I recently had the pleasure of participating as a speaker in an important “behind closed doors” meeting which took place on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the birth of MUSE – Science Museum of Trento.
The museum, for those who don’t know it, is considered one of the jewels of our Italian museum heritage. It was designed by Renzo Piano and therefore has a strong “personality” as a building, both from the outside and the inside.
Furthermore, there is a strong experiential component: there are 270 specimens of taxidermied animals and original skeletons, peaks, floods and avalanches, a small tropical forest housed in a greenhouse, continuous interactions to create a greater relationship between visitors (often very young) and the contents of the museum itself.
In addition to many digital tools, there are many tactile ones that effectively create multi-sensory experiences within the museum.
In this extra-ordinary place, on the occasion of the 10th year, the director Michele Lanzinger and Alberta Giovannini, deputy director of the human resources organization office and various management services, wanted to create a day of vision and sharing for the people who work at this structure, to investigate the themes of emerging technologies, to understand what the evolutions of the museum as a place and as a concept could be in a world that is becoming increasingly digital, almost rarefied.
“We are fond of and believe in visiting the museum as a real, physically practiced experience” – explains the director of MUSE Michele Lanzinger. “If we ask ourselves what the visitor wants, what constitutes a reason for satisfaction that generates the desire to see other museum structures or to return and revisit the same one, we will discover that the choice to visit a museum is strongly linked to an expectation of personal well-being, of satisfaction generated by “knowing more”, of social relationships, of physical exploration. Given these premises, we fully agree in considering the digital experience as now implicit in all those dimensions that concern relationality, sociality, information, personal well-being. And in recognizing that even in the digital world, museums can develop and produce relevant experiences for the pursuit of their mission”.
Director Lanzinger concludes: “Museums not only cannot escape the digital world, but must become significant agents in it and seek their own different and renewed dimension of meaning. To maintain and promote their relevance in contemporary society, they must be able to grasp all the opportunities and problems, challenges and cautions that accompany the great opportunities of AI and generative AI and the expectations on the metaverse, which accompany the more classic informational and social dimension.
It was thus an enormous pleasure to bring my experience in immersive worlds and on the topic of artificial intelligence to do some reasoning together with the “TEAM MUSE” on what the future of a museum could be not only as a place but as an environment (and therefore not necessarily “resident”) and how new technologies will change experiences; of both the visitor and the museum operators.
I think that successful museums at the moment, in addition to being an exhibition of reality, are in fact an effective simulation of the context to which they refer and that thanks to digital technology they have created continuous interactions such as to make them become Experience Factories, Digital Hubs where you can create a relationship, a story, a valuable experience.
All this is strongly linked to the upcoming digital technologies, whatever we call them: extended reality or Metaverse.
My personal bet is that in a few years I will meet “Charlie” in the Metaverse (today he is waiting for you on floor -1) and then the magic of the Museum will be even more fantastic than any themed film.
PS: it has been very nice to talk in this context with many young people and, for my ego, to find my books on display in the MUSE shop. 🙏
Lorenzo Montagna
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