Dirk vom Lehn

Crafting participation: designing ecologies, configuring experience

There is a growing interest amongst both artists and curators in designing art works which create new forms of visual communication and enhance interaction in museums and galleries. Despite extraordinary advances in the analysis of talk and discourse, there is relatively little research concerned with conduct and collaboration with and around aesthetic objects and artefacts, and to some extent, the social and cognitive sciences have paid less attention to the ways in which conduct - both visual and vocal - is inextricably embedded within the immediate ecology, the material realities at hand. In this article, we examine how people in and through interaction with others, explore, examine and experience a mixed-media installation. Whilst primarily concerned with interaction with and around an art work, the article is concerned with the ways in which people, in interaction with each other (both those they are with and others who happen to be in the same space), reflexively constitute the sense and significance of objects and artefacts, and the ways in which those material features reflexively inform the production and intelligibility of conduct and interaction.

Configuring Reception (Dis-)Regarding the ‘Spectator’ in Museums and Galleries

Despite the growing sociological interest in the object, and the long-standing tradition in the humanities and social sciences concerned with the creation of art and artefacts, there is relatively little research about how people in ordinary day-to-day circumstances explore and respond to exhibits in museums and galleries. In this article, we address the conduct and interaction of visitors to museums and galleries and consider how they examine and experience objects and artefacts in collaboration with each other. In particular, we address the ways in which one participant shapes, through gesture and talk, how those they are with look at and respond to exhibits. The article is based on the analysis of audio-visual recordings gathered in museums and galleries both in the UK and abroad.

Interaction and interactives: collaboration and participation with computer-based exhibits

It is increasingly recognized that social interaction and collaboration are critical to our experience of museums and galleries. Curators, museum managers and designers are exploring ways of enhancing interaction and in particular using tools and technologies to create new forms of participation, with and around, exhibits. It is found, however, that these new tools and technologies, whilst enhancing “interactivity,” can do so at the cost of social interaction and collaboration, inadvertently impoverishing co-participation, and cooperation. In this paper we address some of the issues and difficulties that arise in designing for “interactivity” and in particular point to the complex and highly contingent forms of social interaction which arise with, and around, exhibits. The paper is based on a series of video-based field studies of conduct and interaction in various museums and galleries in London and elsewhere including the Science Museum and Explore@Bristol.

Creating Assemblies in Public Environments: Social Interaction, Interactive Exhibits and CSCW

This paper examines the use of a series of three low tech interactive assemblies that have been exhibited by the authors in a range of fairs, expositions and galleries. The paper does not present novel technical developments, but rather uses the low tech assemblies to help scope out the design space for CSCW in museums and galleries and to investigate the ways in which people collaboratively encounter and explore technological exhibits in museums and galleries. The bulk of the paper focuses on the analysis of the use of one interactive installation that was exhibited at the Sculpture, Objects and Functional Art (SOFA) Exposition in Chicago, USA. The study uses audio–visual recordings of interaction with and around the work to consider how people, in and through their interaction with others, make sense of an assembly of traditional objects and video technologies. The analysis focuses on the organised practices of ‘assembly’ and how ‘assembling’ the relationship between different parts of the work is interactionally accomplished. The analysis is then used to develop a series of ‘design sensitivities’ to inform the development of technological assemblies to engender informal interaction and sociability in museums and galleries.

Exhibiting Performance: Co‐participation in science centres and museums

There is a growing commitment within science centres and museums to deploy computer‐based exhibits to enhance participation and engage visitors with socio‐scientific issues. As yet, however, we have little understanding of the interaction and communication that arises with and around these forms of exhibits, and the extent to which they do indeed facilitate engagement. In this paper, we examine the use of novel computer‐based exhibits to explore how people, both alone and with others, interact with and around the installations. The data are drawn from video‐based field studies of the conduct and communication of visitors to the Energy Gallery at London’s Science Museum. The paper explores how visitors transform their activity with and around computer‐based exhibits into performances, and how such performances create shared experiences. It reveals how these performances can attract other people to become an audience to an individual’s use of the system and subsequently sustain their engagement with both the performance and the exhibit. The observations and findings of the study are used to reflect upon the extent to which the design of exhibits enables particular forms of co‐participation or shared experiences, and to develop design sensitivities that exhibition managers and designers may consider when wishing to engender novel ways of engagement and participation with and around computer‐based exhibits.

Revealing Gauguin: engaging visitors in robot guide's explanation in an art museum

Designing technologies that support the explanation of museum exhibits is a challenging domain. In this paper we develop an innovative approach - providing a robot guide with resources to engage visitors in an interaction about an art exhibit. We draw upon ethnographical fieldwork in an art museum, focusing on how tour guides interrelate talk and visual conduct, specifically how they ask questions of different kinds to engage and involve visitors in lengthy explanations of an exhibit. From this analysis we have developed a robot guide that can coordinate its utterances and body movement to monitor the responses of visitors to these. Detailed analysis of the interaction between the robot and visitors in an art museum suggests that such simple devices derived from the study of human interaction might be useful in engaging visitors in explanations of complex artifacts.

Withdrawing from Exhibits: the interactional organisation of museum visits

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Discovering ‘Experience-ables’: Socially including visually impaired people in art museums

Abstract This paper investigates how visually impaired people (VIP) examine works of art together with sighted companions in museums and galleries. It is principally concerned with how shared experiences of works of art are produced in interaction between sighted and visually impaired visitors. It explores how the participants orient to the different ways in which each has access to the pieces through sight, touch, and other means. The analysis suggests that the experience of exhibits is a collaborative achievement to which visually impaired and sighted participants contribute by aligning with each others particular mode of orientation to the artworks. As the participants examine the exhibits, they establish what exhibit features they inspect and how they experience them in and through talk, bodily and tactile actions. The analysis is based on video recordings produced in a large museum in London.Abstract This paper investigates how visually impaired people (VIP) examine works of art together with sighted companions in museums and galleries. It is principally concerned with how shared experiences of works of art are produced in interaction between sighted and visually impaired visitors. It explores how the participants orient to the different ways in which each has access to the pieces through sight, touch, and other means. The analysis suggests that the experience of exhibits is a collaborative achievement to which visually impaired and sighted participants contribute by aligning with each others particular mode of orientation to the artworks. As the participants examine the exhibits, they establish what exhibit features they inspect and how they experience them in and through talk, bodily and tactile actions. The analysis is based on video recordings produced in a large museum in London.

Action at the exhibit face: video and the analysis of social interaction in museums and galleries

ABSTRACT Whilst we can observe a considerable increase in importance of arts and museum marketing, research of people’s engagement with art in exhibitions is relatively rare. This neglect of people’s action and interaction in exhibitions is somewhat surprising considering that it is in exhibitions where museums are in direct contact with their audience. This article begins with a review of the emergence of video-based research in the social sciences before turning to the use of video for the study of visitor behaviour in exhibitions. It contributes to recent debates on experiential and sensory marketing by examining three video-recorded fragments of interactions at exhibits in museums. The analysis of the fragments suggests that people’s experience of exhibits arises in social interaction with others. The article ends with a discussion of the theoretical and methodological contribution of video-based research in museums and of implications of such research for those involved in the management and design of museums and other experiential environments.

Harold Garfinkel : the creation and development of ethnomethodology

This book is a concise intellectual biography of Harold Garfinkel, a key figure in 20th-century social science. Garfinkel is practically synonymous with ethnomethodology, an approach that since the 1960s has led to major analytic and methodological developments in sociology and other disciplines. This introduction to Garfinkel explores how he developed ethnomethodology under the influence of Talcott Parsons and Alfred Schutz, situates it within sociology generally, and demonstrates its important influence on recent developments in the discipline, particularly the sociology of science and technology, gender studies, organization studies, and the computer sciences. The book will be of wide interest in the social sciences and a useful supplement to courses on intellectual history and methodology.