The Routledge International Handbook of New Digital Practices in Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums and Heritage Sites

Abstract

Introduction: Urban Heritage and the 'Everyday' Community-driven involvement in heritage practice has been advocated through a number of key texts and case studies, chronicling not only its successes, but also the pitfalls and limitations of grassroots participation (Crooke, 2007;Logan, 2016;Selman, 2007; Waterton & Watson, 2013a). However, according to Beilin (2005), participatory approaches provide a way of recognising the banality of the 'everyday' through which most social worlds are created and sustained:Critical theory affirms ordinary action and recognizes the effort involved in being an active citizen in the daily grind of participation. It emphasizes the centrality of everyday interpretation. It affirms the value in listening and attending to a grassroots perspective. (p. 59) This 'everyday' is constituted through engagement with place. There is a long history of research into the cultural production of meaningful places in a variety of disciplines such as cultural geography, archaeology, architecture and history, as well as those from within the cultural heritage discipline and professional practice (e.g., see Davis, 2011;Jive'n & Larkham, 2010;Relph, 1976). Further, new questions are being asked about the relationship between technical knowledge and historical and heritage expertise, and how social and popular media forms can be harnessed to identify new ways of engaging communities around heritage places and issues. Such engagement is cognitive, emotional and behavioural (Ponzetti, 2003in Smith, 2017 and multisensory (Crang & Toila-Kelly, 2010), which raises issues related to the ability of traditional 'talk-only' methodologies to understand the complexities of these engagements (Middleton, 2010). This chapter critically examines the use of visual research methodologies (VRM) to investigate the relationship between heritage digital technologies and 'sense of place'. It argues that despite technological and methodological problems, VRM are useful in examining the cognitive, emotional and behavioural encounters with ordinary heritage landscapes. Providing a more

Experimental museology: institutions, representations, users,

“…The project was organised to accommodate the different, but overlapping interests of project partners coming from different research traditions. Overall, there were shared interests in digital media and new knowledge practices in museums, and in exploring the communicative potential of virtual reality and immersive environments in architecture exhibitions (Kenderdine, 2020;White & Chen, 2020). These interests stem from what has been identified as a gap between, on the one hand, contemporary 'born digital' architecture that is designed using virtual reality modelling and a realm of digital as well as analogue tools Sauge, 2019), and on the other hand, architecture exhibition practices, which in museums still largely rely on the display of conventional analogue objects and representations like models, drawings and photos .…”

“…In general, these design-based approaches are future-oriented (Vavoula & Sharples, 2007), focussed on how technologies may be designed for users' real and envisioned needs and behaviours in museum settings. In human-computer information (HCI) studies in museums, it has not been unusual for prototypes to be developed and tested by university researchers with limited participation of museum staff or visitors, with publications reporting on design rationales, evaluation outcomes and insights regarding design features (Hanlee, 2020;Hornecker & Ciolfi, 2019). Although the value of such experimentation with digital media is debatable in terms of innovation in museum practices (Hornecker & Ciolfi, 2019;Pavement, 2019;Samis, 2019), it is clear that technology-oriented research, carried out over decades in museum settings, has been instrumental in shaping museum mediascapes as they are experienced today, in the digital age (Hornecker & Ciolfi, 2019;Kidd, 2014;Parry, 2007;.…”

The value of mass-digitised cultural heritage content in creative contexts

“…However, developing successful co-creation activities in GLAM institutions is arduous, and difficult when resources are scarce (Holdgaard and Klastrup, 2014). The use of generative computational routines, using digitised GLAM collections are source material for algorithmic composites, adds further nuance to evaluating digital access to and outputs of mass-digitisation (Whitelaw, 2019). Previous discussions, then, focus on the social potential and values of mass-digitised content, rather than economic values, in various ways.…”

“…ImprovBot enacts a new form of valuation process on this data, as it privileges certain features, themes and qualities over others, in order to generate show descriptions. Given AI will continue to intervene with digital records and heritage content in the co-creation of value (see Whitelaw, 2018Whitelaw, , 2019, the ImprovBot aids the Edinburgh Fringe Society in extending its social values and value systems by exploring the reuse of its data. The project also demonstrates the potential for value as the co-creation of meaning at scale through the dynamic production of 350 'shows' that were distributed across social media.…”

New Social Practices in the Field of Museum Education in Brazil: Digital Culture and Social Networks

“…Winesmith and Anderson (2020) argue that the digitalization of museum collections is an important step not only to supporting the presence of these institutions on the Internet, but also to recognizing their relevance as cultural institutions in a society which relates and organizes itself in a network. Finally, in an important handbook recently published, Lewi et al (2020) define 'digital practices' as ways to think and work with data, information and digital artefacts and infrastructure, existing in a context of constantly transforming work profiles in the field of museums and other culture institutions.…”