Angelina Russo

Digital cultural communication: designing co-creative new media environments

The design and implementation of audience-focused immersive media-rich physical environments is a familiar landscape within the commercial sphere. From theatre and theme parks to autoshows and airports, commercial interdisciplinary design and production teams have extended and solidified the new media agenda. The success of this track record is demonstrated by the increasing presence of commercial design techniques and knowledge in the creation of immersive new media within the cultural sphere, as proven by Londons Natural History Museum, or the Melbourne Museum.This paper introduces the notion of digital cultural communication, a continuum through which designers can consider the place of narrative and experience and their attributes within public and commercial institutions. Digital cultural communication allows users to become co-creators of knowledge by providing tools and methods which enable the co-construction of creative artefacts. This paper uses a case study from Australias rich cultural institution sector to illustrate the conceptual design of new media co-creative environment using an HCI-derived methodology supported by participatory action research. It is hoped that this method will demonstrate to curators of cultural experiences the cost-effective possibilities for enabling audiences to create rich narrative from user-led content.

Cultural institutions, co-creativity and communities of interest

Despite the proliferation of web-based news and information services, there remains a lack of online destinations from which to obtain reliable and authoritative cultural knowledge. In many countries, such knowledge is provided by cultural institutions such as museums and libraries. Recent discussion suggests that social media - including blogs, wikis and digital stories - may provide a creative solution to the ongoing interaction between cultural institutions and communities of interest. However, little applied research exists to demonstrate how social media can be established and maintained within museums and libraries, and what issues are raised within the institution by a more participatory approach to cultural communication. This paper highlights the implementation of a new program at the Australian Museum to train staff in social media production, in order to make the many thousands of objects and stories held within the Museums collections more accessible and engaging to communities of interest.

Developing communities and collections with new media and information literacy

As part of its many functions, the reference library is charged with developing both its collection and its user community. These two functions are sometimes pursued as separate initiatives (with separate funding) by library managers. In Australia, the State Library of Queensland (SLQ) is committed to an exciting policy of simultaneous collection development and community engagement by integrating new media technologies with public programs. SLQs Mobile Multimedia Laboratory is a purpose-designed portable digital creativity workshop which is made available to communities as a powerful platform to capture and disseminate local digital culture, and also to promote and train community members in information literacy. The Mobile Multimedia Laboratory facility operates in conjunction with SLQs Queensland Stories project, an innovative portal for the display and promotion of community co-created multimedia. Together, the Mobile Multimedia Laboratory and the Queensland Stories initiatives allow SLQ to directly engage with existing and new communities, and also to increase its digital collection with community created content. Not only are both initiatives relatively cost-effective, they have a positive impact upon information literacy within the state.