Interfacing Digitized Art Museum Collections Through the Notion of Performative Materiality. The ArtBot Guide Case Study.

Abstract

The interest and need of exploring the possibilities of Digital Humanities tools within the framework of this Master’s thesis stems from the awareness that significant changes are taking place within the landscape of institutionalized art museums. Most significantly, the fact that most art museums in Western societies have digitized and made available their collections online. Yet, despite the potentials, the collections being online is the point where meaningful interactions usually halt.

The first Part of this Master’s thesis is centered around three concepts relevant for these developments – the interface, digitized art museum collections and performative materiality. In researching the history, meanings and doings of these terms, a mini-glossary is compiled for the process of art museum collection digitization and the potentials that it entails.

Part II of this Master’s thesis, informed by the findings of Part I, offers a Digital Humanities design thinking and critical making speculative solution. Building on the work of the PolyCube model cultural collection interactive visualization tool and the possibilities of Linked Data, the author of this thesis and Master’s level Artificial Intelligence student at the Utrecht University, Simon Dirks, have ideated the ArtBot Guide. The smartphone application aims to make a visitor’s journey to an exhibition a more engaging endeavor. Firstly, in allowing for the hidden structures of the exhibition collection to appear through the PolyCube model tool, visualizing the metadata of the digitized collection objects to perform as a “hyperobject”. Secondly, in exploring the Linked Data possibilities in a chatbot application, where an artwork or an artist’s name can become a node of discovery for further related information to be called upon by wish.

The ArtBot Guide has been designed for a specific case study exhibition, “Tears of Eros: Moesman, Surrealism and the Sexes” at the Utrecht Centraal Museum. A comparison is being made between visiting the exhibition with and without the ArtBot Guide. In applying the concepts of interface, digitized collections and performative materiality to the speculative experience comparison, the innovative aspects of the ArtBot Guide are made most visible.