New Media and
the Museum
(IAT888), 2012

Digital technologies have transformed the ways in which museums create access to their collections, how curators do their work, and the ability of publics to participate in the collective writing of local, cultural, and national histories. This course explores histories and theory of museums, and the shifts enacted by the use of new media to organize and exhibit physical and digital collections. Lectures, presentations, and individual research projects will relate literature in museum studies, anthropology, cultural studies, and new media to developments associated with digital archives, virtual museums, social media and new media exhibition practices, including mobile applications, tangible interfaces, virtual reality, and augmented reality.

 Students will participate in the production and evaluation of digital assets being created for the Museum of Vancouver’s exhibition Neon Vancouver. This virtual exhibit and mobile application, called The Visible City: Illuminating Vancouver’s Neon, will creatively represent multiple layers of Vancouver’s historical, geographic, visual and material life as a platform for tracing the establishment, demise, and revitalization of Vancouver’s famous neon signs. Based on the evaluation and critique of the Neon exhibit’s digital assets, students will propose individual research projects that draw on their particular skills and apply them to theoretical issues and debates raised in the course readings, in the Museum of Vancouver case study, and in individual research initiatives.