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The article addresses the impact on religion of developments in artificial intelligence (AI). Topics include the analogous to religion of the characteristics adopted by AI discourses and practices, the argument that a firm belief in technological progress based on data processed by AI is the only possible path to salvation for humankind, and the development, applications and potential futures of AI in the Futurium museum in Berlin, Germany that opened in 2019.

The purpose of this article is to emphasise the importance of exhibiting archival records in art museum spaces as a knowledge development and information dissemination stance. The article also draws attention to the limitations that are encountered in fostering the public programming of archives through digital technology in art museums. The 2013 Revised White Paper on Arts, Culture and Heritage states that cultural and creative industries should ensure that as many South Africans as possible have access to arts, culture, and heritage offerings, and this includes archival records. However, art museum archives continue to be exclusionist and often act as historical, social, and information barriers for end users. This qualitative study accentuates the importance of physical and remote public programming activities for art museums and art galleries. The study followed a phenomenological research approach and explored the experiences and perceptions of art museum end users in relation to the adequacy of archive public programming. The findings suggest that exhibiting archival holdings at art museums can create awareness among audiences and expose such audiences to cultural history through the archival exhibits, which could be shared externally through digital media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Museums are organizations that need to maintain relationships with several stakeholders in order to achieve their economic and social objectives. In this context, the current paper explores the effect of an organization's bonding social capital and a manager's social capital on the organization's ability to build external relationships, in other words, bridging social capital. Results from the study indicate that the structure of internal social capital (cohesion and diversity) and the manager's role as a bridging tie facilitate relations with stakeholders and other museum networks. Moreover, collective social capital (bonding and bridging) has a direct impact on innovative proposals, on the museum's image and on incomes, all of which entail key management implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Striking the right balance between scientific precision and audience comprehension is a great challenge for text editors in museums of technology. This article discusses how this challenge was met at the Industrial Gas Museum in Athens, Greece, and aspires to offer some useful suggestions of good practice. The Athens gasworks, the first energy-producing industry in Greece, operated non-stop from 1862 to 1984, and constitutes a representative example of nineteenth-century industrial architecture. Today the site operates as a large and popular venue for cultural and commercial events under the name of Technopolis, City of Athens. Part of the site operates as the Industrial Gas Museum, where visitors may follow the process of gas production and discover unknown stories of entrepreneurship, labor and life in nineteenth and twentiethcentury Athens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we investigate the positive impact recent developments in digital technologies have on the relations between museums, their collections and the communities they serve. Our work indicates that sustainable benefit is produced with the use of existing digital literacies and infrastructures. We have analysed and evaluated the potential of emergent 3D and spherical technologies on the relationships between community and museum, participation in the formation of heritage, the 'visit' to the museum, and connection with remote audiences. The evaluation arises from our long term experience in working with community museums and through a series of workshops developed for the project entitled 'Museums and Community: Concepts, experiences, and sustainability in Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean' (EU‐LAC‐MUSEUMS). Firstly, we contextualise the work presented by examining community museums, trends in emergent technologies and the advancements in digital heritage. Secondly, we analyse the methodologies used to design and execute the elements of the workshops, along with assess case studies to demonstrate distinctive experiences and outcomes particular to each workshop. We also describe how we constructed and implemented a novel design for a cost effective Virtual Museum Infrastructure (VMI), which makes it simpler for communities to create a virtual museum and connect it with global museum networks. Our aim is to communicate our findings in relation to methodologies, workflows and technologies that will be of value in understanding how to overcome the challenges emergent technologies present but yet have the potential to strengthen both community and museum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The digital revolution has affected museums in many ways, both directly and indirectly. A major external change is the rise of user‐written reviews; that is, reviews written by museum visitors and posted on the Internet. User‐generated reviews pose challenges to museums, as they are publicly available and largely outside the control of museums. This article discusses research on reviews of accredited museums in London. Our data set consists of all reviews written about 88 London museums that were posted on TripAdvisor during 2014, a total of 22,940 reviews. Using a technique called topic modelling, we describe 19 themes in reviewers' stories of their visits. We find that museum visitors pay attention to the ancillary aspects of their visit: queues, cost, food service, toilets, and activities for children. They make fewer comments on the cultural side of the museum experience. However, these cultural aspects do matter and are associated with positive reviews. We argue that reviewers consider museums as part of a wider leisure sector. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications of our study for museum management and assess the usefulness of user‐generated content as a source of data on museum visitors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In an effort to meet changing visitor needs, the Mutare Museum modernised its Beit Gallery, which presents the traditional, agricultural, healing, musical and religious practices of the Eastern Shona people through digital technology. This new display in the gallery was inaugurated to counter the decreasing numbers of visitors over the years (2000‐2015). As many visitors regretted the absence of interactive experiences within the existing exhibitions, multiple digital presentation and interpretation methods, such as videos, audios, animation, computer interactive devices and flipbooks, were introduced, in an attempt to satisfy their expectations. In this article, we will assess the impact of digital technology on audience experience and growth at Mutare Museum. We will show that, although the introduction of digital technology may have satisfied some visitors, audience growth and loyalty at the museum continued to decline. We argue that when digital technology is employed as an end rather than as a means, the impact will be minimal. Mutare Museum was grappling with the fundamental issues faced by many cultural institutions today: accessibility, high entrances fees, inadequate government funding, low visibility, competition with other attractions, inadequate and poor storage facilities. From our analysis, it became clear that the introduction of digital technology alone was not sufficient to boost audience loyalty and growth, and that a holistic analysis of the museum's fundamental issues was required. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present article describes museum4punkt0, a three‐year project that develops and evaluates digital communication applications and technologies in museums. This project, held on a nationwide scale and funded by the Beauftragte der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien (Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media, or BKM), aims to document and analyse the development process, encourages collaboration, and transfers workflows to the museum field that have their origin in disciplines such as design, Human‐Computer Interaction (HCI), or software development. I will first contextualise museum4punkt0, and then explain its overall structure, which includes an overview of the participating institutions and their specific use cases. This will be followed by a description of the ways in which collaboration, documentation, and reflection were devised to ensure that the project's main objectives are reached, in particular, the development and evaluation of innovative digital applications that can be reused in other institutions. Finally, I will discuss the (changing) role of digital technologies and research in museums, and highlight recent developments that bring the Humanities, communication technologies, computational methods, and adjacent fields together. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Museums must adapt to the increasingly massive use of the Internet, and use it to reach new audiences and find new ways of enhancing culture, or consolidate the relationship with their existing public. Therefore, defining an online strategy that conforms to the museum's mission may prove difficult. One of the challenges cultural organisations face in this regard is how to define, measure and evaluate their efficiency and approach. In the present article, we will study the digital instruments adopted by Italian museums to communicate on and promote their heritage collections on the web, and enhance the involvement and participation of audiences in the digital environment. Our aim is to present and discuss the results of the first online web strategy survey conducted in 2017, by ICOM Italy and the Italian Ministry of Culture (MiBAC). The survey and its findings show that Italian museums have risen to the challenge, by working on defining and developing their digital web strategy. The conclusion will highlight the gaps and some points for future reflection with a focus on open data. We hope that a wider museum community can adopt our monitoring tool, the 17 web strategy parameters, and share results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This article explores the possibility of creating alternative user experience in exhibition spaces while using audience interactivity as medium for generating sonic material. We are investigating participatory art in museum space, ways for redefining audiences, and how artistic logic can be articulated through an encounter with the public. Inspired by the "ArtLens" mobile application developed by The Cleveland Museum of Art, our research adopted an interdisciplinary approach engaging museum visitors with an interactive app. The app maps the exhibition space with sound frequencies and then tracks the journey of each visitor as they go through the exhibition. It was developed as a prototype and applied in a mock exhibition space in Edinburgh College of Art with student volunteers. The unique combination of sounds derived from the user's journey not only allowed the forming of sound sequences but also put the users in an active position to enhance their involvement in otherwise neglected spatial experience. The next step of our research will apply the prototype in museum spaces and explore how the characteristics of different architectural spaces could influence the result. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Iguaçu Regional Museum, located at the Governador Ney Amintas de Barros Braga Hydroelectric Plant, in the town of Reserva do Iguaçu, opened under the administration of Governor Jaime Lerner, in 2000, it is one of the most modern memorial places in the interior of the state of Paraná. To this end, in the context of New Museology, the article analyzes the discursive and imagistic language that the Iguaçu Regional Museum has built for itself and its audience, identifying the identities intended to protect. On the other hand, it reflects on the self-image (associated with environmental preservation and cultural heritage), that the Companhia Paranaense de Energia Elétrica (Copel) has conveyed both in Brazil and abroad. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The research is centred on the multiple communications that arise between people and the transmedia museum. To examine this communication with audiences in greater depth, the interactions and interactivities that comprise it must be analysed. That is why the primary objective of the research is to create an analytical and productive model of the interactions and interactivities that come about or should come about in the transmedia museum. This narrative taxonomy classifies in order to arrange, categorize and reveal the museum's communicative achievements and deficiencies for the purpose of attaining full and accessible communication for all visitors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increased reliance on technology has driven museums to consider the technology required to provide a creative cost effective experience. Technovation is a process of developing and innovating services using technology. This research will contribute to a better technology investment decision-making for museum managers and advance understanding of consumer value, co-creation, technology use and museums. Structural equation modelling was conducted on a survey administered to 412 museum visitors to test technology efficacy, technology acceptance, service quality, museum value and repeat intent in museums. Results indicate the significant relationships of technology self-efficacy, technology acceptance, service quality, museum value to repurchase intention. Consumers supported the role of technology and suggested that technology innovation in museum service delivery is essential. The research suggests that to ensure value co-creation, technology management must guide and support the visitor with the interaction. This is the first known paper testing this system of relationships in the museum context. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Following the theme "Hyperconnected Museums - New Approaches, New Publics", the "Outpost Museum" tries to resist the temptation of connecting the public and the museum through the internet, asks questions about what a new public is and speaks about the rediscovered political power of museums and the power of politics in getting museums to reach new audiences at a global scale, having as starting point the recent opening of Louvre Abu Dhabi and other collaboration projects between Western museums and the Middle East which should serve as a lesson to learn for Romanian museums expected to perform at their best in the international events in which Romania will be on focus in 2019 - Europalia International Festival and the Presidency of the EU Council -, as well as to widen their horizon towards international collaborations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The theme of the 2018 International Museum Day was Hyperconnected museums: New approaches; new publics. Though the theme may look rather vague for some of the museum managers, in Romania as well as in other European countries, the technological development will leave no room for delays in taking radical decisions. Museums will have to adapt their exhibiting discourse to this new challenge. If not, many of those from the younger generation will have difficulties in understanding and accepting the cultural approach of these institutions. Regarding the technological development, it looks like Romania has all the chances to take advantage on this radical switch. It depends only to the decision of the museum managers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the nature of the staff–visitor encounter in relation to the challenges presented in supporting museum visitors with varying competencies in adopting new technologies. In particular, the paper examines the organisation and operation of a museum's front desk, and addresses the highly contingent, interactional accomplishment of loans and dissemination, more specifically the conversation and the interaction between the front desk assistant and the visitors concerning a potential iPod loan. Based on 18 hours of video recordings, the paper focuses on the offering sequence and shows that participants orient to at least two aspects when making/receiving offers of an iPod loan: (1) the acceptance or rejection of the offer and (2) questions of familiarity; e.g. whether or not the iPod can be treated as a known item. These aspects are inherently related, and participants may choose to align with the terms of familiarity while disaligning with the offer, and vice versa. The study shows that museums are faced with a great challenge, as well as a great opportunity, in supporting visitors when adopting new technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Interpretation in natural history museums is generally conservative with methods of collections interpretation barely changed since the first natural history museums were founded. For all the changes undertaken by museums in the last 20 years, sector leaders such as the American Museum of Natural History, the Natural History Museum, London, the National Museum, Prague, Museum für Naturkunde, Berlin and the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle, Paris still operate by connecting objects with facts about their biology. The recent relocation of the Grant Museum of Zoology at University College London has offered the opportunity for the museum to become a space for dialogue and experimentation. The museum, in collaboration with the university, has developed ‘social interpretation’ designed to engage visitors with controversial questions in life sciences and museum practice. Visitor responses are recorded and used as the basis to plan future work. The paper explores how this form of engagement with visitors might allow natural history museums to add to established methods of interpretation, and – in a form of co-production with their visitors – challenge attitudes to scientific knowledge and its development. Thus, the way natural history museums function as sources of knowledge for the public and the ‘front line’ of biological engagement is potentially changed, based on the responses of museum visitors. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Presented article discusses current trends in the presentation of digitized museum collections. The author focuses on the use of metadata and explains why this issue is so important for museum work. Addition of metadata to digitized collections is nowadays a unique way to preserve the long-term usability of information about collections object. To ensure the effectivity of using metadata it is necessary to keep a unified standard both of the format of the metadata and of the form of the digitized objects themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent decades fine art museums have experienced a boom in popularity. This surge is not only reflected by the proliferation of spectacular new museum buildings, but also through a considerable increase in visitors, and, as a result, the significant modification of ‘visitor culture’. These developments require investigation as to how new social situations within the museum environment may influence the perception of artworks. Through the Swiss National Research Project entitled ‘eMotion – mapping museum experience’, we studied the aforementioned social aspects of museum visits in real field conditions, deploying novel methods such as: wireless physiological monitoring, position tracking, electronic surveys, and information cartography. The combination of diverse investigative methods provides insight into the effects of artworks, necessitating alternative strategies for future exhibitions and museum installations. We demonstrate that the social behavior of museum visitors, such as companionship and conversation, have a decisive influence on art reception, which entails consequences for the strategic orientation of museums as sites of experience. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper explains, evaluates and reflects on the technical challenges and opportunities that underpin both the Mapping Sculpture project and its mobile interface. It provides insights into the development process as an integral component of the research methodology, and highlights the importance of meaningful collaboration between researchers and software developers. Just as the project questions the conventional notion of the lone sculpture practitioner, so the technical development needed to mirror the complex web of connections between people, places, objects, organizations and events through enabling large-scale, distributed and collaborative research. Enabling access to these rich resources on mobile devices was a further innovative and challenging development, but one that opens up the possibility for fresh modes of access and development of new audiences. The success of this technical development offers a model for representing complex relationships hidden in multiple sources, enabling innovative research and enhancing access. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the Twenty-first century, museums' mobile digital technology has a prominent role in communication and interpretation thanks to its characteristics of multimodality, handiness, ubiquity, accessibility, and social networking. Digital technology had been a central topic of design discourse in museums up until the recent years. In recent years the attention has shifted from technology to visitor experience. Nowadays the innovative character of mobile devices depends not so much on technology per se as on socio-technical system that now, more than ever before, put visitor's needs and museum environment at the core of the design. Designing mobile apps with the visitor experience as an explicit outcome means looking beyond functionality: we should take into account visitors' expectations, motivations, and behaviors, above and beyond interface usability, and then extend this understanding to the context of the use of the device and to the whole experience of the visit. Any design effort should go in the direction of integrating all of these dimensions. This paper's contribution comes from answering the following question: what are the "dimensions of the context" of mobile-media-enhanced visitor experience? In investigating recent studies and analyzing recent projects on mobile media for museums we have classified three main domains - museum, visitor, and mobile technology. From these domains we have identified fundamental dimensions that can help designers and museum practitioners to better understand the context in which visitors use a mobile app and, in turn, enable them to make more informed design decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between February and April 2011, I led the project Edutangible, a research project about the use of multitouch technologies at the Panama Viejo Monumental Complex in Panama City, Panama. Our goal was to explore the use of a multi-touch tabletop to engage school children ages 8 to 11 with the site and with its archaeology collection. We hypothesized that the more "natural" type of interaction these technologies provided (i.e. being able to manipulate vicarious representations of the artifacts through touch) could help enhance the children's interest in the collection objects. Through iterative design cycles linked to our first two days of user testing, we created an interface in which children could put together pieces of Pre-Columbian plates. We then conducted two more days of user testing in which we framed the use of the tabletop as part of a guided tour of the site. A total of 200 children participated in the four test sessions. We asked the children to give rankings in a feeling scale to the four key parts of the tour: the visit to the main tower at the complex, 2 collection exhibitions, and the multi-touch tabletop. Test results showed that while the technology was highly engaging and attractive for the children, it could also potentially overshadow the collections and the monumental complex. Based on this experience, I would like to present an overview of the challenges I have identified when using these technologies to communicate heritage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This Events and Sightings installment covers a range of recent events focusing on the history of computing. Akihiko Yamada recaps the 5th Commemoration: One Step on Electrotechnology (Look Back to the Future) of the Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan (IEEJ), held at the Hiroshima Institute of Technology on 22 March 2012 during the IEEJ annual convention. Dag Spicer also reviews activities and developments at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, over the last year. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article focuses on innovations in city museums in recent years. By focusing on the user – as opposed to the collection – the changes in city museums have an influence on the statute of the museum, considerably altering its mission. Going so far as to build up databases and digital displays, the museum increasingly intersects its functions with those of an archive which (with particular regard to architectural materials) now proposes exhibitive forms of fruition. The most extreme consequences of this phenomenon is the online museum, with numerous peculiar aspects: it is flexible (its collection can grow without problems, and be presented in different forms), democratic, interactive and inexpensive, and it allows flows of information in several directions. The comparison with the contemporary city remains the fundamental, hinging element, as several intuitions have already shown in the past. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The museum of the 20th century is a space of cultural communication in which all types of elements of expression converge, from the most traditional to the hypermedia. Cusco is much more than a city with some of the most unique museums in the world; Cusco is a heritage museum city. The study of its museums in a universal context through communication, museum narrative and the TIC proposes solutions to increase knowledge and make it accessible to all people, which is the fundamental objective of the investigation. The investigation focuses on the Museum Convent of Santo Domingo-Qorikancha, the oldest temple of the Incan empire. [TRANSLATION]

Multimedia guides are an increasingly common feature within museums and galleries where they provide enhanced levels of interpretation and engagement. Their potential is well recognised in the literature and ongoing technological advances will ensure that their capabilities continue to expand. A key issue for many museums and galleries is to understand the practical realities of developing and operating a multimedia guide to truly realise its potential. In this article, we discuss our experiences developing the mi-Guide multimedia visitor guide at the Museum of Science and Industry (Manchester, UK) and share our experiences of the technical, digital design, content authorship and non-technical, people-related issues that need to be understood and addressed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article summarizes the basic findings about the visitors' attitudes towards the interactive technologies in museums. The special aspects, opportunities and limitations of interactive technologies and new media are described and explained in the framework of the typical visitor's behavior. The article brings basic principles description and tips for creation of interactive installations and new media educational projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the interconnection between the creation of museum and the management of information units and the new information technologies as practical means of registering objects with cultural and heritage content. These are also analysed as representative of social behavior. Having in mind the characterization of collections and the use of technological novelties, museums try to adapt some traditional practices to the new realm of innovative computer technologies. As such, combining multimedia elements and electronic catalogs created from Collections Management Systems hypermedia used as primary resource to present museological items gained space. By posting those catalogs in the Internet the museum reveals its relationship with electronic resources. Furthermore, the socialization strategies of the museum on what concerns information dissemination are also made clearer by the use of these new collection management systems. Statements on citizenship and cultural values are made evident side by side with strategies to preserve collective memory in a field where museums have been working as pioneers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article provides an overview of the cultural significance of the city museum of Rome, followed by a critical approach regarding the history of the Museum of Rome from the first proposals to its foundations in 1930, the subsequent transfer to Palazzo Braschi in 1952 until the opening of the new section in Trastevere, mainly intended to host contemporary exhibitions. The author proposes an innovative hypothesis of a museum-lab for the city, able to compete with the most advanced international experiences on a scientific, museological and educational ground.

The article offers information on Penn Museum located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It mentions that Penn Museum has launched Image Africa with the Penn Museum on September 2011 which includes the series of live performances, free community, and workshops. It states that the standing bull from the Ninhursag Temple at Tell Al-Ubaid, Iraq is one of the notable animal in Penn Museum Collection to be conserved in 2012. It adds that the support from Leon Levy Foundation leads to full digitization.

it's been known for some time that a first electric lighting on the territory of modern Slovenia was implemented in Maribor in the year 1883. Recent discoveries have revealed that other other important events happened on the same year elswhere in the country. Next year there will be more reasons to celebrate 135th anniversary of electrification of Slovenia and Technical museum of Slovenia will honor the jubilee with a new permanent exhibition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]