RESEARCHERS

Lisa Gjedde is an associate professor of ICT, Media and Learning at the School of Education, Aarhus University, Denmark. She holds a Ph.D. in Narrative, Cognition and Communication from Roskilde University. Her research has been focused on the role of narrative in learning, the design of interactive and mobile learning environments, exploring tools for imaginative and creative learning and developing processual methods for exploring meaning making.

Bruno Ingemann is an associate professor of Communication studies at Roskilde University, Denmark and has been the head of the research group Centre for Visual Communication from 2002 to 2007. His research has been focused on three fields: Photography, focused on memory of the mirror and how readers relate to the surface of reality. Museology focusing on the reception and experience of the exhibition. Experimental reception studies focused on developing new methods of exploring the observed.

lg@dpu.dk

bruno@ruc.dk

THE MUSEUM INSIDE_PROJECT [1]: Walk-video in democracy and design  - The reading strategies and reception of an exhibition

This project looks into an exhibition about the last one hundred years history in the cultural historical museum of Copenhagen. By use of an original and new tool a walk-video records the traces and dialogue in the exhibition room with the 'video-cap'.

THE EXHIBITION is well-designed and entitled 'Under the Wings of Democracy' 1908-2008. In one huge room the perimeter are covered with a frieze that primarily consists of photographs and drawings and some short text. The left part of the room shows the chronological time from 1900 to 1945. The right part of the room shows the time from 1969 till now. The flat friezes are extended by a few small objects related to certain years like the bike of the Danish inventor Ellehammer to 1913 and the guitar of the Danish protest singer named Cësar.
In the middle of the room there are three 'islands'. On the left side the focus is on the 1920-40ties and on the right side the focus is on the 1960-1970. The three islands on each side of the middle are about three themes namely municipality and administration; production and working class; home and consumption. Here there is a collection of objects related to many small text bites trying to unpack the stories of the artefacts.

THE USERS are always in pairs in this kind of research. In this example there is the two young women Anne (25) who is walking around for an hour in the exhibition with her friend Rikke (25). The immediate impression looking at their walk-video is that the two women talk a lot and seem to be very engaged and interested visitors. They find objects, photographs and information to show each other, related to their own lifeworld. When I afterwards construct an outline drawing of their walk it shows that they are using the double amount of time looking at the timeline on the wall sheet along the walls as they spend looking at the islands with the many objects. They are using one and a half as long time on the island in the 1960-70s than they do on the objects from 1920-1930 and they are looking on more objects in the 1960-70s.

THE ANALYSIS of the strategies they use to create there personal meaning from the visit in the exhibition can be read in chapter 3: The Museum_Inside Project [1]: Walk-video in democracy and design  - The reading strategies and reception of an exhibition, p. 49-74.