The Development of Popular Music Heritage: exploring an AR exhibition

Abstract

This paper explores the relationship between digital technologies and preservation of popular music heritage and focuses on the AR exhibition, David Bowie Is. Through the lens of discourse analysis, it discusses the interpretation of the popular music and its various digital narratives, the authenticity of user experiences, and how museum functions can be promoted by virtual exhibitions. It provides multiple narratives to tell Bowie’s untold stories and experiments on music, stage, and costumes that questioned gender and social norms. It creates authentic experiences for the audience through offering augmented information on exhibits that arouse the audience’s emotions and trigger their memories. The AR exhibition can also help to promote the museum’s functions due to access without boundaries, digital preservation and enhancing the museum’s educational role. The paper suggests that this AR exhibition offers new ways for museums to preserve popular music and different experiences of listening with potential commercial value.