1st Edition
Museums and Technologies of Presence
In view of the ever-increasing use of interactive and emerging technologies in museum spaces, Museums and Technologies of Presence rethinks the role of such technologies as potential facilitators of presence and as vehicles for offering new, immersive, and embodied visitor experiences.
This edited collection presents theoretical approaches and case studies that explore how presence can be experienced in museum spaces and what role technology can play in visitor experiences. It considers the theoretical underpinnings of the concept ‘presence’ for museum spaces, offering a critical examination of how immersive and other emerging technologies can affect, diminish or enhance our sense of presence and embodiment. Through an international range of case studies and innovative projects, this volume considers emerging technologies – including virtual reality, augmented reality, interactive (multisensory) installations, and AI – alongside different aspects of presence, including immersion, embodiment, empathy, emotion, engagement, and affect.
Taking an interdisciplinary approach, Museums and Technologies of Presence will be beneficial to those researching or studying in the fields of Museum Studies, Digital Humanities, Computer Science, Information Science, and Digital Media. It will also be useful to museologists, curators, and artists who are interested in developing immersive experiences, experimental new media, and immersive aesthetics.
Introduction
Maria Shehade and Theopisti Stylianou-Lambert
Chapter 1
Presence, Museums and Immersive Technologies: An interdisciplinary exploration
Maria Shehade and Theopisti Stylianou-Lambert
Part I: Presence as Immersion, Embodiment, and Multisensory Experiences
Simulated, Stimulated, and Emulated Presence in 3D Digital Museums
Kostas Arvanitis and Enrika Pavlovskyte
Chapter 3
Presence in immersive museum exhibitions: the role of agency, body-ownership and awareness
Ana Luisa Sánchez Laws and Kamilla Bergsnev
Chapter 4
Designing Cultural Experiences within Technosocial Systems
Vince Dziekan, Jon McCormack, Lucija Ivšić, Oscar Raby and Nina Rajcic
Chapter 5
Multisensory Visitor Engagement: an Analysis of Three Case Studies
Ekavi Whitlock Blundell
Chapter 6
Reconfiguring the Viewer: Modes of Perception and Attention in Immersive Museum Experience
Stéphanie Bertrand and Chris Salter
Part II: Affective Presence and Absence
Chapter 7
Affective Presence through 3D Printing: Some Considerations on Materiality, Temporality and Technological Modes of Production
Anne Ogundipe
Chapter 8
Technology and presence in a museum of trauma: Therapeutic effects of making danger real
Arnar Árnason and Sigurjón Baldur Hafsteinsson
Chapter 9
Breathe: Bridging the personal and the planetary through augmented-reality experiences
Diego Galafassi
Chapter 10
Museums and the Power of Absence: Agrippa (A Book of the Dead)
Jen A. Walklate
Part III: Spatio-temporal Presence
Chapter 11
Digital sensory experiences in museums. Does space matter?
Kali Tzortzi and Ava Fatah gen. Schieck
Museological presence through deep mapping: the Atlas of Maritime Buddhism
Sarah Kenderdine, Lily Hibberd and Jeffrey Shaw
Chapter 13
Interwoven Spaces with XR, AI and Robots: Merging Realities in Space and Time
Louis Nisiotis, Aimilios Hadjiliasi, Floris Alexandrou and Lyuba Alboul
Chapter 14
(Co)-Presence with the Past Using Emerging Technologies in Contemporary Art: Institutional Critique Re-envisioned
Elena Stylianou and Artemis Eleftheriadou
Biography
Maria Shehade is a Senior Research Associate at the Museum Lab of the CYENS Centre of Excellence and an Adjunct Lecturer at the Cyprus University of Technology, with an interest in museum studies, cultural heritage management and policy, and cultural diplomacy. She is the co-author of Greek Cultural Diplomacy: Current Approaches – Future Challenges (2021).
Theopisti Stylianou-Lambert is a researcher and artist with an interest in museum studies, photography, visual sociology, and new technologies. She is an Associate Professor at the Cyprus University of Technology and the leader of the 'Museum Lab' at CYENS Centre of Excellence. She is the editor of Museums and Emerging Technologies: Mediating Difficult Heritage (2022) and the author of The Political Museum (2016).
