IN-PERSON London Heritages. Section A

Abstract

Prompted by an interest in the widespread and transformative impact digitization has had on museum practices in recent years, (cf. Arvantis & Zuanni, 2021; Vermehren et al, 2021), this paper presents an ongoing research project on digital materialities in museum exhibitions. Focusing on materiality, the project seeks to understand the affordances for meaning-making of digital media in relation to the epistemological commitments of modes, media, and material expression (cf. Bezemer & Kress; Björkvall & Karlsson, 2011; Lindstrand, 2022). The paper includes data from a series of workshops at museums that are part of the Swedish National Maritime and Transport Museums; Vasa Museum, Vrak – museum of Wrecks, Naval Museum, and Maritime Museum. The workshops were guided by key theoretical underpinnings from multimodal social semiotics. Based on empirical research into a wide variety of cases, we aim to offer a meta-language for assessing digital materiality which can be used as a basis for scientific analyses, as well as a tool for cross-professional discussions and informed decision-making in exhibition design. We claim that the digital makes objects available in a specific form and with a specific (simulated) materiality which adds discursive layers to the representations. It contributes to the possibility of adding shifts in how the visitor is positioned, as well as shifts in presentations. Aesthetical enhancement contributes to making the digital salient and a resource in the museum’s meta-representation of self. The digital may also be used to express epistemic modality. It is a plastic material that is open and flexible. Depending on the modes it ”mimics”, it assumes corresponding properties and brings the equivalent possibilities, hindrances, and epistemological framing in communication. The project is funded by The Swedish National Heritage Board and will run for three years, 2023-2025.