The evolution of the museum
My favourite museum when I was younger had moving dinosaurs. My least favourite was in my local town – it combined reels of text with dull, browning objects. It was all multimedia storytelling none the less.
Museums have always understood the power of multimedia storytelling. To interest an audience they cannot simply give us the facts, history must become a story. Some museums even allow people to enact the story for themselves – dressing up and pretending they really did go to that terrifying Victorian school.
I went down to an exhibition in Cardiff called “When we were young” to see what different multimedia it called upon to tell the stories. As I walked in I could hear the sounds of children playing in the schoolyard. Around the room were information boards coupled with cartoons and pictures and in other areas there were flip boards with questions on one side and answers on the other. It used objects to generate stories by placing the object next to a question like, “What special day did Denise get this purse?” encouraging the reader to then find the answer in an ‘object file’. There were touch and feel draws, a play area and it even used videos from ‘Capture Wales’ with local residents telling stories about growing up in Cardiff.
Exhibits from "When we were young"
Where then does the online part come in? Well, if you want to see how the museum is evolving look to the internet. In my first blog I discussed the rise of Flash journalism, where multimedia in all of its wonderful formats are brought together to tell the story (or many stories) of a particular subject.
A flash project about Kurdistan uses many different types of media to portray the turbulent history of the country. It even has a story map compiled of different people’s stories each with their own personal layout and a section where people can identify and give information about anonymous pictures.
Whilst websites and traditional museums both harness the power of multi-media storytelling the web has even more to offer. It can reach out to a much wider audience and this audience does not simply visit the museum but participates in its creation.
Kurdish culture has for decades been repressed and there is no national archive. The website provides a space that people have never had before where they can document, through multimedia stories, the history of Kurdistan. The people have now become the museum curators. The stories are more ours than ever and they have no limits. The website is borderless – it can be constantly added to and the story will continue to grow in all directions and from all points of view.
The multimedia storytelling experience is arguably more streamlined on the web too. Video, text, picture, sound can be brought together seamlessly and in ever more creative and artistic ways. However if you want that authentic moving dinosaur experience I would still advise you to go to a real museum…
