BeauxArts Magazine (In French) Inès Boittiaux, Florelle Guillaume 25 November 2020
Do you miss museums? Interactive timeline, virtual reality experience, 360° tour… Many institutions around the world have set up virtual tour systems that allow you to explore their collections without moving an iota. From Figueras to Amsterdam via Roubaix, here is our top 15 most successful experiences!
A virtual journey through time (over two million years) and across the five continents is what the “museum of the world”, initiated by the British Museum and the Google Cultural Institute, promises. The site, conceived as a long chronological frieze, offers a fascinating plunge into the history of humanity and the collections of the British institution (which contains some seven million objects!). On the frieze, each point, whose colour varies according to geographical location, refers to a detailed record of the work. The little extra? While it is easy to get lost in this galaxy of dots, it is possible to highlight, on the frieze, only one continent or one theme (among art and design, life and death, power and identity, religion and belief, trade and conflict). There is currently no French version of the site. To fully appreciate the experience, mastering the language of Shakespeare is essential!
AR-Lumen is the collaboration between designer Tom Hebrard and artist Paul Vivien. Accustomed to new technologies and monumental projections-mapping, they want to take the opposite side of a “race for innovation” that is hitting the art and design sectors. Forgetting software, energy-consuming video projectors and nights spent in front of their (soon to be obsolete) 2018 computers, they are concentrating on low-tech, recovery and diversion.
They are hacking into old school overhead projectors (those with layers), transforming their optics to increase their power tenfold, while reducing their energy consumption thanks to an optimised LED. Using a solar-powered car battery, the system is mobile and energy self-sufficient. Paul & Tom use a variety of DIY techniques to create mechanics and layers on which they paint, engrave and sculpt visuals to be projected onto the facades of castles or buildings, while playing with their relief. In this way, they apply the methods of digital video-mapping, but in the form of analogue projection.
The story tells the visions of the witch AR-Lumen: an uncertain future for humanity, where resources are exhausted, but where a people has managed to find the solution to its salvation, through degrowth, recycling and exchange. We see methods for transforming waste, inventions and machines, some of which are drawn by the children and adults who took part in a workshop the afternoon before the show. This time of convivial exchange is important, creating a link between the show and the audience, showing that this technology is much more accessible and sustainable than the digital whole.
The project is in development, the last stage of creation at the eco-responsible festival La P’art Belle, in Sarzeau on 10.08.2019 and at the Aurillac festival on 25.08.2019.
FREE THE MUSEUM is an initiative to activate the “museum experience” in the world around us, transforming everyday places into sites of engagement, reflection, healing, activism, and informal learning. It is a CALL TO ACTION aimed at equipping museum practitioners with the resources needed to apply their skills, knowledge and creativity to different facets of public space.
What is Free the Museum?
2020 is a year of transitions – for museums, museum professionals, and the people we serve. There is no turning back, and no one clear path forward. Now is the perfect time to take a wide angle view of the future: to experiment, iterate, and reevaluate.
Free the Museum is a movement to embrace these turbulent times by activating the “museum experience” in the world around us.
Free the Museum is a call to action for museum practitioners to transform everyday places into sites of learning, joy, reflection, and healing.
Free the Museum is a way to discover new paths forward, imagining a museum model that is more inclusive and equitable, more responsive and relevant to the community in which it sits.
Free the Museum is your chance to “hack the world”, repurposing everyday places as platforms for meaning and expression, highlighting the stories they have to tell.
Delivery drones, intelligent sensors, Industry 4.0 – for several decades now, robotics has gradually taken hold in our lives and has turned our daily lives upside down. In this process, design plays a special role, as it is designers who design the interfaces between humans and machines.
The exhibition Hello, Robot. Design between human and machine presents an unprecedented insight into the recent boom in robotics. It includes more than 200 objects from the fields of design and art – robots used in the home, care and industry, video games, multimedia installations as well as examples from film and literature. Showing the multiplicity of forms that robotics takes today, the exhibition also opens up the debate on the ethical, social and political issues raised by the increasing use of these technological innovations.
Hello, Robot addresses the theme in four chapters: “Science and fiction”, “Programmed for work”, “Friend and helper” and “A total fusion”. It is as much about the fantasy of creating artificial creatures as it is about robots in popular culture. In the world of work, in which robots are particularly present, visitors will encounter both classic industrial robots and artistic installations that question the limits between work that can be automated and the – especially creative – tasks of humans. Similarly, in everyday life, the use of robots is becoming increasingly intimate – between digital friends and cybersex. The installation of sensors and the development of intelligent cities also point to a future fusion with machines.
The science and history museums of the Palais de Rumine are planning a new joint and interdisciplinary exhibition. How do you define what is “exotic”, in Switzerland or elsewhere? This changing notion still conditions our way of looking at the world today.
Exotic? is the result of a research project led by Professor Noémie Etienne (University of Bern). In line with the work that critically addresses Swiss history, the exhibition will examine the relationship between Switzerland and foreign countries during the Enlightenment, but will also provide a link to the 21st century and an understanding of the world views or clichés that arise from them.
In view of the subject matter, which is sometimes sensitive, numerous mediation activities, as well as artistic installations or partnerships with other cultural institutions will accompany Exotic? which is intended to be a space for reflection on Switzerland’s place in history and in the world.
This project aims to highlight the richness of Hermès’ creative processes surrounding the world of silk. The spectator is invited to discover the different facets of this product through several playful experiences in store, which include the main steps in the creation of the Hermès squares, which offer a a surprising encounter with the world of silk. This installation offers the customer a new perspective on the traditional square Hermès which actually hides a large number of surprises, that the customer is invited to discover through several interactive steps.
Appointed last year as head of the Grand Palais to bring a fresh wind of transversality to the building, Chris Dercon, the world-renowned museum manager, is not letting the pandemic demobilise him. On the strength of his experiences at the PS1, the Haus der Kunst and the Tate Modern, he is thinking about the museum of the “after”. And he is determined to triumph over French bureaucratic red tape.
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“The art of decompartmentalization”.
A former art critic and gallery owner, Dercon was artistic director at Moma PS1, New York’s avant-garde exhibition space, then at the Centre for Contemporary Art in Rotterdam, the Haus der Kunst in Munich and finally at the Tate Modern in London. He has made Europe his life project. In Parisian circles, his opinions are sometimes greeted like an oracle. Dercon knew few failures, but the one he experienced in Berlin was violently painful: his mission as director of the Volksbühne ended under booing, after three years of a long and tiring dialogue with the theatre’s very anti-capitalist teams and the social-democratic town hall.
Is there a Dercon style?” It’s someone who is not afraid to question the model”, says Sam Stourdze. In the academic world of art, he obviously enjoys playing the dog in a game of bowling. His working method is based on two pillars: an avant-garde vision and the mixing of the arts. When you think you’ve found a rare pearl,” explains Simon Baker, “you realise that he already knows this artist! ». His unusual career has allowed him to meet artists from all walks of life. Connected with fashion, photography and dance, he is constantly making connections. “He has the art of decompartmentalization and decentring,” adds Sam Stourdze. At the risk of exasperating the “cultural” when he mixes pop culture and elite arts.
From strange artworks to severed heads, it’s safe to say that the word “museum” is a an umbrella term that can be interpreted in many unique and unorthodox ways.
Most people have an image that comes to mind when they hear the word “museum”, and chances are it’s an image of quiet halls, neatly hung artworks, and artefacts carefully displayed in glass cases.
And while many museums follow this basic blueprint, there are certainly those that choose a different path. In reality, the title of “museum” can refer to a whole host of different spaces and experiences.
With thousands of museums across the globe, each with their own subject matter, items and atmosphere, developing an overarching definition for cultural institutions is almost impossible. To celebrate the diversity of the museum space, we’re going to take a closer look at some of the weirdest and most wonderful museums from around the world.
The Plastinarium – Guben, Germany
Sometimes museums aim to teach us more about the world around us, and sometimes they ask us to look inwards in order to learn something about ourselves. In the case of the Plastinarium, the museum gets us to do this in quite a graphic way.
After nearly four decades of studying medicine and dissection, Gunther von Hagens perfected the controversial process of plastination, in which polymers are used to preserve human tissue. Visitors to the Plastinarium can see the results of this process, receiving a graphic lesson in anatomy by viewing humans and animals in creative poses.
When you think of the latest innovations that are allowing museums around the world to reach new audiences, perhaps snail jokes aren’t top of your list. But a museum in Pittsburgh has proved that a simple idea well executed can win over a new generation of fans.
Carnegie Museum of Natural History has attracted millions views of films of Tim Pearce, a curator at the museum telling snail jokes on the video-sharing social networking website TikTok.
The app is popular with 13-21 year old’s, with over 1 billion people downloading it. That makes it bigger than Instagram.
The content is mainly around dancing, singing and lip synching to music, movies or sound bites. Users create short looped videos, then have the option of adding music and Snapchat style stickers or filters. While hashtags make the content searchable.
The fun content makes it appeal to teenagers. And it would seem that teenagers like snails.
Carnegie Museum of Natural History have posted 12 films on TikTok, with the most viewed attracting over 1.5 million views. That’s more people than visited all four institutions in the Carnegie Museums Of Pittsburgh group last year.
