module_4
The Experience Design
The current system of cultural heritage valorisation is not always successful in activating an ‘engaging’ cognitive process towards visitors, in provoking a cognitive experience. This module will have the task of analysing the causes and removing them. There is still too widespread a belief that, in the museums, it is necessary to convey an interpretation or “to teach a lesson” instead of promoting the heritage, creating empathy in the visitor and providing the tools for the visitor to come to a correct interpretation of the work through cognitive experiences that remain, in the long run, beyond the visit.
Equally widespread is the idea that mere contact with information can transmit culture by osmosis or convection, like heat spreading through a room. The industry focuses on a value chain, starting with digitisation techniques, moving on to process techniques, to obtain usable digital objects, and then jumping straight to domain information, built by experts in the field and used as content. In between, there is a missing link, around which not enough thought and little research has yet been done: ‘The languages of digital images and sounds’.
Language means the articulation of forms, reconstructed according to the possibility of manipulating images, sounds, footage, blending of the one and the other, new and old, integrated and not added together as separate pieces of a system. The many examples of museums and web portals, rich in information that have a totally unsatisfactory cognitive-emotional outcome, are proof that the approach described above does not work. Hence the need for an organic research work on what happens to multimedia production in the age of its digital reproducibility, like the one Benjamin did in his consequent essay on technical reproducibility: photography1, putting under investigation all the new possibilities and opportunities for access, valorisation, cognitive acquisition, sense and meaning related to the artefacts of the past.
We believe that this project can provide the basis for overcoming, in the light of history itself, of design, of tools to narrate culture, the obstacles that are also cultural and not technological. Overcoming the compartmentalisation of knowledge, which is different from specialisation, is a tendency to be impermeable to any discipline other than one’s own, a tendency that prevents one from broadening the forms of one’s narrative to create points of interest that are the gateway to a non-specialist public.
The focus and focus of design and activities must be shifted from technologies to languages that are able to shape emotion through technology.
the only way to preserve beauty is to make memory alive. This does not mean preserving the things that interest us somewhere, nor does it mean entrusting them to a prosthesis external to us (by now we are used to calling memory a USB stick or an external hard disk), it means making sure that it is alive in the present and that in our territories, so rich in beauty, it is part of the identity of those who inhabit them. A work that we find in a museum has belonged to a territory and is now there, in front of us, because of a different historical path, far removed from the one that the work generated. the creative industry could be a case of success provided that it opens up to artists until now excluded from the processes of cultural communication, even at the cost of opening up a conflict with traditional components. In a study dedicated to the evolution of man and his cerebral functions, Lamberto Maffei, director of the Italian National Research Centre’s Institute of Neuroscience, writes: artists produce subjective models, emotional interpretations of the chaotic reality that surrounds them and of everyday life. The reader or observer accepts or rejects the model with his or her own creative act, which leads to understanding. I would capitalise on this vision, which today brings together cognitive scientists, to build a strategic bridge between the insights of our pioneers and the opportunities that the digital world offers us.
Those who deal with the digital or web version of the museum and its works have a duty not to confuse their work with that of marketers. We must not only ask ourselves which strategy will convince the visitor to enter, but ask ourselves with which new cognitive and emotional assets the visitor leaves. The analysis of those who leave is just as important as the motivations of those who enter. They must have an extra wealth of mind and heart, made up of knowledge, motivation and awareness.
Not necessarily only historians or archaeologists will be able to return to their professions with a richness of mind and heart, but also lawyers, teachers, carpenters and students will be able to acquire a wealth of awareness, knowledge, will be motivated to cultivate and increase for themselves the source of new emotions and will be motivated to support those whose task it is to preserve and enhance this heritage through the planning of activities and the social use of culture.
The digital museum and its declinations, which we have just seen, will be successful if they know how to apply the complete value chain up to the impact with the end user. Scholars will be the information providers;
filmmakers and scriptwriters will be the storytellers; technology will allow new products and services for culture to emerge. An artist’s intuition, scientific knowledge, technological possibilities need to be integrated into a new methodology: cultural design.
One mistake we often make is to confuse language with technology. Even at a basic level, we are used to calling ‘interactive’, a system in which we can choose which parts to see or read by means of a gesture (touch). This limits the idea of interaction. What we call by this name is normally a multiple- choice system, not an interactivity.
When Odysseus arrives in Ithaca insulted because of his beggar-like appearance, we immediately feel a sense of revulsion at the arrogance of those predators, that sense of revulsion is the effect of interactivity.
In La Traviata, when Alfredo enters the ballroom and accuses Violetta of being a bad woman, only the audience knows the true story and the unconditional love that binds the woman to her partner, it hurts to see the insult and respectability destroy a couple and it tugs at the heartstrings (also helped by Giuseppe Verdi’s music) This is an interaction, an involvement of one’s emotionality in the story we are living.
Interaction does not concern the work of engineers, but that of artists Module X
Abstract
For a cultural asset to have social value, to produce cohesion and identity, to go beyond the niche of experts, it needs to be used to produce cognitive experiences whose mechanisms we now know, in part, through cognitive science. The essential point in arriving at a solution is to abandon the idea that a civilisation that has produced an artistic expression of itself could have done so for one simple reason. Thus, to abandon the idea that a single point of view can be exhaustive, that history is only history, that archaeology is
only archaeology, that biology is only biology. Artists must be included in the process that until now has only been scientific or technological.
Lamberto Maffei, director of the Italian National Research Centre’s Institute of Neuroscience, writes: artists produce subjective models, emotional interpretations of the chaotic reality that surrounds them and of everyday life. The reader or observer accepts or rejects the model with his or her own creative act, which leads to understanding. I would capitalise on this vision, which today brings together cognitive scientists, to build a strategic bridge between the insights of our pioneers and the opportunities that the digital world offers us.
Key points for discussion and reflection throughout the course
- Building a map of past mistakes and solutions proposed by great intellectuals who have addressed the issue
- Giving social cohesion as value to the new museum
- Analysing where to place attention in the construction of a narrative that
transfers experience - From the work to the civilisation that generated it to us visitors: bridging a
space-time gap - The power of digital: a common environment, a new language
- Creative industries as a market opportunity: use and re-use
Duration
- 20 hours (4+4+4+4+4): Unit 1 = 4 hours, Unit 2 = 4 hours, Unit 3 = 4 hours, Unit 4 = 4 hours, Unit 5 = 4 hours
learning outcomes
By the end of the module, learners will be able to:
- To have a solid basis of awareness of the strategic importance of the theme: ‘cognitive emotion’ is a dramaturgical end or a figure of speech used so that nothing changes.
- Understanding the dynamics of mistakes made in the past
- Learning from our own history when, who, how, and why created the
techniques of dramaturgy. - Learning how to apply the techniques to the new way of conceiving the museum and cultural heritage in general.
- Create the plot of a tale focused on knowledge
- Exporting this knowledge to the digital environment
Structure
- Introduction
- Abstract
- Duration
- Learning Outcomes
- Resources
Unit 1: Culture is not a commodity
Unit 2: Describing, narrating, acting
Unit 3: Integration with technology, the digital world the meaning, habits, the younger generation
Unit 4: To create experience
Unit 5: From emotion to experience, the cognitive sciences
Resources
units
unit_1: Culture is not a commodity
An introduction on the difference between marketing a product and the market of culture with a focus on the impossibility of building focus groups on “what the audience wants”. The audience may only want what they know, but our ultimate goal is to build a cognitive experience, this can never come from a cognitive survey, only from an artist’s proposal.
The first unit will serve to raise awareness of the need to know how to build a team of different, useful, right figures
- Identify the language of art as a carrier for planned emotions Be aware of the chain reaction that occurs when a story
- Strikes an emotional chord
- Involves
- Generates knowledge
- Increases self-reward due to consciousness
- Increases emotionality
Self-Assessment Exercise 1: True / False
unit_2: Describing, narrating, acting
Describing narrating, acting, three ways of narrating with different characteristics and different emotional involvement. We will show that acting was the mode used by Greek theatre to build social cohesion around poleis values.
Telling makes the spectator distant, paradoxically it makes him reflect more, pushes him to analysis, and this is why storytelling is the narrative structure most often used in lessons or conferences dedicated to an informed and
attentive audience, acting the story, on the contrary, involves the audience, creates an imaginary, either of words (novel) or of images. There are great directors who are able to construct a story with very few words and a great wisdom of gestures, actions and shots. We will act through examples known to all:
- Giuseppe Verdi’s La Traviata
- Pretty Women
- The Godfather
- Gangester story
- Pocaontas
- The Passenger by Michelangelo Antonioni, starring Jack Nicholson
Dramatic paths to a cathartic experience. Just as in the time of Athens the subjects were extracted from mythological stories largely known to the general public, so the godfather or gangster story uses popular chronicle or prejudice to nurture an expression and meaning, perhaps opposed to the prejudice itself, but able to endure beyond the viewing of the film.
unit_3: Integration with technology, the digital world the meaning, habits, the younger generation
The world of Frederick II
In the show built for the narrative museum of Lagopesole Castle
The figure of Frederick II is highlighted, in its historical and social characteristics, through a bird-trainer who is actually a spy for the pope. Gotfred, that is the name of the spy, appeals to the public’s pity because he is identified as a being who is not perfect, but in good faith, serves the pope for an allegedly superior purpose. Pity and fear come when he glimpses a possibility that could cost him his life. The public knows from the first moment that his spying has been discovered, but not him.
This mechanism activates the emotionality of the spectator, pity comes when one is afraid of something that happens to others than oneself.
- Fear
- Pity
- Catharsis
unit_4: To create experience
- Are there narrative criteria that, better than others, tune into the public’s soul?
- Can they help in creating cognitive experiences for museum visitors?
- How can these structures be transferred from the world of theatre to the world of cultural heritage?
- Identification and empathy
Identification is what allows the audience to feel the same emotions as the character
Empathy is the anxiety that involves the spectator seeing the character going towards danger.
unit_5: Recap: Assets in Museums and Collections operation/management
Narrative technique and emotional experience are closely related, the story we tell is not the end of our work, it is only the means to the end: catharsis. So the plot structure is only the means, the pleasure of the spectator our strategy of action.
Those who invented theatre and theorised how to transfer experiences to the audience called it Oikéia edonè the emotional experience encompassing a path through pity, fear, catharsis: the purification. The audience, freed from the tension of suspense will emotionally experience a sense of pleasure. The spectator will also be gratified by his ability to anticipate the solution.
Chi ha inventato il teatro e teorizzato come trasferire esperienze nel pubblico la chiamava Oikéia edonè
Tecnica narrativa ed esperienza emotiva sono in stretta relazione tra loro, la storia che raccontiamo non è il fine del nostro lavoro, è solo il mezzo per ottenere lo scopo: la catarsi. Dunque la struttura della trama è solo il mezzo, il piacere dello spettatore la nostra strategia di azione
Oikéia edonè l’esperienza emotiva comprendendo un percorso attraverso la pietà, la paura, la catarsi, ossia la purificazione, il pubblico, liberato dalla tensione della suspance proverà emotivamente un senso di piacere. Lo spattatore sarà anche gratificato dalla sua capacità di anticipare la soluzione.
Describing narrating, acting, three ways of narrating with different characteristics and different emotional involvement. We will show that acting was the mode used by Greek theatre to build social cohesion around poleis values.
Telling makes the spectator distant, paradoxically it makes him reflect more, pushes him to analysis, and this is why storytelling is the narrative structure most often used in lessons or conferences dedicated to an informed and attentive audience, acting the story, on the contrary, involves the audience, creates an imaginary, either of words (novel) or of images. There are great directors who are able to construct a story with very few words and a great wisdom of gestures, actions and shots. We will act through examples known to all:
- Giuseppe Verdi’s La Traviata
- Pretty Women
- The Godfather
- Gangester story
- Pocaontas
- The Passenger by Michelangelo Antonioni, starring Jack Nicholson