Shifting Gears
Why, hello! Nice to see you today! Yes, I know I’ve been gone for awhile, but I hope that you will forgive me, I’ve been quite busy, you see.
I just finished up the last term of my masters degree courses. As of yesterday, I am offically working full time on my thesis. The more I think about it, the more I get excited. And nervous.
I figured that a good idea would be to dust off this blog and shift gears a bit. I hope you don’t mind, but I’m going to be using this space to talk about my Thesis project, research and goals. Hopefully it will be a good place to air some ideas, get some feedback and talk about things that interest and inform me.
So first things first: My thesis.
I’ll give you a brief overview - this is actually a draft of my final abstract:
The Writing on the Wall: The Impact of Information Media in Museum Space
In Writing on the Wall, I focus on the impact that information media has on the experience of, and movement through, a museum space. How can information media such as didactic panels and audio guides change the way visitors experience museum exhibits? How does the type of information and the ways in which it is presented change the way that a piece of art is experienced and remembered? This thesis approaches these issues through institutional discourse analysis, quantitative participant observation and qualitative interview approaches. These methods combine to explain the uses and impacts of these information media.
I will soon be starting a my research regarding how information media (I’ll be focusing mostly on didactic panels and audio guides) change the experience of and movement through space. I decided to focus on this after a visit to the Guggenheim in New York City - the museum was giving free audio guides with tickets and as I moved through the space, small pockets of visitors were concentrated around paintings that had been identified for information in audio form. They moved as if almost on a preordained path. Was this the intention of the museum? Was this the intention of the viewer?
I am not planning to go into much more detail at the moment - pieces are still falling into place. But if you’re interested, keep an eye on this space for speculations, observations and questions. I have a lot of questions.
-Heather
