week 11

Readings

The Museum: A Refuge for Utopian Thought

This article brings up a lot of thought provoking points about museums acting as a form of utopia. These institutions are imaginary spaces highlighted by the most desirable artistic productions in our society, therefore, they create these imaginary spaces framed by multiple perspectives. By taking the art pieces out of the real world, their function changes as an object of the museum space and the intellectual world.

Weaving all of these artworks together creates an intellectual utopia in the space that they occupy. It also leads to the creation of a space of adventure and imagination for any visitors. However, I do believe that this article fantasized the role of a museum a bit too much. We cannot fantasize the role of museums to this extent because we still need to question their role in society in order to produce more dialogue and move society forward in their ways of thinking.

This article discusses museums as a space of movement and not a dead production, however if we think of museums as these fantasy worlds, they lose their credibility as places of diverse dialogue. By appreciation and also questioning the information a museum holds, we can not only be entertained by the parallel universe they occupy, but also give the utopia they create the space to develop from various dialogues.

Does this constructed reality create a new world separate from the rest of reality? I’m not sure if I could say its entirely separate. It would rather be an extension of our already built reality. The highlights of what humanity wants to display to itself. It’s like social media, it’s not the reality of our world, but rather just the highlights of what we want to show to each other. So it is real, but also fake at the same time.

Despite my skepticism, museums will always be a world of mysteries and stories, waiting to be unlocked by its visitors through their understanding and imagination. Whether this constitutes these institutions being utopias is totally up to the individual.

Collection Activation Assignment

For my collection activation assignment, I am particularly interested in developing an application for the Hermitage Museum. This is definitely my favorite collection that I ever existed and it is seriously amazing. Not only the architectural aesthetic of the museum itself, but also the diversity and expanse of the museums collection itself. Due to the collection being so entirely vast, I would like to focus specifically on the museum’s Mosaics and Stained Glass collection due to my affinity for this medium of artwork, and especially the manipulation of light that stained glass offers, which inspires my aesthetic direction.

In my development of this augmented reality experience, I would love to use the museum’s mosaics and stained glass pieces and create an imaginary world surrounded with these works of art, that the user can navigate in order to interact with each one and learn more about the individual piece’s cultural heritage and background. I want to use particle effects, background music, and arrange the different stained glass pieces in order to turn a room into a mosaic of itself, turning these individual pieces of art into a larger work that maintains the aesthetic qualities of The Winter Palace.

Through the careful placement of every artwork as well as the addition of many effects in Unity, I desire to create a fairytale world that maintains the aesthetic of the institution while also creating an individual reality that relays the ethereal quality that works of stained glass hold. I don’t want to overbear any interactor with too much interface, but rather give them the responsibility to navigate this fairytale world and give them just enough UI data in order to figure out how to respond to the surrounding artwork.