Transmedia Story Telling and Alternate Reality Games in Museums – Promising Novelties or Unsuitable Gimmicks?

Abstract

Alternate Reality Games try to combine the real and the virtual world by interactive Transmedia Story Telling/Transmedia Narrative taking place in real-time and evolve according to the participants’ responses. Traditionally, there is only online information on an exhibition in the real museum world or a completely virtual “exhibition” on the screen only. Alternate Reality Narratives (ARN) shift between the two realities. Since 2008 several projects have been launched in museums. Before the appearance of a virtual cyber world, it could be said that our lives took place in three different realities: the primary real everyday one, the secondary fictitious one recombining elements (mainly physically) from the former (for instance in a museum), and the secondary personal recombining elements (intellectually or physically) from the two others. We constantly move between those realities. If we consider that the real and fictitious realities are both physical (things, people) and that the personal reality is virtual, we could, by adding the cyber reality, create a dichotomy physical/virtual. Alternate Reality Narratives use our permanent and very often unconscious shift between the two realities to augment the museum experience. We discuss the title question in a museological context including theoretical considerations as well as practical aspects.

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