needed to work the app? What if they are small children who do not yet have a phone? This exhibit would seem to exclude poorer classes of society from getting the full experience of the exhibit. It would be nice if the museum could somehow provide people with the technology rather than expecting them to own it. This process seems to put too much pressure on the visitor to go through numerous digital acts in order to learn.<\/p>\n
Also, by limiting the visitor to one families story, they are kept from learning the story of the other seven families. In order to hear both stories in full, this app process forces the visitor to go back through the exhibit eight times in order to get the full content. The visitor also cannot go back and experience the app after leaving the museum or before entering the museum since the app is location activated. The location aspect of the app I think goes against the purpose of the museum; to spread knowledge to all levels of society. In this case, technology in the museum only seems to exclude rather than include and supplement the learning of the visitor.<\/p>\n
http:\/\/mw2015.museumsandtheweb.com\/paper\/storyteller-world-war-one-love-and-sorrow-a-hybrid-exhibition-mobile-experience\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"