I come a bit late in this discussion, but hopefully not too late. I was very much stimulated by Jonathan's initial post and all the rest of the replies, so let me just add this:
In my doctoral research I have used camera phones as a way to connect museums and everyday life: in particular, I have asked young people-owners of camera phones to try to capture through MMS (image and text) their everyday interpretations of archaeological monuments that are integrated into a city's (in Greece) infrastructure. What I wanted to see is to what extent the use of an everyday technology like the mobile phone can access, reveal and communicate the knolwedge of the ephemeral everyday life that usually goes unnoticed (and it is often ignored by museums). The MMS I received from the participants have shown both instant and personal and constant and collective everyday interpretations of those monuments; they have provided a rich range of how people make meaning of outdoor museum objects in their daily life.
To an extent then mobile technology may offer the opportunity to memory institutions like museums to
'open a small window' to a field that they have always been opposed to: the ephemeral, contemporary everyday life as it happens. By receiving raw, everyday, views museums could create an open communication channel with everyday life, learn from it and provide a more comprehensive view of cultural memory, as it is formed and expressed in daily life. The whole idea is here that not only we provide a richer documentation for museums, but create another type of documentation: one that is not exchaustive, but follows the rhythm of the everyday, making visible the ephemerality, the familiarity, the instantaneity and the fluidity of things that go by.
Thanks everybody for a very stimulating discussion.
Kostas.
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Konstantinos Arvanitis
Doctoral Student
Department of Museum Studies
University of Leicester
105 Princess Road East
LE1 7LG
Leicester
UK
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www.le.ac.uk/museumstudies/ka43/kostas/index.htm
________________________________
From: on behalf of Jonathan Kepple
Sent: Tue 6/9/2005 8:53 PM
Subject: [WDL] Cultural Memory
A couple of years ago there was an exhibition at The British Museum called:
'The Museum of the Mind'. It was concerned with way in which cultures record
in their traditions, values and beliefs in their artefacts - the way they
are made and decorated and what they represent. The exhibit presented the
museum as more than just a collection of historical objects. It was also a
library of cultural memory.
The rise of digital technology is likely to increase, substantially, our
surrogate memory. We will find ourselves in the position to be reacquainted
second hand,with experiences that have been forgotten.
In the past this would have been done through a diary, or perhaps a piece of
art. When I was young, my parent's still camera, with a battery operated
flashbulb, took frozen snapshots of our lives.
However the camera only came out on special occasions - Birthdays or
Christmas. Film cost money. It had to be sent off to be developed and turned
into slides. Watching these slides involved setting up the projector. There
was a financial burden and a lot of ceremony involved.
The accessibility of digital technology - both the decreasing price, the
portability and the convenience of built-in hard drives as a storage medium,
will lend itself to frequent, spontaneous use. Any footage can be
transferred to other mediums quickly and with very little fuss.
The less effort required to use a piece of technology, the more likely it is
to be used. This generation may find their lives documented more than any in
the past. As adults, they will have access to a cache of visual and audio
data recording their early years. They will see themselves at the beginning
of their lives - a period that most of us only have sketchy memories of.
Furthermore after they are gone, if the archive is maintained, future
generations will be able to look deep into their family history and see
people, who they never met, in their historical context.
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