Virtual museum platforms

The three-part webinar series »What matters for virtual museums?« aims to foster exchange between museum institutions on topics related to museum presentation options of digital content in physical and virtual museum spaces.

With the aim to build a basic shared knowledge about which technical ways and creative means work and which competences are necessary for the respective implementation, international museum actors are invited to discuss current software and hardware solutions for museum presentation and mediation.

At the latest with the new ICOM definition of what functions museums have to cover today, it became obvious how much the institution of the museum itself was still in a state of flux over the past 20 years. There seems to be no end in sight, because the museum field is also a society within a society that is in a constant state of change. Digital media and the Internet in particular promise to profitably promote and support this change. Peter Weibel, artistic and scientific director of the ZKM, recently called for museums to further expand their online presence in order to become a Netflix 2.0.

Behind this is a critique of the way online content has been prepared, structured and presented to date, but also a major challenge that many museums have not yet been able to meet structurally, as the Corona pandemic showed. The trend is toward museum visits that begin long before the visitor actually enters the museum, continue after a museum visit, or can take place online completely independently. This requires ideas and concepts for virtual platforms that combine a wide variety of purposes, represent museums, convey information, but can also serve as an extended exhibition space and knowledge sphere at the same time. The parameters that are crucial for the design of the user interface of such platforms will be worked out in this workshop.

Procedure
The workshop is realized using the videoconferencing tool Zoom. It can be accessed either via the browser or as an app. During the workshop, we will divide you into break-out groups where you will work on case studies together with other participants. Please note: The speaker's contributions will be recorded and published afterwards, the break-out sessions will not be recorded. If you do not want to be recorded, please activate the camera and sound only during the break-out sessions.

The webinar series is part of the practice-based research and development project »Beyond Matter« and takes place in the context of the exhibition »Matter. Non-Matter. Anti-Matter« The project is funded by the European Commission and the Federal Commissioner for Culture and the Media.