Digital Museum – in the Light of the Projects of MOME TechLab

Abstract

The paper discusses the use of digital technologies in museums. It introduces various connotations of the concept of the digital museum. A special focus will be placed on the potentials of enhancing the museum visits in space and time and engaging the visitor as an active participant. Fifteen projects of the MOME TechLab are introduced, which have been created in an educational setting as student projects or as commissioned works by the TechLab Fellows collective. All of them have been designed for and in cooperation with cultural heritage institutions, representing a broad range of topics from literature to music and fine arts. They are clustered according to mechanisms and goals, such as surprise and emotional involvement, playful exploration, interactive data visualization, augmenting objects with additional information, assigning active role to visitors to voice opinion, and offering real and virtual tours beyond the walls of the museum. Most of the projects are demonstrated at http://techlab.mome.hu/en. The paper stresses the necessity of interdisciplinary cooperation and the need to scholarly assess the merits of digital installations in museums.