Cabinet of Curiosity

Abstract

This article considers the textually constructed 'virtual museum' of LambdaMOO and the users that manufacture their virtual bodies within this structure. As in traditional museums, the MOO museum functions as a legitimising force for the population's activities and as a strategy for constructing aesthetic values. The traditional museum relies on a stable culturally shared understanding of what bodies, objects, spaces, art, and viewers are in order to shape meaning. It is these very characteristics that are disordered by virtual MOO environments. The on-line virtual museum requires a new theory of spectatorship because it presents a quotation, or view, of a museum rather than a physical building structure that can be explored by the corporeal body of the viewer. These performative 'views' destabilise the spectator's ability to access a factual narrative or to remain invested in the realness of the museum system. Thus, the term 'museum' and the traditional viewing body are redefined by the components of MOO environments. This article considers the ways that virtual spectatorship and the virtual museum can constitute a kind of critical work on the traditional museum.