CHArt Eighteenth Annual Conference

Emilie Gordenker, Gallery Systems, London, UK
Digital Collaboration: Building a Kiosk for Digital Responses

Digital Responses, an exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum (May 2002 - March 2003), resulted in an unusually productive collaboration between a museum, an artist/curator, a software provider and a design company. The conception and implementation of a web-based kiosk for the exhibition followed curatorial objectives, but also gave shape and direction to the show and to the artists' projects. This paper provides a brief background to the exhibition; explains the symbiotic relationship between museum, curator and designers; and shows the final result of the collaboration.

Digital Responses presents a series of new works, each created in response to objects and spaces in the V&A, by artists who use digital media in their creative process. Gallery Systems, a company providing software and related services to museums, created the exhibition kiosk (and micro-website) with designs by Keepthinking.

Some ideas initially suggested by Gallery Systems/Keepthinking as organising principles for the kiosk - such as the themes uniting the work and an "artpath", a route through the museum, devised by the artists to flag works or ideas relevant to their works - were embraced by the artists and the curator, and ultimately had a fundamental impact on the content and display of the physical exhibition.

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