Curation in the digital age: How technology has revolutionised the museum industry-How has 5G and AI technology been employed to change the experience of visitors in the museums?

CURATION IN THE DIGITAL AGE: HOW TECHNOLOGY HAS REVOLUTIONISED THE MUSEUM INDUSTRY

Abstract

The study aims to explore the curation in the digital age. It gives an in-depth analysis of how the museums have utilized the technological advances to shape the visitors’ experience. The analysis includes an exploration of the cross-border cooperation that the museums are establishing with the technological companies, the role that the 5G and Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies play in curation in the museums and the ways that it changes the experiences of the visitors. A comparative analysis is done to understand if the benefits of digital curation outweigh the disadvantages. A thorough literature review is conducted using both grey and white literature. These include the previous research, reports, conference papers and websites. The findings of the study were compared with the literature to draw logical inferences. The data showed a clear trend of digital curation and how technological advancement has been used to redefine visitors’ experience, engagement and interactions in the museums.

Curation in the Digital Age: How Technology Has Revolutionised the Museum Industry

Introduction

In the dissertation, am interested in exploring the different concepts of digital curation through a multidisciplinary approach. The researcher will give an in-depth examination of how museums have some cooperation with technological institutes. This will show how museums and exhibitions cooperate with technology companies such as CultureSpace and Airbnb to improve curation and attract more visitors. The dissertation will analyse curation and digital technologies to examine the rejuvenation of the practice and how it has changed the visitor’s experience. A comparative analysis for digital curation will be done through the identification of advantages and disadvantages of the practice. Artificial intelligence and 5G technologies have revolutionised the connectivity and networking ion different sectors. The museum industry has not been left behind and the review of literature will show how these technologies have shaped the sector, application and the influence that it is likely to have soon. The research will also holistically look at how curation has evolved from formal practice to the application of digital technologies. Information for the review of literature will be gathered online using google scholar as the main search engine for the relevant materials. The gathered information is then sorted and used for the analysis. A clear body of literature on the evolution of digital museum will be added and identify the gaps that will be filled by the current study. The information will give a comprehensive description of how curation is being done by the museums in the digital age and the way that they have utilized technology to revitalize the experience of the visitors.

The dissertation aims to explore the concept of curation in the digital age and digital exhibition to identify the extent to which it has been employed and the role it plays in increasing the audience. It explores the concepts of museums’ cross-border cooperation with the technological institutes, multimedia use in curation and the improvement of visitors’ experience. The researcher also explores how the AI and 5G technologies will influence the museums.

Purpose and Significance of the Study.

The data gathered from the study will be critical in improving the body of literature on museum digital curation and exhibition. The curators can utilise the information to enhance their practices and revolutionise the visitors’ experiences. Besides, the findings will be important in enhancing the audience interactions with the artworks and exhibitions as well as marketing of the institutions. The goal of the study is to identify as well as describe the emerging trends in the museum digital curation and exhibition for the expansion of the accessibility to the artworks.

Overview of the Structure.

The section begins with a brief description of the study topic in the background. Different aspects of the study topic are outlined. It is followed by the comparative analysis of curation in the digital age. The next section describes what the research intends to achieve and then the significance and the purpose. This section outlines how the findings can be utilised and how beneficial they will be. Then the author outlines the research questions that guide the study and the data gathering process. The last section is the literature review that contains a thorough analysis of the existing evidence from both the grey and white literature. There is also the critique of the evidence gathered and the gaps identified from the reviewed materials. This will all be done to gain an in-depth understanding of how curation in the museums has been influenced by digital technologies and where it is likely to be headed.

1.1 Background.

Curation involves the assembly, management, and presentation of collections. For instance, the curators in museums and art galleries research the selection and acquisition collections for the institutions as well as oversee the interpretation, exhibits, and displays (Villi, Moisander, and Joy, 2012). There are different types of curation, some of which are overlapping, including the content, social, and data curation. Unlike marketing strategies, curation does not involve the creation of own content. For instance, the content curation is meant to add value to the users (Sweeney, 2012). Moreover, the contents are shared in different platforms such as articles in blogs, social media, RSS feeds, links, and websites (Cairns and Birchall, 2013). Notably, curation is hailed as a demonstration of following and understanding developments in a particular field (Higgins, 2011). However, the opponents of curation attribute the practice to a collection of other people’s ideas rather than the creation of their own (McCall and Gray, 2014).

1.1.1 Comparison of digital curation and curating digital exhibitions.

In the digital curation, there is a multidisciplinary approach that involves drawing upon the knowledge of archiving, information, computer science, and library (Dobreva and Duff, 2015). Although there is the application of the archival principles in the digital curation, the object’s context, content, and structure are preserved. Curating digital exhibitions presupposes adding value and maintaining the artworks for both current and future use (Wolff and Mulholland, 2013). The practice has an in-depth history in the description of the roles played by the museums in comparison to the exhibits and the collections, whereby it is not only employed to protect but also to improve their accessibility as well as adding value (Yakel, 2007). Cairns and Birchall (2013) summarised the idea by outlining that the museums and the libraries centre their curations on the concepts that are well established in adding value to the objects and collections. Furthermore, the curation can create narratives employed by the users for the understanding of the collections and objects in the exhibits.

In my dissertation, I’m foregrounding how digital curation creates narratives (of a particular kind) for the users to understand the objects and collections in the exhibitions better. This way, am going to explore how the audio narrations of the objects improve the user engagement and redefine the experiences of visitors to continue being attracted to the sites.

The efficient storytelling elements are applied in combination with the media such as videos, images, audio and texts for curating the digital exhibitions to improve the experiences of visitors. Cairns and Birchall (2013) affirmed that the digital curation models in the curated web spaces propose an exhibition framework for engaging the interests of the audience and communities compellingly and coherently. According to Villeneuve (2017), the curated web spaces have been utilising the digital exhibits that make the museum exhibitions meaningful to the audience, in which they help the visitors connect with the exhibitions by tapping their familiar points of reference (Sabharwal, 2012). Hence, digital exhibitions give information in the contexts that can emotionally be accessed by the audience.

The museums have been acting as filters for the abundance of cultural information since many items can be kept or displayed in the exhibitions in the museums as well as the storerooms (Cairns and Birchall, 2013). However, the transformation of the art and curation of exhibitions has expanded and, therefore, disrupting the whole market (Viera, Ellard, and Vargas, 2017). The curator’s role at this instance has been compared to that of the orchestra conductor with the presentation of collections regarded as a creation of new experiences and forms instead of the conventional use of raw art materials (Findlay, 2015).

1.2 Comparative Analysis: The Pros and Cons of Curation in the Digital Age.

The role of curation in the museums has been focusing on maximising the goals of inclusion for the case of exhibition curators. As such, the mission of the art museums shifts to improve the accessibility of the cultural and arts resources to a greater audience (Tibbo and Lee, 2010). The aim is to ensure that the interaction with the visitors is improved and the interaction. Audio recordings and narrations create a better understanding of the artworks and objects. Notably, the curation in the digital age has risen to prominence even beyond the museums since the alignment of the digital curation with the technological advancement and the participatory culture has been considered a creative and innovative idea by providing opportunities for the critical enquiries, giving a platform for the demonstration of the creative and interpretive abilities (Birchall, 2012). Besides, the digital curation is utilised for the teaching of information creation as well as analysing the credibility of the data sources (Ahn, 2013).

It is worth emphasising that the landscape of the information has been reconfigured, which provoked the emergence of the new social and algorithmic tactics for sense-making and deriving meaning from the hyperflexible and hyperconnected data (Mager, 2012). To that end, the computer’s processing capabilities are employed for the sorting and manipulation of data (Sabharwal, 2012). Moreover, the curation of the digital content focuses on personal arbitration for the discovery, drawing attention, and contextualisation of the useful and the interesting ones (Rusbridge et al., 2005). Therefore, curation in the digital age positions the role of the curator as a mediator and tastemaker by improving the original works (Olham, 2011). The proximity to information has made curation in the digital era to gain substantial influence and power (Rosenbaum, 2011).

On the contrary, the horizontal organisation of the internet has complicated the finding of information. The overreliance on the hierarchal methods for categorising and prioritising information is linked to the others leading to the creation of a vast network whose accessibility is equal (Debono, 2014). The museums have been known to draw their authority in the filtering of culture and information. However, curation in the digital age has posed new challenges and problems while the filtration of culture and information could be trusted on academics and curators, editors and publishers of books and journals, there has been a continuous burgeon of data thus breaking the floodgates of information (Sabharwal, 2012). Besides, there has been the challenge of control of the flow of knowledge by self-appointed curators in the digital age thus making it difficult for the museums and other institutions to make meaning and sense of the inordinate hyperconnected data (Zarro and Hall, 2012). Although the tools of social curation and algorithmic are utilised by the population that is connected, they may get answers but still, the museums have the challenges with uptake as it is in nascency (Villi, Moisander, and Joy, 2012).

The perspective of Wyman et al. (2011) was that in every exhibition, local context is not depicted by a montage where the art functions but it is artificial. Exhibition and reproductions have been considered as activities that tend to remove the historical place of artwork and a movement along a global path of circulation.

Walter Benjamin was a renowned critic and critical theorist and related the objects’ exhibition to the reproduction and defined the art exhibition value as an impact of the works’ reproducibility (Kirchberg and Tröndle, 2012). Some of the cross-border cooperation with technological institutes have achieved improved visitors’ experience through the production of replica works. The artwork’s inscription in the historical context where it traces its originality is understood to be the aura. However, the loss of the aura is triggered by the removal of the artwork form and its reproduction and further distribution. The reference is to the actual original context but the visitors of these exhibitions do not relate the experience to the originality (Wyman et al., 2011). The artwork is isolated and liberated from the original environment, therefore, the concept of being self-identical in the material nature is there but the historical place of the artwork is lost. Similar sentiments were given by Martin Heidegger through “the origin of the work of art” (Cairns and Birchall, 2013).

1.3 Research Questions

How does curating influence visitors experience in the museums?
What are the pros and cons of curation in the digital age?
How is curation done in the digital age and what are the potential impacts to the museums?
How has 5G and AI technology been employed to change the experience of visitors in the museums?
What is the impact of the museums’ cross-border cooperation with technological institutes?

2.0 Literature Review

2.1 Museums’ Cooperation with Technological Institutes.

Instead of threatening the museums that focus on the exhibition of the original artworks, the cross-border cooperation has been offering complimentary multimedia experiences by targeting a broader audience (Sabharwal, 2012). Their focus on digital curation and exhibitions has been to revolutionise the user experiences and engagement with the visitors. According to Moreno (2018), cooperation ensures that the management companies utilise a database of images and videos or operate directly with institutions and museums where they pay usage fees. For instance, in the Belvedere museum, holding Klimt’s largest collection of paintings, there was no special request for the project but pictures could be taken. Sansom (2019) gave an example of the digital exhibitions at Van Gogh at the venue in Paris in the Starry Night. The immersive displays of art that have been perfected by culture space is an expression of the role that curation plays through cross-border cooperation of the museums with technological institutes (Sansom, 2019). They change the feeling and experiences of visitors to become participants. For instance, in Van Gogh’s bedroom that was recreated as Airbnb in Chicago by the Art Institute was a replica that was improved for the promotion of new exhibition (The Telegraph, 2019). The experience of the visitors is greatly improved by the replica to the extent that one felt like living in the painting, which was significantly improved by the furniture, artwork and the use of bright colours. The Culture Space that was a management company for the French museums was very successful in digital exhibitions (Sansom, 2019). The company even planned to expand international multimedia art centres to reach more people. The curations employed by the company such as the audio-visual experiences in the paintings of Gustav Klimt contributed to the immense success by changing the visitors’ experiences (Sansom, 2019). The popularity of digital exhibitions and the arts based on the experiences improved by curation, Culture Space has been managing the institution’s space exhibitions. The VanGogh Starry Night in Paris was an example of curation of a digital exhibition projecting masterpiece in the walls in the form of a themed itinerary to represent the crucial life stages of the artist that took part in the painting’s transformation.

2.2 How 5G and AI Technology will Influence the Museum.

Every day there have been major improvements in the network. Recently, 5G technology has been hailed for its transformative power. The World Economic Forum outlined that 5G technology puts the world on the verge of interconnectedness (World Economic Forum, 2018). 5G is an improvement of the 4G network with promises of revolutionising several industries. The technology has already begun to make its mark in the world of the museum (Woods, 2018). For instance, Beijing’s Palace museum made a launch of incorporating the technology in the compound. Similarly, the Forbidden City Museum has harnessed the Internet of Things and the 5G network as they strive to unleash the unrealised potential. The 5G technology will reshape the museums by facilitating the AR and VR frictionless experiences (Woods, 2018). The network has been praised for its ultra-high speeds, reliability and latency (CBINSIGHTS, 2019). These abilities will be crucial in unlocking the potential for virtual reality and augmentation in the museums. Geography and bandwidth will no longer limit the visitors. The museums will offer more reliable experiences to the visitors without the challenges of connectivity (World Economic Forum, 2018). Creation of robotic arms will improve the accuracy of operations. 5G network will enhance the data-driven insights as museums can collect different types of demographic information rather than relying on bare-bone statistics of the annual revenue and visitors for strategising on attraction (CBINSIGHTS, 2019). The technology is being utilised in the Palace Museum in Beijing to track the journeys of the visitors.

The AI technologies have been mainly employed in the museums to improve engagement with the audience both inside and outside. AI was used in the exploration, investigation and understanding of collections in Tate Recognition programme that was able to scan 30,000 digital artworks and create repairs. It was hailed for matching a Reuters photo of make-up applying women with a similar composition of a 1660 painting (Camurri, and Volpe, 2016). The matches were put in an online gallery that was searchable with explanations regarding the matching to allow the visitors to make comparisons. The American Alliance of Museums put AI as a significant aid to archivists and curators. The technology will be critical in the museums in the future to manage the data by unlocking the digital image collections potential through sorting, tagging, and drawing of connections between the museums’ databases (Kiourt, Koutsoudis, and Pavlidis, 2016).

The curators are mainly exploiting AI technologies to assemble remarkable collections. For instance, the National Museum in Norway is trying the deep neural networks and machine learning to apply them in the collections (Rialti et al., 2016). The machine vision will be critical in adding metadata for the identification and tagging of images and algorithm maps on the bases of “context-free gaze”. Besides, the history will speak for itself through innovations such as historical figures’ chatbots. The robotic advances are expected to continue automating the work thus improving the visitors’ access to information and interactions. For instance, they assist in booking of the museum tickets and planning of visits (Germak et al., 2015). Besides, the AI will improve the data analysis with the focus on the experiences of the visitors.

2.3 The Value of Immersion

In the past, multisensory immersion was employed by museums for the engagement of the audience and heightening the emotional experiences (Hakvoort, 2013). Film projections, dioramas mirrors, voice tracks and sound effects were used for the contextualisation of artefacts with an immersive atmosphere (Stogner, 2011). The approach improved memorable experiences among visitors since immersive narratives have been employed to shape the designs of exhibitions (Stogner, 2011).

2.4 Curating in the Digital Age

The museums have three-fold purposes where the collections are housed as specimens and objects, people working with the artefacts and the knowledge that is garnered from the interactions (England, Schiphorst, and Bryan-Kinns, 2016). The acquisition into collection separates the museum object from the for previous life but curation in the digital age has raised questions regarding the practice. Ray (2017) recognised the curator in the digital age not to collect information or objects similarly like the museum curators did or place the equal value on the collated objects. Hence, it signifies that the era of hyper-connectivity in the digital curation has embraced online collection that can be evanescent and fragile in platform and content than the physical museums (Rosenbaum, 2011).

Curation has developed from 21st century from being described as an activity of the museum, library or gallery to the inclusion of varying digital and online activities (Brand, 2011). Padoa et al. (2015) indicated that curation brings together the digital artefacts tapestry in the construction of alternative perspectives or creating new meanings. Digital curation emerged as a practice responding to the growth of the published digital content in the online platforms. Similar findings were introduced by Kaplan (2013) by outlining that the tidal waves were created by the participatory web 2.0 culture which had the tools of creation and publishing of information to avail to the population. Brand (2011) identified that the digital curator’s value has significantly grown in terms of the ability to scour the content and transforming the aggregated information to new concepts. However, Boyd (2012) indicated that the digital curator’s emerging role was enhanced by social media but the sifting and validation of the sources’ reliability were considered critical. The uncontextualised data that is daily received from search engines such as Google and news media vary in terms of the relevancy (Tibbo and Lee, 2010). The digital curators come in for the navigation of the information’s complexity and gathering the relevant materials to suit the purposes.

2.5 Curation Influences the Visitors Experiences in the Museums

The exhibition environments such as museums are complex spaces and facilitate the experience. They offer learning contexts of free choice and act as encyclopaedias of the natural heritage and warehouses of cultural information (Birchall, 2012). According to Abe (2012), the museums have been used as the sites that allow self-actualisation of the free time and leisure activities. In the digital age, they do not only act as spaces of stagnant cabinets as new strategies and methodologies have been introduced for the enhancement of the visitor entanglement and experiences. The participation and interaction with the displays have been improved through the incorporation of appealing technology. Belk (2013) indicated that museums have developed in line with the evolved technologies of the exhibition. The technology has made alterations to the relationship between the artworks and the audience. Arnold (2017) established that the pressing of a button by the visitors changed their experiences as it could manipulate an effect on an exhibit that was designed for the demonstration of a concept. The technological advancements played a significant role in changing the exhibits presentations in the museums. For instance, the appeal of the static objects was improved to the visitors, specifically the children (Sabharwal, 2012). Kreps (2013) also justified the finding by indicating that the acceleration of the cultural interpretation and attraction of new set of audiences was changed by the digital technologies.

According to Crooke (2011), the growth of email marketing among the museums has been identified as an interactive experience for the delivery of content for the institutions. The Metropolitan Museum of Art’ s website had received approximately thirty-two million visitors in comparison to the 6,3 million people that had physically found their way to the institution between 2014 and 2015 (Giannini and Bowen, 2016). Similarly, there was an increase in Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, a further indication of the role that social media plays in the improvement of the social interaction (Abe, 2013). The virtual access to the artwork and collections have significantly increased through digital curation and exhibition in the modern world where the internet has played a vital role in the virtual exploration and interaction (Biella et al., 2016).

2.6 The Use of Multimedia in Curating

The museums have been changing their mindset to focus on the creation of a positive experience to the visitors by reinterpreting the new exhibitions and collections as a way of recognising the different ways that people learn (Lord et al., 2004). The technological advancements have increased the hyperconnected societies where people have been over-relying on the fast and short forms of communication for the consumption of information thus the museums experienced challenges of surviving. According to Brand (2011), the collaborations that evolved between scientists and museums lead to the technological frameworks of Internet of Things (IoT) to deal with the issues. The IoT had the features of gathering and analysis of information of the data generated from the visitors of the museums thus creating a data-driven insight for the formulation of adaptive museum engagement experiences. The IoT has been crucial in impacting on the user experience by promoting the construction of meaning and the acquisition of knowledge as well as social learning (Pierdicca et al., 2019). The digital curators have been playing a vital role in the incorporation of the IoTs in the museum spaces as well as the curated exhibitions.

Rieh et al. (2007) gave a different perspective by outlining that the mathematically derived indexes have been utilised for measuring the visitors’ attention in the museum. These include the Diligence Visitor Index measuring the proportion of visitors that have stopped at a certain element in the museum such as the artworks. From Pierdicca et al. (2019), there have also been recent technological advances in terms of the sensor-based systems that have been employed to study the museum visitors’ social behaviours. For instance, the development of sensor-based systems for studying the visitor’s behaviours in fine-art exhibitions to connect their actions with their choices of engagement (Pierdicca et al., 2019). According to Yoshimura et al. (2015), Bluetooth data gathered from the mobile phones in the indoor localisation system has been exploited for monitoring the visitor’s movement in the museum.

Mobile applications such as the Rocca di Gradara applications revolutionised the visitors’ experience in the exhibitions in the museum (Pierdicca et al., 2019). The apps offered contextual information from the visitors to leverage the activity of learning by the users. Synder (2015) identified that the contextual notification and the real-time localisation were the main functions. The experience of the users was increased by the virtual tour, the audio guides enhancing their navigation in the exhibitions and the improving interactions (Pierdicca et al., 2019).

Figure 1: Virtual tour (Source: Pierdicca et al., 2019)

In similar findings, Higgins (2011) established that modern devices have been playing a vital role to achieve data curation through the acquisition, communication and dissemination, especially for the IoT. The apps and the intelligence sensing systems have been supported by wireless sensor networks, 5 and 4g technologies and AI (Findlay, 2015).

2.7 Evolution of Curating: Formal to Technological

Curation has evolved from the traditional approach to the current one with the aim of changing the interactions and experiences of the visitors. My dissertation appreciates the path that curation in the museums has moved from the formal to the digital practice. The argument put forward is that technology has been applied to completely improve digital curation, sharing of information and improving the experiences of the visitors to continue attracting more. My dissertation looks at this concept to understand the trend of evolution of curation and explore the likely direction that technology will take it in the future.

The digitisation that has occurred in the museums has been critical in redefining the curation from the previous focus on the academic and intellectual and cultural sphere to the social activities and processes based on the improvement of the personal experiences of the visitors. According to Cairns and Birchall (2013), the scope of exhibition-making comprises of the increasing number of the actors, that have been involved in the different activities and processes ranging from creators, artists, critical members and the staff of the museum to the audience. There has been a major trend of the museums trying to reinvent themselves to match the digital transformations. In similar findings, Bechtler and Imhof (2014) indicated that digital curations adopted in the museums have significantly increased attendance. Digital tools have been utilised for the attraction of large and diversified audience. The visual content of the art collections has been circulating in the internet digital platforms such as Pinterest, Facebook, Google Plus, Twitter and Instagram by utilising devices such as laptops, computers, and smartphones (Abe, 2012).

Giannini and Bowen (2016) discerned that museums have been focusing on the selection and curation of artworks in a digitised collection for save and share. Moreover, the evolution has been more than the traditional creation of favourites list through reflection on the audiences and choosing appropriately (Giannini and Bowen, 2016). In the same vein, Crooke (2011) identified the significant steps that have been taken to curate the actual exhibitions with the photography exhibition of click by the Brooklyn Museum through an open call that was filtered online by using the crowd’s wisdom for experimenting. The crowdsourcing of the material and social history has been made possible through projects such as Toledo’s attic. Consequently, the project evolved from a virtual museum to the networked co-curation. The concept was also described by Villeneuve (2017) as networked, collaborative, and visitor-centred. The digital curation in the museums has been recognised as an active approach of engaging the participants through a new generation of the presences of the digital museums and exhibitions. From Giannini and Bowen’s (2015) perspective, the concept of curation in the museums has been symbolic to reflect a new digital information and objects order.

In his work, Martin Heidegger gave a clear distinction between the inscription of artwork into a distinct historical and ritual space as well as time and the removable artwork in an exhibition that does not have a context (Cairns and Birchall, 2013). Apart from that, there is the emphasis of the artificial and technological character of the relation to the world. According to Giannini and Bowen (2016), the framing that is created by the technology gives room on one hand for the positioning of the subject and the other one for experiencing the world in terms of an object as an image. Furthermore, t is the framing that gives the definition of the relationship to the environment and the provision of the invisible guides of experiencing the artwork.

In a similar context, Dobreva and Duff (2015) determined that there is an understanding of the exhibitions in presentation and revealing the strategy of framing. In other terms, the responsibilities of the exhibitions do not only rest on the presentation of images to the gauze of the audience but also demonstrating the framing structure, apparatus and technology (Dobreva and Duff, 2015). Wyman et al. (2011) also indicated that in visiting the exhibitions, the audience does not only gaze at the exhibited objects and images but also have a reflection on the temporal and spatial relationship that exists. These include the curatorial choices, hierarchies and the strategies applied in the production of the artwork (Wyman et al., 2011). There is self-exhibition before any artwork. This includes the ideology and the technology used.

Similarly, Yakel (2007) identified that new tools and trends have been embraced by executives in the museums to redefine the dynamics and nature of the exhibition-making. These are some of the new ways that have been adopted for the museums to work with the public. Crooke (2011) also highlighted that the digital curation in the museum has changed to be based on the experience of the visitors rather than the academic and cultural practices. Findlay (2015) also pinpointed an ongoing trend of the digitisation of the art collections in the museums and creation of the interactive platforms for improving the experiences of the visitors in the museums through the development of their presences in the social media (Armstrong et al., 2014). The practice has been improving access to people from different parts of the world. In the current museological discourse, content is placed as the attention’s centre in the advertising and digitisation of the artworks (Moreno, 2018).

Giannini and Bowen (2016) underscored that museums have been evolving and gaining a renewed role in the digital era as the curators of information. Some of the social interaction sites such as Facebook and Google have been designed in a way that one can tell what people know but rarely discover new things. From the perspective of Thorne (2015), museums have not only been digitising objects but also using their knowledge of the collection of artworks for the duration of the most appealing and engaging stories to large and diverse groups of people (Abbott, 2008). The digital curation that is utilised by the museum is unbiased by the commercialisation interests that fill the critical void in the landscape of the webs. The Rijksstudio that is an establishment of the Rijksmuseum is such an example that is a collection but not necessarily a story (Giannini and Bowen, 2016). Besides, there is the Saatchi Gallery of the Facebook page. De gulle ekster was an initiative that was established for making art and design improve the accessibility even to the ordinary people through careful curation of what is on offer.

According to Bowen and Giannini (2014), the emergence of the idea of curation as a digital activity was triggered by the understanding of the interpretation of the concept as an authorial act. The theorist proposed the curatorial culture through the feature of celebrity playlist feature in the iTunes. Filtering professionally was hailed by some pundits in journalism and the curation of information rather than the generation of content (Abe, 2013). The concept of curation has been borrowed from the museums but stretched far beyond the consciousness global network (Bowen, Keene, and Ng, 2013). Cairns and Birchall (2013) highlighted some of the factors attributed to the growth and prominence of curation beyond the museum to include the growth of data and the need for coherently gathering information. However, the internet’s organisation in a horizontal way complicates the finding of information.

Wyman et al. (2011) discovered curation to have been emphasised because of the role that it plays in the care of artworks and objects, as well as, communicating the value of the art to the world. However, Cairns and Birchall (2013) had a contrary view as they indicated that the discourses of the museums have shifted although some scholars have a perception that curating will not move their idea of museums forward. The idea of centralisation of the experiences of the visitors by the museums and the exhibitions is meant to improve access to the artworks and interaction.

A similar argument put forward by Buseman, Jacobson, and Little (2012) by indicating that the responsibilities of curators were perceived as care-takers to the people serving in the authority. An example is the United Kingdom where a Museum’s Association was established to create professional ethos to be utilised for the curatorial employees as well as centrality for the displacement of the artists and the collectors in the hierarchy of the new museum. The curator has been described by Cairns and Birchall (2013) as the soul of the Museum. However, the development of curation as a distinct profession has been hindered by the ambiguity of the curatorial role and the overlapping nature with the academic disciplines in the knowledge of the subject (Cairns and Birchall, 2013). The role of the curators came under strict scrutiny in the 1990s after the development of museology critically looking at the museum’s emergence as a cultural values’ arbiter and the role played in the embodiment of the social values (Buseman, Jacobson, and Little, 2012). The relevance of the museums was highly dependent on the recognition of the authority of the museum and political nature that also gave room for the reinvention of the curatorial professionalism and redefinition in the world.

2.8 How Technology Has Influenced Museum and Visitor Experience

Currently, the museums have been using digital curation as a way of making the audience appreciate their presence in the digital age. Olham (2011) termed it as curating for Instagram, by designing apps that make the visitors access additional information. For instance, the Brooklyn museum real-time app for asking questions concerning the artworks improved the user experiences (Brooklyn Museum, 2008). Similarly, McCall and Gray (2014) spotted Beacon technology to be employed in museums such as Guggenheim for tracking the visitor’s movements in the galleries by application of Bluetooth. The GPS technology has been incorporated in the apps for plotting the galleries paths (Rusbridge et al., 2005). According to Marciano et al. (2018), embracing of technology has made the museums to curate the exhibitions that are Instagram-friendly by using social media as an effective marketing tool.

Augmented reality has also emerged in the museums where visitors point to the exhibits and their contents that are interactive and appear in the phones (Oktium, 2018). The visitors utilise the content to learn more about the exhibits and become participants. Kaplan (2013) determined that the visitors’ experience using technology has been enhanced in Smithsonian that has different mobile apps for visitors downloading of the exhibits before the actual visits. These include information of the pieces of art with high-quality videos, images and audio commentaries. Similarly, Oktium (2018) indicated that virtual excursions and remote video tours have been improving the experiences of users and interactions.

The displays of art in the galleries in the museums have a design of intimate with the visitors and can ignite the conversations regarding the artistic processes as well as the interpretations to invite more people (Kaplan, 2013). Similarly, the exhibits in the museums are displayed in a way that they will be enjoyed by the visitors. Rosenbaum (2011) established that technology has redefined the visitors’ experiences by connecting them to the exhibits and art using installed personal level, installed hardware or the mobile applications to break the physical barrier of exploration and transform the audience to become participants in the exhibits and art galleries. These technological tools have helped the visitors to get a personal meaning to the art (Oktium, 2018). The guided tours with the use of mobile phones have helped in navigation in the art exhibits and museums. Similar sentiments were indicated by Wolff and Mulholland (2013) who outlined that visitors can even listen to the recorded commentaries in the museums thus improving their experiences. The auditory experiences in their explorations improve the understanding of the displays. For instance, the Detroit Museum of art has been a perfect example of visitors enjoying recorded artists’ poems as they browse the exhibits by similar authors (Oktium, 2018). In the guided tours, people with the vision impairment enjoy the experiences through audios, audio descriptions and music playlists. Louvre that is in Paris allows Nintendo 3DS XL for visitors to listen and browse 3D photos in their navigations (Ray, 2012).

2.9 Research Gaps

There has been little updated research and documentation regarding curation in the digital age. Outdated studies exist linking the curation of the digital exhibitions and the role played by multimedia, AI and 5G technologies in influencing the museums. Considering the recent advancement in technology in the 21^st century, there has been little integration in research. For instance, no studies are outlining the impact of technology such as the 5G, apps and sensor-based systems to improve the visitors’ experiences in the museums.

The current study has filled this gap and contributed to the body of literature by outlining the trend and evolution of the curation in the museums by use of technology. The study has managed to integrate all the aspects of technology such as cross-border cooperation with the technological institutes, 5G and Artificial Intelligence as well as the multimedia to shape the visitors’ experiences. The improvement of the experience of the visitors by using technological advances has been deeply explored in terms of the evident contributions and the reflection on the future of the 5G and Artificial intelligence technologies. The process has enabled the gathering of valid and credible information to form the evidence-base

References

Abbott, D., 2008. DCC briefing paper: what is digital curation? Edinburgh: Digital Curation Centre.

Abe, A., 2012. Curation in chance discovery again. Proceedings of EWCDDS12, pp.37-42.

Abe, A., 2013. Curation in chance discovery. In: Ohsawa, Y. and Abe. A. eds. Advances in Chance Discovery. Berlin: Springer, pp. 1-18.

Ahn, A., 2013. “You are not a curator”. [Online] Available at http://bullettmedia.com/article/you-are-not-a-curator/ [Accessed 11/8/2019].

Armstrong, M., Brooks, M., Churnside, A., Evans, M., Melchior, F. and Shotton, M., 2014. Object-based broadcasting-curation, responsiveness and user experience. IBC2014 Conference, pp. 1-7.

Arnold, K., 2017. Cabinets for the curious: looking back at early English museums. London: Routledge.

Bechtler, C. and Imhof, D., 2014. Museum of the future (Vol. 18). Zurich: JRP Ringier.

Belk, R., 2013. Collecting in a consumer society. New York, NY: Routledge.

Biella, D., Pilz, T., Sacher, D., Weyers, B., Luther, W., Baloian, N. and Schreck, T., 2016. Crowdsourcing and co-curation in virtual museums: a practice-driven approach. Journal of Universal Computer Science, 22(10), pp.1277-1297.

Birchall, D., 2012. Institution and intervention: artists’ projects in object-based museums, MA dissertation, Birkbeck College, University of London, London.

Bowen, J. P. and Giannini, T., 2014. Digitalism: the new realism? EVA Conference 2014, London, pp. 324–331.

Bowen, J. P., Keene, S. and Ng, K. eds., 2013. Electronic visualisation in arts and culture. London: Springer.

Boyd, D., 2012. “The power of fear in networked publics.” [Online] Available at: http://www.danah.org/papers/talks/2012/SXSW2012.html [Accessed 11/8/2019].

Brand, W., 2011. “An algorithmic future: can computers curate?” [Online] Available at: http://www.artfagcity.com/2011/09/09/an-algorithmic-future-can-computers-curate/ [Accessed 11/8/2019].

Brooklyn Museum, 2008. “Click! A crowd-curated exhibition.” [Online] Available at: http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/click/ [Accessed 11/8/2019].

Buseman, R., Jacobson, T. and Little, C., 2012. Public Art and exhibitions made for a social purpose. Museums & Social Issues, 7(2), pp.255-268.

Cairns, S. and Birchall, D., 2013. Curating the digital world: past preconceptions, present problems, possible futures. The Annual Conference of Museums and the Web, Portland, USA: Archives and Museum Informatics.

Camurri, A. and Volpe, G., 2016. The intersection of art and technology. IEEE MultiMedia, 23(1), pp.10-17.

CBINSIGHTS, 2019. 5G & the future of connectivity: 20 industries the tech could transform – CB Insights research. [Online] Available at: https://www.cbinsights.com/research/5g-technology-disrupting-industries/ [Accessed 15/82019].

Crooke, E., 2011. Museums and community. In: Macdonald, S. ed. A companion to museum studies. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd, pp. 170-185.

Debono, S., 2014. MUZA: rethinking national art museums and the values of community curation. Malta Review of Educational Research, 8(2), pp. 312-320.

Dobreva, M. and Duff, W., 2015. The ever-changing face of digital curation: introduction to the special issue on digital curation. Archival Science, 15(2), pp.97-100.

England, D., Schiphorst, T. and Bryan-Kinns, N. eds, 2016. Curating the digital: space for art and interaction. New York, NY: Springer.

Findlay, C., 2015. Preserving complex digital objects. Archives and Manuscripts, 43(1), pp.77-80.

Germak, C., Lupetti, M.L., Giuliano, L. and Ng, M.E.K., 2015. Robots and cultural heritage: new museum experiences. Journal of Science and Technology of the Arts, 7(2), pp.47-57.

Giannini, T. and Bowen, J. P., 2015. A New York museums and Pratt partnership: building web collections and preparing museum professionals for the digital world. Museums and the Web 2015, pp. 1-10.

Giannini, T. and Bowen, J. P., 2016. Curating digital life and culture: art and information. In: Bowen, J. P., Diprose G. and Lambert N. eds. Electronic visualisation and the arts. BCS, electronic workshops in computing. London: EVA 2016, pp. 237–244.

Hakvoort, G., 2013. The immersive museum. Proceedings of the 2013 ACM international conference on Interactive tabletops and surfaces, pp. 463-468.

Higgins, S., 2011. Digital curation: the emergence of a new discipline. International Journal of Digital Curation, 6(2), pp.78-88.

Kaplan, M., 2013. Curation and tradition on web 2.0. Tradition in the Twenty-First Century: Locating the Role of the Past in the Present, pp.123-48.

Kiourt, C., Koutsoudis, A. and Pavlidis, 2016. DynaMus: a fully dynamic 3D virtual museum framework. Journal of Cultural Heritage, 22, pp. 984-991.

Kirchberg, V. and Tröndle, M., 2012. Experiencing exhibitions: a review of studies on visitor experiences in museums. Curator: The Museum Journal, 55(4), pp. 435-452.

Kreps, C., 2013. Liberating culture: cross-cultural perspectives on museums, curation and heritage preservation. London: Routledge.

Lord, P., Macdonald, A., Lyon, L. and Giaretta, D., 2004. From data deluge to data curation. Proceedings of the UK E-Science All Hands Meeting, pp. 371-375.

Mager, A., 2012. “Algorithmic ideology.” Information, Communication & Society, 15(5), pp. 769–787.

Marciano, R., Jansen, G., Thomas, W., Shah, S. and Kurtz, M., 2018. Building open-source digital curation services and repositories at scale. International Journal of Digital Curation, 13(1), pp. 170-182.

McCall, V. and Gray, C., 2014. Museums and the ‘new museology’: theory, practice and organisational change. Museum Management and Curatorship, 29(1), pp.19-35.

Moreno, R.L., 2018. Museums and digital era: preserving art through databases. Collection and Curation, ahead-of-print.

Oktium, 2018. Technology is changing how people experience art and museums. [Online] Available at: https://medium.com/oktium/technology-is-changing-how-people-experience-art-and-museums-7c70b6d7dd20 [Accessed 15/8/2019].

Olham, L., 2011. Curation: it’s not just for museums any more! Computers in New Zealand Schools, 23(3), pp.262-273.

Padoa, C., Schneider, D., De Souza, J.M. and Medeiros, S.P.J., 2015. Investigating social curation websites: a crowd computing perspective. 2015 IEEE 19th International Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work in Design (CSCWD), Calabria, Italy, pp. 253-258.

Pierdicca, R., Marques-Pita, M., Paolanti, M. and Malinverni, E., 2019. IoT and engagement in the ubiquitous museum. Sensors, 19(6), pp.1-21.

Ray, J., 2012. The rise of digital curation and cyberinfrastructure: from experimentation to implementation and maybe integration. Library Hi Tech, 30(4), pp.604-622.

Ray, J., 2017. Digital curation in museums. Library Hi Tech, 35(1), pp.32-39.

Rialti, R., Zollo, L., Ciappei, C. and Laudano, M., 2016. Digital cultural heritage marketing: The role of digital technologies in cultural heritage valorization. 2016 Global Marketing Conference at Hong Kong, pp. 1062-1063.

Rieh, S.Y., Markey, K., Yakel, E., St Jean, B. and Kim, J., 2007. Perceived values and benefits of institutional repositories: a perspective of digital curation. An International Symposium on Digital Curation (DigCCurr 2007), Chapel Hill, NC.

Rosenbaum, S., 2011. Curation Nation: how to win in a world where consumers are creators. New York, NY: McGraw Hill.

Rusbridge, C., Burnhill, P., Ross, S., Buneman, P., Giaretta, D., Lyon, L. and Atkinson, M., 2005. The digital curation centre: a vision for digital curation. 2005 IEEE International Symposium on Mass Storage Systems and Technology, Sardinia, Italy pp. 31-41.

Sabharwal, A., 2012. Networked co-curation in virtual museums: digital humanities, history, and social media in the Toledo’s attic project. International Journal of Heritage in the Digital Era, 1(4), pp. 587-609.

Sansom, A., 2019. Paris digital art venue Atelier des Lumières is a hit, and expanding abroad. [Online] Available at: https://theartnewspaper.com/news/paris-digital-art-venue-is-a-hit-and-expanding-abroad [Accessed 13/8/2019].

Stogner, M.B., 2011. The immersive cultural museum experience–creating context and story with new media technology. International Journal of the Inclusive Museum, 3(3).

Sweeney, K., 2012. Maria Popova: Why we need an antidote to the culture of Google. [Online] Available at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/2012/dec/30/maria-popova-brain-pickings-internet [Accessed 13/8/2019].

Synder, I., 2015. Discourses of ‘curation’in digital times. Discourse and Digital Practices: Doing Discourse Analysis in the Digital Age, pp.209-225.

The Telegraph, 2019. Van Gogh’s bedroom recreated in Chicago as Airbnb rental. [Online] Available at: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/12151352/Van-Goghs-bedroom-recreated-in-Chicago-as-Airbnb-rental.html [Accessed 13/8/2019].

Thorne, S., 2015.What is the future of the museum? Frieze, (175), pp. 120-27.

Tibbo, H.R. and Lee, C.A., 2010. Convergence through capabilities: digital curation education for libraries, archives and museums. Archiving Conference, 2010(1), pp. 53-57.

Viera, A., Ellard, C. and Vargas, K., 2017. The absolute resolution photography exhibition: facilitating visitor engagement with supported interpretation (SI). Visitor-centred Exhibitions and Edu-Curation in Art Museums, pp.139-152.

Villeneuve, P., 2017. Supported Interpretation: building a visitor-centered exhibition model. Visitor-centred Exhibitions and Edu-Curation in Art Museums, pp.127-138.

Villi, M., Moisander, J. and Joy, A., 2012. Social curation in consumer communities: consumers as curators of online media content. In: Gürhan-Canli, Z., Otnes. C. and Zhu, R. (J.) eds. NA – advances in consumer research (vol. 40). Duluth, MN: Association for Consumer Research, pp. 490-495.

Wolff, A. and Mulholland, P., 2013. Curation, curation, curation. Proceedings of the 3rd Narrative and Hypertext Workshop, Paris, France.

Woods, L., 2018. 5G & smart tourism: a match made in heaven? [Online] Available at: https://uk5g.org/discover/read-articles/5g-smart-tourism-match-made-heaven/ [Accessed 15/8/2019].

World Economic Forum, 2018. How 5G will change the world. [Online] Available at: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/01/the-world-is-about-to-become-even-more-interconnected-here-s-how/ [Accessed 15/8/2019].

Wyman, B., Smith, S., Meyers, D. and Godfrey, M., 2011. Digital storytelling in museums: observations and best practices. Curator: The Museum Journal, 54(4), pp.461-468.

Yakel, E., 2007. Digital curation. OCLC Systems & Services: International Digital Library Perspectives, 23(4), pp.335-340.

Yoshimura, Y., Sobolevsky, S., Ratti, C., Girardin, F., Carrascal, J.P., Blat, J. and Sinatra, R., 2014. An analysis of visitors’ behavior in the Louvre Museum: a study using Bluetooth data. Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design, 41(6), pp.1113-1131.

Zarro, M. and Hall, C., 2012. Exploring social curation. D-Lib Magazine, 18(11/12).

CURATION IN THE DIGITAL AGE: HOW TECHNOLOGY HAS REVOLUTIONISED THE MUSEUM INDUSTRY

by [Name]

Course

Professor’s Name

Institution

Location of Institution

Date

Abstract

Curation in the Digital Age: How Technology Has Revolutionised the Museum Industry

Introduction

Purpose and Significance of the Study

Overview of the Structure

1.1 Background

1.1.1 Comparison of digital curation and curating digital exhibitions

1.2 Comparative Analysis: The Pros and Cons of Curation in the Digital Age

1.3 Research Questions

How does curating influence visitors experience in the museums?
What are the pros and cons of curation in the digital age?
How is curation done in the digital age and what are the potential impacts to the museums?
How has 5G and AI technology been employed to change the experience of visitors in the museums?
What is the impact of the museums’ cross-border cooperation with technological institutes?

2.0 Literature Review

2.1 Museums’ Cooperation with Technological Institutes

2.2 How 5G and AI Technology will Influence the Museum