Museum Visitor Experience Research Articles

Portable technologies at the museum

A topic of interest in contemporary museum studies is how digital technologies contribute to museum visitor experiences. Building on insights from media and technology studies that new media should be understood for how they overlap with old media, the article reports an ethnographic study of the intersections between the exhibition at a modern museum of natural history and three portable technologies – one of which is digital. Mobile phone cameras, exercise pamphlets and dress-up costumes link visitors with an exhibition, but they simultaneously shape this relation in their own specific directions. This is shown by drawing on the concept of mediation as it is developed by philosopher Michel Serres and philosopher of technology Bruno Latour. The article is based on the Ph.D. thesis entitled “Portable Objects at the Museum”, defended at Roskilde University on 22 September 2010.