and theater sets – the highly atmospheric, immersive spaces described earlier. In Part III, Habsburg- Lothringen describes contemporary scenography in terms of the construction of “flexible, atmospherically dense, and interactive illusory spaces, in which the viewer is immersed temporarily” (Chapter 15).
Such “illusory spaces” might seem to be a logical, even inevitable, progression from displays such as dioramas and period rooms. However, Habsburg-Lothringen also discusses the 1980s rejection of this kind of naturalism or illusionism among German-speaking curators and designers of historical exhibitions who turned instead to a kind of Brechtian realism in which “alienating effects and distortions” disrupt the illusion of the exhibition and expose it as a construction (Chapter 15). A new critical and poetic approach to exhibition making led in the direction of more aesthetic, sensual, and atmospheric environments. From a present-day perspective, and in relation to the earlier discussion of atmospherics, this is perhaps unexpected: it suggests that, far from always being a tool for the construction of illusions or for the manipulation of visitors/consumers, atmospheric media could be used to produce what Habsburg-Lothringen refers to as a “productive shock” in visitors. In the context of a historical exhibition, this shock serves to disrupt any assumption of an objectively knowable past, seamlessly connected to the present, and unfiltered by present values and understandings.
For den Oudsten (2012), scenography doesn’t refer only to thematic, highly designed environments, but to a dramaturgy that takes place within a space between observer and observed. The idea that scenography does not have to describe only immersive exhibits is made clear in Beat Hächler’s chapter. Hächler refers to his practice at the Stapferhaus in Lenzburg as “social scenography,” a concept intended to capture “the performative aspect of exhibitions” (Chapter 16). In a social scenographic exhibition, the exhibition space is conceived of as a dynamic space, a space produced by action, by the activity of visitors. This requires rethinking the museum as “a space of the present,” which produces reflection in visitors because “what museum visitors are confronted with above all is themselves.”
Audience participation
New media curator and writer Beryl Graham notes that participation is challenging to some art curators, critics, and institutions because it is associated with a loss of curatorial control and with inciting disorderly audience behavior – notoriously in installations like Cyprien Gaillard’s The Recovery of Discovery (2011) discussed by Rectanus in Chapter 23, or Robert Morris’s 1971 Bodyspacemotionthings discussed by Graham in Chapter 20. Huhtamo characterizes visitor engagement with interactives as often chaotic, impulsive, and depthless: “momentary acts of punching and tapping, pushing and pulling” (Chapter 12). Yet, Luigina Ciolfi, who designs interactives for heritage sites, shows how the design process is increasingly rooted in a “rich view of human interaction and experience” and how point-and-click technologies are being replaced with multisensory forms of engagement, and site-specific designs (Chapter 19). For John Bell and Jon Ippolito, as for Ciolfi, digital technologies can actually enhance the sensual, emotional experience of place (Chapter 21).
Hands-on participatory exhibits have often led to accusations that the museum is treading too closely to other nonserious popular contexts such as the circus, the dime museum, and the fairground (see Goodman 1990, Giddings, Chapter 7). I have written elsewhere about how the pioneering exhibition Cybernetic Serendipity at London’s ICA attracted this kind of criticism (Henning 2006, 88). Sue Perks cites the critics of the Human Biology exhibition at the Natural History Museum, London, which opened in 1977: they referred to the exhibition variously as a “cheap disco,” a “lewd offal-shop nightmare,” “tasteless,” and like a “fairground ‘tunnel of love’” (Chapter 18). These are associated with fears about populism and “dumbing down”; anxieties about the working class are not far from the surface in this discourse. In this context, the most interesting (and, as Perks points out, “scathing”) critique came from Patrick Boylan who “considered Human Biology to be selfconsciously ‘modern tasteful’ in style – ‘pure Middle Class “Habitat”’. reinforcing ‘fashionable, mildly liberal, educational and social theory and practice’” (quoted in Chapter 18). By associating the visual style of the exhibition with the homes of middle-class liberals (who shopped at Terence Conran’s fashionable Habitat store), Boylan manages to imply that, far from making the museum more accessible, the Human Biology Hall was actually speaking to a narrow self-congratulatory elite.
Boylan was right to recognize that the Human Biology exhibits owed at least as much to liberal educational theory as they did to the inspiration of popular entertainment and commerce. In fact, while they are heavily associated with entertainment contexts, interactives actually developed in the context of the museum’s educational remit. Perks recounts how the Natural History Museum, in planning its innovative New Exhibition Scheme in the 1970s, drew on the influence of the Exploratorium in San Francisco, the work of the Open University, and the Isotype method of the 1920s and 1930s (Chapter 18). These shaped a new emphasis on visitor participation, well-defined learning objectives, and techniques to evaluate effectiveness. At the Exploratorium, interactives and hands-on exhibits were intended to communicate abstract scientific concepts in an enjoyable and accessible way, and to enable visitors to understand the workings of technologies that appeared to them in everyday life as mysterious “black boxes.” However, as interactives have become more widely used, their use has changed: in heritage contexts, for example, the priority is not an understanding of technology; rather, the technology is there to enhance a sense of place and to embody the kinds of interactions associated with the place (Ciolfi, Chapter 19). This is facilitated by technologies disguised as mock-historical artifacts, which record and respond to visitors’ locations, including motion sensors, GPS (satellite-based navigation), and geotagging (using geographical metadata attached to images, video, or objects).
Instead of increasing accessibility, Karin Harrasser argues, hands-on learning in museums can stand in the way of deeper learning and reproduce existing educational inequalities (Chapter 17). In their research on hands-on displays in children’s museums, Harrasser and her colleagues focused on observing children using them. Their research confirmed Pierre Bourdieu’s observations in the 1970s that “open learning” through interaction privileges the already privileged, while other children struggle, being “unfamiliar with the whole environment” and lacking a sense of entitlement. The irony (or tragedy) here is that the development of interaction and visitor participation in museums was a genuine attempt to expand the audience across social classes and to increase accessibility.
Other devices intended to enrich visitor experience can also have unintended effects. Biehl-Missal and vom Lehn find that information kiosks and handheld devices can mean that visitors spend more time with the technology than with the objects it is intended to support, and that groups either separate and take in the exhibition individually, or “become frustrated with the systems and abandon them” (Chapter 11). In other words, these media can have the same effect of individuation that has been observed with the older audio guides. Yet we should differentiate between these media and their
