The Post-Partum Punctum as Promised…

Discovering your toes

"This second element which will disturb the studium I shall therefore call punctum; for punctum is also: sting, speck, cut, little hole – and also a cast of the dice. A photograph’s punctum is that accident which pricks me (but also bruises me, is poignant to me”

(Roland Barthes of course).

Not every museum object makes its screen debut in exactly the same way. Large scale installations delivered in a webpage suffer sorely - not only from their inevitable reduction - but also from our inability to sense the work with our own bodies. Fine oil works demand that you and I stand in close proximity to them in order to appreciate the delicate brushstrokes, and to absorb the faint aroma of resin so lovingly layered into the canvas. Online we miss the faint mustiness of the archaeological object that perches on its floodlit pedestal; looking just as if it had and burnished especially for us – that very moment – after being pulled out of a distant excavation. All those lost-aura moments that I referred to in my previous blog.

So why even bother looking for works and objects online – I hear you wondering; clearly – it's obvioulsy not even worth the effort!

How about we consume photography then? If the artist decides to produce a digital image, does it matter that we enjoy the image from the privilege of our own home computer? And even if it is a digital scan of one of the many prints the photographer has produced – does it really matter that the image comes to us over the ether rather than through a C-print? If you take the leap of faith that dares to suggest that the medium might not be quite so crucial to the work as we once might have thought, this might suggest that it might actually be the gesture of the work that is bruising us – even poignantly at times.

If I have persuaded you – even partially that there could be something remarkable in enjoying art telematically – then you will have to agree with me that there could be the possibility of a post-partum punctum – that 'aha' moment that takes us out of ourselves - even momentary even though the work was born elsewhere in its nascent physicality. The next part would be to persuade you that it is critical to engage with the art object within the portal of a museum rather than discovering an orphan image with incorrect or limited labeling that beguiles its true provenance. I personally believe that there aren't too many delivery systems that can compete with museum delivery. The museum extends into the Mediasphere those very same measures of truth and integrity that have their provenance in the physical museum. And If I have persuaded you so far of the veracity of the Musesphere, then I dare you come back to my blog in the near future to continue this journey with me.... you never know .... you might even discover your own toes.

Punktum, aura, and all those wondrous wow moments!

Voyage pittoresque de Constantinople et des Rives du Bosphore
Drawing: Antoine Ignace Melling

Back to the question – when is a museum not a museum – concerns me quite a lot as someone who performs the museum online for a profession. I would like to state for the record that the 'digital' museum – I actually hate that term but don’t really have anything better at hand - doesn’t even try to compete with the physicality of the museum object/artwork. So all you luddites who out there are this very moment ranting about the preciousness of the physical object are missing the point altogether! I would like to propose here (in black and white) that the online museum actually may well act as a vehicle for those extracurricular moments that recall Barthes' punktum or, even manage to compensate – big time - for the irretrievable loss of the aura. Yes, those lost qualities of the artwork that Walter Benjamin so lamented in his seminal 1936 essay.

And if you think that mechanical reproduction caused such unforgiving loss, what about the relentless clone-ability of the electronic reproduction? Where mechanical copies may be seen as strangely similar to each other, the digital copy is identical to the source, and in essence, there is no original, and there is no copy.

So … instead of lamenting the loss – how about we try to envisage for a second the extraordinary reach of the museum A flood of museum texts are now freely flowing across electronic networks, both from, and by the museum and, in certain web 2.0 cases, also to the museum. And if you once felt that you were not comfortable going to a museum that seems so formidably inaccessible, the online museum does seem to do a pretty good job of shifting intellectual access to collections from once wall-bound physical museum. In fact if you prefer to stay at home, you might be pleased to discover those very same objects of wonder are now coming to you on the little screen in your very own home/school, and even at the office (between work commitments that is of course). The only barrier to your claiming your own stake of cultural capital (Pierre Bourdieu), and becoming an instant connoisseur of contemporary, conceptual, or simply modern art is now the glass (and now totally transparent) window of your computer.



This is probably enough for one evening, and I suspect that I am preaching to the choir as the only people actually reading blog that is called Musing the Musesphere is probably someone who is already completely at home in the museum anyway. Still – for those who want to walk a little further with me – I do want to visit the idea of Barthes' punktum in my next blog to try and work out how online museums can still act to punctuate your lives!

There is a there there

People often ask me what is actually there ‘there’. What is it that keeps people so fixated on their screens and, as a media and communications researcher I feel obliged to respond. I briefly wonder whether they are about to launch into a tirade about how pathetic it is to see someone locked into their favorite sitcom; or how come their kids seem to run straight to instant message their friends from home after spending the whole day in school with exactly those same friends. But these days it seems that that the puzzlement is not directed at why anyone would want to keep abreast of the real, online or onscreen lives of others, but quite often, it turns to why anyone should want to spend their time in an immersive world such as Second Life. Worlds like Second Life (SL) tend to offer both of the above; and a lot more. Not only can you track the lives of others at study, work and play as you do in Facebook, but you can also maintain an second life of your very own in the persistent world – a world that doesn’t go away when you log off, but continues exist, and even thrive in your absence.

After many years of augmenting my face to face conversations with friends, family and colleagues through email, instant messaging services, image and video-sharing platforms and social network interfaces (more about these in another blog) many of these contacts have now taken up residence in Second Life. And so the conversations continue to flow – mostly through badly spelt text chats, or on occasion though voice conversations in world. In addition to my Facebook page, the numerous websites I maintain, and the waves of emails I am indepted to answer, I am now finding new ways to augment my mediated presence; this time in the delightfully creative world of Second Life.

So what are museums doing there? Actually, plenty! Perhaps the most impressive museum experience I have come across recently in second Life must be the one developed by the US Holocaust Museum in Washington. This is not merely documentary in nature, but also highly experiential. May I suggest that if anyone is interested in walking through a Second Life simulation of Kristallnacht (Crystal Night) they contact me in the virtual world. I am very easy to find; just instant message Jennifer Freund in world and mention you read this blog post.

Susan/Jennifer

The Preciousness of the Image

I have fought battles over commas before now. I have spent years laboriously slaving over perfect grammar, punctuation and, of course, always flawless spelling – not to mention meticulously written content; edited and burnished to make every sentence shine. One of my first web 2.0 battles was over the Wikipedia entry for the museum – the comma was missing. This might sound like a rather petty observation to you, but this particular comma was in the institutional name – and it was spelt incorrectly! So I signed in and did my bit for the museum – I corrected the name! Soon after I found that my correction had quietly reverted to a previous version. This was like a red rag to a bull. I charged in there and re-uploaded my comma – and from here on continued to do battle with the rest of the text – a battle that lasted many months. I am embarrassed to admit that I eventually gave up and left the museum entry at the mercy of the masses. After all – I consoled myself – there were obviously a bunch of people out there who were pretty committed to my museum – who was I to spoil their fun?

This week's battle was over an image. The contract said 'thee shall not cut, crop, or alter the image in any way', and 'neither shall you cover(t) the image with any text or superficial layer, visual or graphic'. Only we were all in love with this particular image, and dearly wanted to use it to promote the upcoming exhibition. The team in the Multimedia Unit struggled with the ethos of 'clicking to view the full image' as a work around, and finally gave in to abide both by the word, and the intent of the contractual relationship we had entered into.

I tell you this not to impress you with our dedication – even though we are a very dedicated clutch of museum professionals – but to lay the ground work for future discussions that will describe the ways in which the museum moves out of its cozily walled garret, as it makes its way into the cacophony of the World Wide Web. When we send out an image into the ether – we are confident that it does not leave our clutch as a poor, impoverished orphan, but in its splendour, and, in its native proportions; confident in its color fidelity, and, of course assured of who it is once clothed in its richly mantled metadata.

Susan

When is a museum not a museum?

How are museums represented online and how do they represent themselves? I am interested in the electronic museum, and, specifically what is it that makes a museum a museum even after they have breached the walls of the physical institution.

When museums define their virtual presence via their website, or extend their activities across social networks, do they draw on their traditions – already firmly established and instantly recognised from the physical museum - to extend and augment their activities online? I intend to trace the different ways that museums cross over from the physical to the mediated, and in doing so will explore the ways in which they bring their 'museum-ness' to their online surrogates.

Clearly traditional museum audiences travel the net much in the same way that the typical user has been identified travelling the net; spending much of their time in social networks such as Twitter, Facebook and Myspace, seeking their entertainment over such platforms as YouTube, Flickr, and sending in their avatar to represent, and interact on their behalf in persistent worlds, such as Second Life. Museum content that is limited to the institutional website suggests that – as excellent as this content is – it could sit in deep silos - with users bypassing museum resources as they seek similar content (although far less rich, or structured) already at their fingertips.

So the museum has begun to colonise web 2.0 spaces and here too it is fascinating to see how they have made their screen debuts. There are already many excellent examples of museums taking the lead in social network platforms, and opening their web spaces up to user-generated content, yet, having said this, there is also resistance from the managers of memory institutions who are not too eager to shift the balance between those reading the museum, and those who might wish to actually write the museum; in a truly Web 2.0, read/write scenario.

The discussions here therefore unite both the physical and the electronic components of the museum into a cohesive and fully integrated space that I have called the Musesphere. The term Musesphere was coined to describe the tangible and intangible texts made available to both local and remote visitors through new media, and harnessed to describe both the physical and digital footprints of the museum.

This blog seeks to identify those meeting places; where social networks of museum professionals and museum users can come to read and write together, and, in the weeks 'visit' museum activities and contents in order to provoke the question 'when is a museum not a museum'. Hopefully these short conversations will instigate hopefully some useful discussions in the true museum tradition and in doing so, will identify the successes and failures whereby museums extend their museum-ness into virtual spaces.

Dr. Susan Hazan
Jerusalem