Abstract
ABSTRACTThis article offers insights into how digital methods in cultural heritage settings can help evoke and illuminate the richness of visitor engagement and interpretation, especially in relation to expressions of ownership. Drawing on the Artcasting research project, which examined how galleries can inventively evaluate visitors’ engagement with art, we propose that, in addition to looking for commonalities and stability in visitors’ articulation of engagement, it is beneficial to look for ways to make sense of difference. The project drew on theories of mobility to explore visitor engagement with cultural heritage, creating an artcasting platform that invited visitors to ‘cast’ artworks to another place or time. We analyse artcasting data through two ‘movements’. The first uses thematic analysis of artcasts to show how visitors to two ARTIST ROOMS exhibitions expressed ownership in relation to their engagement with artworks. The second demonstrates how individual responses can be put into relationship and understood as an articulation of engagement that moves beyond the interpretive authority of the gallery or any one visitor. The article contributes new perspectives to understandings of articulation and engagement and their relationship to the production of heritage, and reflects on implications for moving digital practice towards more complexity and diversity.
Highlights
In museums and galleries, visitors ‘perform their own heritage’ in ways that are ‘facilitated from being at – and revisiting – the heritage site. . . interpretations emerge from reflecting on their own histories along with objects and environments at the heritage site’ (Haldrup and Bœrenholdt 2015, 60)
The project drew on theories of mobility to explore visitor engagement with cultural heritage, creating an artcasting platform that invited visitors to ‘cast’ artworks to another place or time
Visitors ‘perform their own heritage’ in ways that are ‘facilitated from being at – and revisiting – the heritage site. . . interpretations emerge from reflecting on their own histories along with objects and environments at the heritage site’ (Haldrup and Bœrenholdt 2015, 60)
Summary
Visitors ‘perform their own heritage’ in ways that are ‘facilitated from being at – and revisiting – the heritage site. . . interpretations emerge from reflecting on their own histories along with objects and environments at the heritage site’ (Haldrup and Bœrenholdt 2015, 60). Visitors ‘perform their own heritage’ in ways that are ‘facilitated from being at – and revisiting – the heritage site. This article explores how visitors can use inventive mobile methods to articulate their engagement with artworks in and beyond gallery settings. We argue that this articulation is an expression of a sense of ownership that characterises the transformation of art objects into heritage. As part of the project, we built an experimental digital methodology and mobile application (app) called ‘Artcasting’ to explore how galleries can inventively evaluate visitors’ engagement with art, and make that process of evaluation part of the experience of engagement. Artcasting was piloted in two ARTIST ROOMS exhibitions in the UK – Roy Lichtenstein at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh, Scotland, and Robert Mapplethorpe: The Magic in the Muse at the Bowes Museum in County Durham, England
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