What communication for museums? Experiences and reflections in a virtualization project for the Museo Egizio in Turin
- Title
- What communication for museums? Experiences and reflections in a virtualization project for the Museo Egizio in Turin
- Date
- 2015
- Is Part Of
- Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Cultural Heritage and New Technologies 2015 (CHNT 20, 2015)
- Pages
- 1 - 11
- Language
- eng
- Publisher
- Museen der Stadt Wien, Stadtarchäologie
- Place Published
- Vienna
- Abstract
- The use of cognitive metaphors for the transmission of historical and cultural content is now an indispensable condition in the process of revamping the forms of museum communication. In this project for setting up the new Museo Egizio in Turin, the cultural message has been entrusted to three specific filmed segments in 3D computer graphics, aimed at introducing the subjects dealt with in the rooms dedicated to queen Nefertari, the chapel of the painter Maya, and the tomb of Kha. These are archaeological settings of extraordinary importance for studying and learning about the art and culture of ancient Egypt. In these filmed segments, passive viewing is offset by an emotional approach that engages visitors in an information path where, despite the inactive mode of fruition, they are in some way participants, because they are emotionally involved. The film itself is conceived as a showcase of changeable, heterogeneous digital content, capable of offering a concise, preparatory overview of the finds present in the museum spaces. This passive and " self-explanatory " approach will allow the visitor to understand the relationships between various objects – some not directly visible – like the mummy of Kha and of his consort Merit; to reconstruct the tombs virtually in their original context; but above all, thanks to the techniques of virtual archaeology, to visit these settings as they appeared at the moment they were unearthed. All this was made possible thanks to the use of integrated technologies for rendering and representation, capable of bringing virtualization to a level of verisimilitude that can foster a hyper-realistic " participatory " vision. The high degree of realism of the virtual reconstructions, the visual effects, and the techniques of cinematographic representation add emotion to the scientific content, making a positive contribution towards the visitors " losing themselves " between the real and the virtual dimension. Active or passive communication? Based on dynamic narration and multimodal information, new forms of museum communication have strongly changed the very ways in which cultural content is enjoyed by the public, and the logic with which it is displayed. At the same time, the impulse of new technologies has overarchingly imposed new forms of communication, based above all on digital content and languages. Recent studies clearly show that all those museums that characterized their own cultural offering through the use of digital technologies and the public's active participation have been most successful in terms of attendance figures and also, in all likelihood, have achieved better understanding of the cultural information being communicated. In this context, Turin's Museo Egizio has seen a communication proposal come into being that, through the use of 3D restitution technologies, virtual reconstruction, and computer animation, can accelerate and enhance the visitor's cognitive abilities, becoming a medium capable of effectively generating " virtuous " learning
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