When exhibits come back to life – How to implement Virtual and Augmented Reality in Museums

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When exhibits come back to life – How to implement Virtual and Augmented Reality in Museums

Author: Andrea Geipel – Deutsches Museum, Germany

New technologies, such as Virtual Realitiy (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR), not only point the way to science communication in the museum of the future, but also sharpen the view for everyday challenges in the analogue and digital realms. These are precisely the challenges that cultural institutions are facing in an equal measure. With the opening of the VRlab in August 2018, the Deutsches Museum created an experimental area in the exhibition space to test various scenarios of digital communication and education and to identify measures for their implementation.

As part of the national project museum4punkt0 the Deutsches Museum, together with seven other institutions, evaluates and documents questions on digital storytelling, usability and infrastructural requirements when implementing digital technologies. Within the VRlab the Deutsches Museum applied ethnographic fieldwork, 20 in-depth interviews as well as a questionnaire (n=367) to uncover how skilled visitors already are in using VR, how they perceive the virtual exhibits, the contextualization and the storytelling and how they evaluate usability and accessibility.

Our evaluation shows, that around 16% of the visitors have already experienced room scale VR before coming to the Deutsches Museum, around 92% want to learn more about how VR works and around 87% want to see and learn more about the real exhibits. Together with detailed documentation, the talk will give insights in the implementation, virtual storytelling and reception of VR and how therefore, it is more than another media station. In a next step, we will take a closer look at educational concepts and learning outcomes in VR.

In the talk I will highlight why VR should never be seen as a replacement for real exhibitions but rather as another promising tool to give context, add information and bring exhibits back to life.

The author has not yet submitted a copy of the full paper.

Presentation type: Individual paper
Theme: Technology

Platform politics vs. content – How we communicate science on YouTube

Author: Andrea Geipel – Munich Center for Technology in Society (TUM), Germany

As leading social video platform, YouTube is especially known for music videos, gaming content or how-to-tutorials. However, since 2015, the number of channels in the category ‘Science’ went up from one Mio to 15 Mio displaying the growing number of interest in this niche topic. Prominent YouTube channels, like Vsauce, AsapSCIENCE or kurzgesagt (in a nutshell), present their videos to 3 to 12 Mio subscribers with topics like the fermi paradox or the napkin ring problem. Nevertheless, only a small number of studies give insight in how and to what extend YouTube as a platform influences science communication.

Using the example of five ‘Science Channels’, I argue that producers have to adapt to the platform politics of YouTube to become visible, create a community and gain success. Based on interviews, platform and video analysis as well as ethnographic methods I work out how these platform specific rules lead to a loss of relevance of the specific scientific content presented. Becoming visible is predominantly achieved by following the logics of the algorithm, that is deciding which videos are recommended to users. In addition, producers need to perform authentic and therefore coherent to their own brand and in contrast to other video producers and build networks with others.

While in newspapers, press releases and TV shows the accuracy of the content together with the reputation of the presenter wins the audience’s attention and solace, YouTube in contrast, rewards authentic performance, entertainment and adherence to algorithmic logics of gaining visibility. In the end, this changes the public image of science as well as the way science will be communicated in the future.

The author has not yet submitted a copy of the full paper.

Presentation type: Individual paper
Theme: Science
Area of interest: Investigating science communication practices

Online news from the past – ancient Greece on YouTube and the seemingly revival of a holistic academic education

Author: Andrea Geipel – Munich Center for Technology in Society (TUM), Germany

Co-author: Jesus Múñoz Morcillo – Karlsruhe Institute of Technology

Popular science web videos are short, understandable and entertaining films that are explicitly been produced for the internet. This new medium comprises a great variety of producers, themes and aesthetics that are changing the production and dissemination of knowledge and the way people get in touch with it. Whenever we speak about science web videos most people think of edutainment video content on STEM topics, i.e. (Natural) Sciences, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. The Humanities do not seem to belong to this definition, even if the research methods in the broad field of the Humanities are scientific as well: Philosophers, philologists, anthropologists, sociologists, historians, or art theorists also use hypotheses and verification methods for the production of new knowledge, which often relays on complex interdisciplinary approaches. Otherwise, we would not be able to understand the influence of platonic ideas through the ages, the changing societal function of art or the origins of today political and war conflicts, so as to mention a couple of themes. Against this background, it is very comforting to see that some YouTubers are contributing to the dissemination of general and specific knowledge on the classical antiquity, which constitutes the fundament of western civilization. In the light of this moderate but considerable trend, some questions arise. Is the YouTube content, related to Ancient Greece, reliable at all? Which are the most popular topics? And, is there a difference in the way of explaining topics and knowledge of the classical antiquity and of the STEM disciplines? In order to address these questions, we have analyzed 30 popular YouTube videos about Ancient Greece comparing the results with the main characteristics of STEM-related online videos as described in recent research. The interim results indicate that, compared to popular YouTube videos on STEM subjects, antiquity is usually presented as an area for general education rather than as a research field.

The author has not yet submitted a copy of the full paper.

Presentation type: Show, tell and talk
Theme: Science
Area of interest: Investigating science communication practices

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