Do Digital Mediators Create Relationships between Museum Visitors and Museum Collections?

Abstract

Digital mediators have been present for some time in museums. Often lumped in with other kinds of “interactives,” digital mediators have become ever-present in exhibition galleries. But what effects do they have on the relationships made between the visitors and the objects (and exhibits) they come to see? This poster presents an early stage of a qualitative visitor experience study on the role of digital mediators in museums. Specifically, I ask: In a museum setting, how does interacting with digital mediators affect a visitor’s experience with the mediated objects. Two museums will be the sites of the study, the the Cleveland Museum of Art and an, as yet, unselected, Scandinavian museum. The study is a part of a larger project with the Norwegian Research Council KULMEDIA that seeks to generate new knowledge about the connections between the role of cultural life and media in society and the economic and technological framework underlying them.