From something to research question

This week I have been trying to pin down my research question. As most master students, I believe, my interest for my chosen subject did not arise from a pointed and specific question or hypothesis, but rather from a vague feeling that there is something here. Something that might be revealed if you dig deeper into it. Something that intrigues you, but you are not sure why.

My originally plan was not to write about museums, but about public libraries. However, I never got this feeling described above, that there was something there, when I thought about libraries. The reason I wanted to write about libraries was that I love them, and think they are essential for good societies, so I thought I could write something about libraries role in the society. I changed my mind last spring when I had an internship at the Karen Blixen Museum, where I, together with another student, were allowed to put up a small exhibition. At the same time I followed a course about intermediality at the University of Copenhagen. This combination gave me the feeling, there is something here. First of all, I loved working with the exhibition, the planning, the generating of ideas, the reading, the writing, the practical building, the marketing, everything. I decided that this was something I would like to have as a proper job.

During my time at the university I have read some museology, but the theory never affected me much. All the focus on objects did not engage me, and it did not help me understand the special feeling of being inside a museum. The intermediality course gave me the key to understand why I am so fascinated by museums, and what is the right way for me to theoretically approach exhibitions. I have as long I can remember been enchanted by multimedial art and culture, like film, theatre, musicals, dance and exhibitions. The intermediality course gave me some tools to talk about, think about and understand this phenomena, which woke the idea that this was master's thesis content. A master's thesis about the intermediality of museums exhibitions would give me the opportunity to combine my background in media and communication studies with my interest in culture, and hopefully competence that can provide more chances of making exhibitions in the future.

What I have came down to this week is that I want to find out how Lars Elleström's media model, a model that tries to explain the relations between different media, can be useful for the way we understand the role of media in exhibitions and the intermediality in exhibitions.

St.meld. nr. 49 og relevansen av masteroppgaven

Ettersom jeg nå skal bruke et halvt år på å konsentrere meg om bruk av medier i utstillinger, så er det greit å føle at dette emnet kan være en smule interessant og relevant for andre. Jeg har derfor idag lest Stortingsmelding nr. 49 (2008-2009) "Framtidas museum. Forvaltning, forskning, formidling, fornying." for å se om jeg kunne finne noe støtte for valg av tema hos kultur- og kirkedepartementet.

Og jeg fant tre grunner til at et fokus på bruk av medier i utstillinger er et aktuelt tema å dykke ned i.

1. Immateriell kultur inkludert
Den første grunnen er at bevaring og formidling av immateriell kultur blitt føyd til i ICOMs nyeste definisjon av et museum:

«Et museum er en permanent institusjon, ikke basert på profitt, som skal tjene samfunnet og dets utvikling og være åpent for publikum; som samler inn, bevarer/konserverer, forsker i, formidler og stiller ut materiell og immateriell (kultur)arv om menneskene og deres omgivelser i studie-, utdannings- og underholdningsøye­med.»

Både bevaring og formidling av immateriell kultur krever at ulike medier, som lyd og film, i større grad tas i bruk. Dette krever, mener jeg, også mer kunnskap om hvordan museumsformidling ved hjelp av disse mediene fungerer.

2. Digital formidling, den store utfordringen
Den andre grunnen er at "digitalbasert formidlingsteknologi" i følge stortingsmeldingen er "den store formidlingsutfordringen" for museene (Kap 13.1). Utfordringen for museene ligger i å kunne ta i bruk og se mulighetene med ny teknologi, i å knytte sammen det digitale og det fysiske rommet, og å utvikle museumsformidlingen på nettet.

3. Manglende fokus på fruktbar bruk av medier

Den tredje argumentet for at et fokus på bruk av medier i utstillinger er relevant, finnes i det som det ikke settes fokus på i st.meld. nr. 49. Digitalisering er et ord som dukker opp i mange av stortingsmeldingens kapitler. Samlinger skal digitaliseres, museene skal på nettet, og arkivene bli tilgjengelige og søkbare. Det at digitale medier finnes i mange ulike former og kan brukes på mange ulike måter kommer ikke fram. Denne litt ensidige fokuseringen på digitale medier og nye teknologier er en av grunnene til at jeg har valgt å skrive oppgaven min om medier i utstillinger, og ikke digitale medier, eller nye medier. Det at noe er digitalt gjør det ikke automatisk bra. Dette påpekes heldigvis i kapittel 13.1 om digital formidling: "Det er et stort sprang fra digital tilgjengeliggjøring til digital formidling.".

I arkivsammenheng er det selvfølgelig en svært viktig forskjell om noe er digitalt eller analogt, i utstillingssammenheng er det underordnet mener jeg. Jeg mener det er medieformens egenskaper som er det viktigste. Noen ganger vil den digitale egenskapen være relevant, for eksempel om en to-dimensjonal flate skal være interaktiv. Andre ganger vil den ikke være det, for eksempel om den to-dimensjonale flaten kun skal være dekorativ, eller om den skal være en original gjenstand fra en historisk periode som et fotografi eller et maleri.

Videre i kapittelet kan vi lese: "Det er en utfordring for institusjonene å ta i bruk og å se mulighetene med ny teknologi. For å utvikle gode formidlingsverktøy er det behov for mer kunnskap om målgruppene." Andre behov nevnes ikke, og jeg synes derfor denne løsningen har noen mangler. Kunnskap om målgrupper er selvfølgelig veldig viktig, men jeg savner en linje om at det som behøves er kunnskap om målgruppenes forhold til medier, og kunnskap om hvordan ulike formidlingsverktøy fungerer, for å kunne se muligheter og ta i bruk ny teknologi. Dette er også viktig for å huske at gamle medier og gammel teknologi også kan fungere i mange sammenhenger.

Så, for å ta en oppsummering. Et halvår med fokus på bruk av medier i utstillinger er aktuelt og interessant fordi formidling av immateriell kultur blir stadig viktigere for museer, og nå er inkludert i ICOMS definisjon, fordi bruken av digitale medier er den store utfordringen for museer framover, og fordi man ikke må glemme at alle medier har egenskaper som kan skape virkningsfulle effekter, ikke bare de digitale.

Let's start with a visit to the Victoria and Albert Museum

Last Friday I took my first trip to London after moving to Oxford. The purpose was to take a look at how media are used in the exhibition Diaghilev and the Golden Age of the Ballets Russes 1909 – 1929 at the Victoria and Albert Museum. The exhibition ended yesterday, so it was a bit optimistic to think I could use it as an example in my master's thesis, but I wanted to see if media was used in an interesting way in it. And a trip to London to visit this wonderful museum was a good way to start the work on my thesis.

Unfortunately, I didn't plan my trip too well. I hadn't managed to get in contact with the museum, so I didn't have permission to take photographs, and since the exhibition had just three days left, there was a lot of other people who, like myself, wanted to see it before it closed down. So I cued through the exhibit with my notebook, trying to describe it as best as I could.

The theme makes this exhibition quite interesting in relation to use of media, because how do you exhibit dance, movement and music? As an exhibition at the V&A, beautiful costumes, posters, paintings, drawings and photographs were of course central elements. These objects were supported by, not too long, texts on the wall. The whole exhibit consisted of several big rooms which each had its own colors and lightening effects. The colors were strong, red, purple, green, blue, yellow and black, and the lightening dramatic and theatrical. In each room there were films to watch. One type was filmed ballet performances. These films were projected on walls, and almost becoming a part of the exhibition architecture. Another type of films was showed on TV-screens placed in black boxes. These were much smaller in scale than the projections on the walls. On these TV-screens you could for example listen to and see a man talking about Stravinsky's music. The man was placed on a background of drawings, photographs, painting and note sheets which moved and shifted according to what the man was talking about. On another screen you could see an interview with a choreographer and see him instruct two dancers.

This way of using films in an exhibition is not very original or new, but in relation to the questions I will examine in my thesis, it is interesting. The interesting part is how the different types of films are presented. The ballet performances are presented as esthetic elements, and integrated in the exhibits scenography. The documentaries are presented as separate elements where neither the the picture on the screen or the box containing the screen have an esthetic function. They are of course esthetically in the way that you can perceive them, and they are part of the impression of the room, but I will argue that they were mainly sat up for informational purposes. You could say though, that the black box around the TV-screen has a solely esthetic purpose in the way that it is there only to make the TV-screen look better. It is not giving anything to the look of the exhibition, just removing something.

Andrea Witcomb argues in her article "The Materiality of Virtual Technologies" (Cameron & Kenderdine 2007) that museums could take advantage of thinking about multimedia installations as objects. In this V&A exhibition I would say that the ballet films are presented as objects in the same way as the costumes and the posters, and given the same value, both as esthetic objects and as historical documents.

But even though media installations here are presented as objects, it is still a divide between the objects and the supporting information in the exhibition. The information films are not given the same value as the objects. They give the visitor supporting information in the same way as the labels and the texts. This depends, though, on the visitors background. A ballet expert would probably get as much information out of the ballet films, as from the information films. But for the common visitor, even though they may pick up some information about costume and dancing style, the ballet films would mainly be an esthetic element, as probably intended by the curator.

My master's thesis will evolve from an interest in how media are used in exhibitions. Some of the questions I hope to investigate during the following six months are, among others: What are the intentions behind use of media in exhibitions? How do different media work together in an exhibition? How do media work in relation to the room? How do media function as historical evidence? What are the relation between the esthetic, the pedagogic and the informational role of media in exhibitions?