Infrastructuring Knowledge in Cultural Infrastructure

Abstract

This paper discusses infrastructuring as an informal experience of Participatory Design in the context of museums. The authors describe “participation” as an embedded and stable parameter for looking at museums sustainability. Their standpoint is that museums develop and encourage knowledge through participative and interrelated relationships among various actors. Thus, the value of participation intersects the concept of infrastructuring, which implies the ongoing feature, the hybridity of networks and the complexity of the context, and consider together human and non-human. Describing visitors' participation in infrastructuring processes, the authors underline the unprofessional and unplanned stage of design process in order to stimulate new direction on designing museum exhibition and for planning the introduction of interactive technologies in the museum environment.