Virtual Realities and the Museum Experience

VIRTUAL REALITIES AND THE MUSEUM EXPERIENCE How VR is improving the visitor experience at the Anne Frank House, Het Scheepvaartmuseum and Tropenmuseum Jennifer Willcock MA Heritage: Museum Studies Thesis University of Amsterdam Submitted to the Graduate School of Humanities at the University of Amsterdam in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Master of Arts in Heritage Studies: Museum Studies Author: Jennifer Willcock Student Number: 11592702 Word Count: 17,194 Supervisor: Dr. Dos Elshout Secondary Reader: Prof.dr. Bram Kempers 1 ABSTRACT Virtual Reality (VR) has recently become a trend in museums worldwide. In 2018, three museums with very different missions incorporated VR into their exhibitions, each to diverse effect. By analysing the cases of the Anne Frank House, Het Scheepvaartmuseum and Tropenmuseum, it is possible to explore the many possibilities that VR technology now offers museums. This thesis will explore to what extent the interactive capabilities of VR can be used to enrich visitors’ experiences, and how it can encourage their engagement with the museums respective topics. Key Words: Virtual Reality, Visitor Experience, Authenticity, Interactivity, Accessibility, Edutainment, Disneyfication, Intangible Cultural Heritage 2 3 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank the staff and my fellow students of the MA Museum Studies course for their support over the last 20 months - to share our enthusiasm for museums has been a joy, and I hope we will one day be colleagues again. I would also like to extend my thanks to Charlotte Bosman and Titia Zoeter, my interviewees, who were so generous with their time and provided many valuable insights on this topic. Thank you to the Jansen family who have been so generous in sharing their home with me. Thank you to Jan for his continuous encouragement. Finally, thank you to my parents for their constant support, whatever I do and wherever I go. This thesis is dedicated to my grandfather, Ken Willcock, without whom this Masters would not have been possible. 4 5 CONTENTS Abstract …………………………….…………....………………………….……………… 2 Acknowledgements ………………………………………………………………...……... 4 Introduction ………………………………………………………...………………………. 8 1. Authenticity and Accessibility at the Anne Frank House …………………..……… 16 Constructing an Authentic Experience………………………………...……….. 18 A Virtual Museum is an Accessible Museum ………………………...……….. 27 2. Edutainment, Spectacle and Disneyfication at Het Scheepvaartmuseum ……… 32 Interactivity and Edutainment …………………………………………...……… 34 Spectacle and the Experience Economy …………………………..………….. 37 Disneyfication and Dare to Discover ………………………………...………… 40 3. Virtual Reality and Intangible Cultural Heritage at the Tropenmuseum ……..….. 44 Making the Intangible, Virtual …..………………………………………....……. 47 The Practicalities of VR ……………………………………………………...….. 51 Conclusion ……………………………………………………………………….……….. 56 Bibliography ……………………………………………………………………....………. 61 Appendix A: Images ……………………………………………………………….…….. 65 Appendix B: Interview Transcripts ……………………………….…………………….. 81 1. Charlotte Bosman, Digital Project Manager, Anne Frank House ……..…. 81 2. Titia Zoeter, Exhibition Maker, Tropenmuseum ………………………..….. 88 6 7 INTRODUCTION In his 2001 essay The Law of Accelerating Returns, the inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil states that “an analysis of the history of technology shows that technological change is exponential, contrary to the common-sense ‘intuitive linear’ 1 view. So we won’t experience 100 years of progress in the 21st century - it will be more like 20,000 years of progress (at today’s rate)”. Indeed, there is no doubt that in this Digital Age, technological innovations are ever more frequent, and that digital technology has now transformed many experiences in daily life. Museums are no exception. Since photographing their collections in the late eighteenth century, museums have had a long history of adopting the latest technology to improve their working practices. However, it is only in recent years that digital technology within museums has become a specialism, with there now being departments and conferences entirely dedicated to the topic. This drive within the sector to embrace new technology demonstrates that museums not only preserve the past, but are also continuously looking to the future. One of the more recent trends has been Virtual Reality (VR). The prevalence of VR in museums, galleries and biennales of late has demonstrated the 2 technology’s wide-ranging potential in the field of arts and culture. So far, VR has 3 4 been used to offer virtual tours , virtual experiences , and even entire virtual 5 museums. With its ability to create a deeply personal interaction by placing the participant in another reality, VR is an attractive option for museums who wish to engage and inspire visitors. What could be more effective at conveying a different time or place than (virtually) transporting the museum visitor there? Inspiring new 1 Kurzweil (1948) is known for his many correct predictions for the future of technology. In 1990 he famously claimed that a computer would defeat a world chess champion before 1998 - it did, in 1997. He has an 86% rate of accuracy, and Bill Gates called him “the best person I know at predicting the future of artificial intelligence”. He is currently Director of Engineering at Google. 2 2017 was the first time VR was shown at Venice Biennale, to great success. In 2018, 40 pieces were shown. https://submarinechannel.com/venice-vr-2018-vr-in-competition/ 3 British Museum: https://blog.britishmuseum.org/new-virtual-reality-tour-with-oculus/ 4 The World’s First Photography Exhibition: https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-travel-1839-worlds-first-photography-virtual-reality 5 The Kremer and EUseum: http://www.thekremercollection.com/the-kremer-museum/ https://thevirtualdutchmen.com/2018/02/02/euseum-europas-first-vr-museum/ 8 perspectives and capturing the visitor’s full attention is not so easily done with text, images and objects alone. VR is rich with potential. Through an exploration of three cases studies, in this thesis I will question to what extent can the interactive and immersive capabilities of VR be used to enrich visitors’ experiences, and how can it encourage their engagement with the museums’ respective values? What is VR? At this point, it is important to define exactly what is meant by the term “Virtual Reality”, which is used to describe both the artificial environment and the technology used to create the experience (merriam-webster.com). VR is characterised by its use of a headset, which covers the participant’s eyes in order to fully immerse them in the visual experience. Headphones and audio also work to create a completely new reality by further occupying the user’s senses, but these are not always used. This is different to Augmented Reality (AR), which predominantly uses smartphones to combine the participant’s real physical surroundings with “an overlay of digital information” (merriam-webster.com). AR has been used by many museums as it can be easily integrated with exhibitions - for example, the Rijksmuseum Twenthe’s AR app for the Louise te Poele exhibition in 2016 encouraged visitors to use their phones to scan the still lifes, which would then “subtly start to move and come to life - with the help of animations, text, films and sound clips” (rijksmuseumtwenthe.nl). The use of AR by museums has already been the focus of much scholarly research, and so this thesis will focus solely on VR, which in comparison has received little academic attention regarding its use in museums. I will also be looking specifically at VR which has been integrated into a pre-existing museum – not stand-alone experiences such as those exhibited at the Venice Biennale. This is because I wish to explore how VR can benefit and contribute to what already exists within the museum space. This current trend of using VR is the result of many years of technological progress. VR has been available since the 1980’s, but its recent boom has been spurred on by the development of truly realistic software and - crucially for museums 9 - the increasing affordability of quality headsets. These range from €450 for the high-end Oculus Rift and €200 for the Oculus Go, to mobile phone compatible options such as Google Cardboard, priced at just €10. The combination of widespread creative potential paired with its recent affordability has made VR an attractive prospect for a huge range of museums. As VR technology continues to improve, it will become clear whether we can expect VR to emerge as an integral part of the museum experience, as many Audio-Visual technologies already have, or whether this current trend will come to an end when the novelty of VR has worn off, or a new technology arrives to replace it. The Case Studies This year (2018) in Amsterdam, three museums with very different backgrounds have incorporated VR into their exhibitions, each to diverse effect. By analysing the cases of the Anne Frank House, Het Scheepvaartmuseum and Tropenmuseum, it is possible to explore the many possibilities that VR technology now offers museums. By focussing on three case studies in Amsterdam, I hope to give a clear comparison of how different types of museums have used VR within the same cultural, social and economic context. My hope is that this offers a fairer comparison than if I had chosen museums in a variety of locations, and so will allow me to focus on how VR can be used to approach different topics. In choosing

Load more