Dear Lisa & colleagues:
I personally have no experience 'gamifying' exhibitions, but I believe we need to use some critical museology when we consider such in-gallery gambits using IT.
I had bookmarked a recent recommendation in reply to a question about a conference topic for the American Alliance of Museums on the AAM's 17 October Museum Junction Open Forum Digest e-mail promoting an Art Processors' Awaken Exhibition system that provides AR, VR Apps, & Immersive tech (Art Processors 2022).
I also had been stimulated to think about this issue 5 years ago having seen a promotion for an app from THINKPROXY Location Technology for in-gallery use that pinged visitor smartphones with object related information & images. This was in the context of the following AAM journal Museum issue cover in 2016.
I see exactly the same troubling capture of rapt attention by deliberate design of the device apps themselves paralleled in the screen shot below from the recently promoted Art Processors (2022) Awaken Exhibition app for in-gallery device use. Note that the users attending to the in-gallery devices provided by the Melbourne Museum in Australia below have their backs to the exhibit of artifacts.
Screen shot from Art Processors (2022) video on a highly commendable process resulting from detailed engagement with Aborigine communities in the development of the interpretive IT content at minute 1:49.
QUESTION: Are the device-centred behaviours pictured above actually what we want to encourage in a space where much time, trouble, & treasure has been expended to present real objects to on-site visitors?
This post argues that device apps employed as interpretation strategies in museum galleries actually undermine the quality & extent of direct experience with museum collections on exhibit. Communication technology apps are designed to monopolise the user's attention. [Hand-held devices] are observably, experientially, & demonstrably through research behaviourally addictive. Experiencing an exhibition mediated by means of pointing one's nose at a device screen is-first & foremost-purely interaction with the addictive hand-held device, not engagement that effectively encourages face-to-object experience. . .
Shouldn't museums really concentrate on our "core business" providing experiences aimed at interactive engagement with real objects on exhibit rather than encouraging more interaction with communication IT? . . .
Being museum practitioners, is it too much to expect that we would analyse our interpretive machinery through a material culture lens? Technology-. . . digital camera, the modern automobile, or a smartphone-is what the respected experimental physics professor & Director of Museum Studies Ursula Franklin (1990), author of the Real World of Technology, terms "prescriptive." By definition, this means the imposition or enforcement of a rule or method. . .
The above blog post includes a section analysing 'gamification'.
Essentially therefore, in your blogger's view, AR, VR Apps, & Immersive tech that have been & continue to be recommended may have some utility for museums.
However, are pixelated device screen images not best served up under pandemic museum closures and/or other remote external circumstances-perhaps such as the above-pictured young lady's wi-fi equipped ice-cream parlour-rather than for use inside physical museum galleries aimed at presenting real objects to in-person visitors?
Thanks for thinking about my 25 cents worth of 'gamification' & related kinds of IT-mediated in-gallery experiences-e.g. third party-imposed Pokémon Go capture opportunities-analysed in the above referenced blog post.
Respectfully yours
Paul C. Thistle
Reference Cited: