Navigating Culture. Enhancing Visitor Museum Experience through Mobile Technologies. From Smartphone to Google Glass.

Abstract

IntroductionThe beginning of the third millennium comes with a technological revolution: the digital sphere has been immersed in the everyday life of society. Websites, Ipads, Smartphones are only a small number of new media that have gained control over our lives. The rapid expansions of media technology, the universal access to the Internet, the continuous online presence in the social media are fundamentally changing the cultural experience. In the entertainment and the new museum era, the issue is no longer whether new media and technologies should be used by museums (the focus of our study) but how they may be used to develop a richer, deeper and more immersive visitor experience. Generally, digital media have been explored in order to strengthen the communication process between the museums and their visitors, to provide new methods of visitor interaction with the collections and the art works.In this study we investigate some of the forms used by museums to build up a digital experience for the visitor, focusing on the use of Smartphone applications and the characteristics of the museum experience that they share. Through the review of literature and document analysis, we discuss five categories of fundamental topics that subsume different types of applications - art and ideas, interaction and creativity, curation and interpretation, behind the scenes journey, masterpieces tours and personal trails - and a series of character figures, metaphors for the museum visitor experience: the Explorer, the Analyst, the Listener, the Creator, the Gamer and the Socializer. We also acknowledge the next step in the evolution, by the insertion in the application technologies of augmented reality through which the visitor experience of the museum is highly enriched in terms of learning, entertainment and creativity.The new museum and the museum experienceThe new museology (Vergo, 1989) focuses on the social role of museums and on their interdisciplinary profile, along with new styles of communication. The new museology is promoting an open institution towards the public that focuses on the active participation of the visitor, which functions as a platform that generates social changes. Until the 80's, the museum has been the ivory tower by excellence, without the need of other justification than its own existence. The cultural changes within the mediatized society generated real modifications in the museum's constitution and an essential transition from an institution with an educational purpose towards an institution with a recreational purpose centered on the audience and its needs. More precisely, the museum is nowadays influenced by the consumption society and the entertainment era, aiming to transform art and culture in a spectacular performance. The focus of the new museum has moved from objects / collections on individuals / communities. The public, the audience and the contemporary individual are the concentration point of the new museology. The new museum reflects the dynamics and the multicultural nature of the 21st century, as it is an institution which favors dialogue, interpretation and experience. Museums are, therefore, exciting places for the visitors, free-choice learning environments (Falk & Dierking, 2000) that may shape identities - through access to objects, information and knowledge visitors can see themselves and their culture reflected in ways that encourage new connections, meaning-making and learning (Hein, 1998; Hooper-Greenhil, 2000; Falk J.D., 1992). Nowadays, museums are involved in a real dialogue with their audience, based rather on interpretation than on absolute truths, sharing views and inviting the public to spend successive, countless experiences, to wonder, encounter and learn. Still, the learning outcome of the museum visit is second after its entertaining quality. Research has found that strong motivations to visit museums are leisure and entertainment (Moore, 1997; Packer & Ballantyne, 2002), as people visit museums for new experiences, worthwhile leisure, learning and entertainment in an exciting and stimulating environment. …

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