Art History, Curation and Practice After Media
CHArt Twenty-Second Annual Conference
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FAST FORWARD: Art History, Curation and Practice After Media |
User Requirements for a 'Virtual Arts Centre of the Future'
Katrien Berte and Peter Mechant, Department of Communication Sciences, Ghent University, Belgium
Today, most museums, arts centres and festivals in Flanders are represented online. A recent study shows however, that in general their presence is far from interactive and that they use only a fraction of the wide range of possibilities offered by current information technology in terms of community building, interactivity, hypertextuality and multimedia.
In the IBBT research project ‘Virtual Arts Centre of the Future’ (VACF) we use a number of web2.0 applications to create an online cultural environment that is elaborate, interactive and targets the specific interests of its visitors. Are the Flemish art lovers interested in this new concept or do the current sites realise their needs?
In February 2006, an online survey about ‘culture, the arts and the Internet’ was conducted among visitors to some of Flanders most-visited websites targeting the Flemish Internet user with an interest in culture. This survey resulted in a dataset of 2,635 respondents. They were asked about their cultural behaviour and experiences in contributing to online communities and consuming culture and arts on the Internet. They were probed for their needs and expectations about arts and culture online. A model to determine the adoption rate for the ‘Virtual Arts Centre of the Future’ was implemented. Preliminary results show that most respondents would like to see trailer-like video fragments and listen to audio fragments before going to a cultural event. They are interested in receiving personalised information based on their interest and their past behaviour. The majority of respondents are less interested in sharing their experiences with others and in expressing themselves by making or sharing their own digital art.