Ubiquitous Museology Workshop 2016, Buenos Aires, AR
January, 2017
by M.W. Burns
As part of the conference - "Chaos at the Museum, Infiltrating the Urban Fabric held in Buenos Aires in November 2016, I was fortunate enough to lead a workshop on the topic of ubiquitous museology. The workshop began by sharing some of the basic concepts of ubiquitous museology to help ground the participant’s thinking.
Ubiquitous museology is a “place-based” practice for planning, designing and integrating museum experiences into the everyday world. It uses the things, places, and phenomena that exist around us as locations for informal learning. But, creating museum experiences in the urban environment is not simply a matter of transferring tactics used in museums to the streets. Instead ubiquitous museology applies many tactics borrowed from street art, guerrilla marketing, place making, and pervasive gaming - forms of engagement that were born on the streets, as well as utilizing mobile, location aware technologies.
To exercise some of these ideas, participants in the workshop collaborated in teams to address the urban landscape as a museum itself. Provided with information about a specific site in Buenos Aires, each team was challenged to create ways of “activating” their site as an informal learning environment. These included historically recognized areas of the city, as well as more ordinary places, and even derelict sites. Offering participants a range of locations was intended to challenge the notion that some sites are more valuable than others. Ultimately, it is our job as experience designers to help people make meaningful connections with their world, even in the most unexpected places.
Workshop documentation is presented below.
January, 2017
by M.W. Burns
As part of the conference - "Chaos at the Museum, Infiltrating the Urban Fabric held in Buenos Aires in November 2016, I was fortunate enough to lead a workshop on the topic of ubiquitous museology. The workshop began by sharing some of the basic concepts of ubiquitous museology to help ground the participant’s thinking.
Ubiquitous museology is a “place-based” practice for planning, designing and integrating museum experiences into the everyday world. It uses the things, places, and phenomena that exist around us as locations for informal learning. But, creating museum experiences in the urban environment is not simply a matter of transferring tactics used in museums to the streets. Instead ubiquitous museology applies many tactics borrowed from street art, guerrilla marketing, place making, and pervasive gaming - forms of engagement that were born on the streets, as well as utilizing mobile, location aware technologies.
To exercise some of these ideas, participants in the workshop collaborated in teams to address the urban landscape as a museum itself. Provided with information about a specific site in Buenos Aires, each team was challenged to create ways of “activating” their site as an informal learning environment. These included historically recognized areas of the city, as well as more ordinary places, and even derelict sites. Offering participants a range of locations was intended to challenge the notion that some sites are more valuable than others. Ultimately, it is our job as experience designers to help people make meaningful connections with their world, even in the most unexpected places.
Workshop documentation is presented below.
Workshop documentation by M.W Burns and Clare Brown