CHArt CHArt Computers and the History of Art - 1997 Conference Paper Abstract
Technologies such as VRML (Virtual Reality Modelling Language) enable us to create three-dimensional galleries on the World Wide Web. What implications does this have for museums trying to deliver a meaningful digital museum experience?
Many organisations and individuals have chosen to develop a digital presence on the World Wide Web in the form of what has been termed "Virtual Museums" or "Virtual Galleries". These galleries represent everything from large 'actual' institutions, through to solitary artists with no 'actual' gallery space of their own.
For the most part these virtual museums are constructed using 2D digital images for the museum objects combined with hypertext. Virtual galleries/museums are visually therefore, 2D representations of museum space. Their third dimension is created in cyberspace or what one might call the "museum experience". This experience is recreated each time the visitor to the virtual gallery or museum follows a different path around the hypertext. It is possible to argue that with virtual museums we have found a meaningful paradigm for an 'actual' museum, wherein one might also take a different path around museum objects each time one visits.
However, putting aside those galleries which exist only in cyberspace, one can question this paradigm. For an 'actual' museum part of the experience is surely the explicit space within which one views the museum objects. Cyberspace by contrast is only implicit space. VRML, subject to its limitations, presents us with a way of making explicit 'actual' museum space on the WWW. But do we wish to take this path? Who has not felt their heart sink when reading a film review that begins 'Made for TV'? Can a 3D museum, 'made for the WWW', be a satisfying experience?
Rachael Edgar has a PG Dip in the History of Art and Design specialising in Early 20th Century Art and Interactive Systems in the History of Art and Design. She is currently working at Teesside University as a researcher on a JISC/JTAP funded project, the Networked Virtual Reality Resource Centres for Art and Design. This aims to assist Art and Design colleges to come to grips with Internet technologies such as Java and VRML.