Nana Twumasi: Digitization a Design in the Museum World of Art

 

Digitization is the process of converting information to computer readable format. The human life in the 21^st century has impact on the use of technology and how these have shaped our lives impressively in the museum world of arts. Digital transformation in computers and computing and other advancement in social, political and cultural environment cannot be underestimated in museum experience.

Bryan Shelmon argued that, “digitization is when a museum takes it collections and renders them to post online. The museums also try to digitize actual sculpture with 3-D renderings to capture the detail of every angle of the art piece.” (Shelmon, 2018). 

However, museum play crucial roles in preserving the culture of a people. Through documentation and artifact preservation, culture is recorded and remembered for the future including its history and social evolution. This is because people live together in groups and societies, associated with bodies that can be expressed through museum digitization.

 

According to Emmanuel Arinze in his book the role of museums in society, the museum is an institution that tells the story of man, the world and how humanity has survived in its environment over the years. It houses things created by nature, man and the modern society that houses the cultural soul of a nation. (Arinze,1999). A place that holds heritage value where information is passed on to one generation to another in the representation of an object, image sound or signal to describe information in the symbolic environment.  

 Lord G. Dexter, states that, “the purpose of museum exhibition is to transform some aspect of the visitors’ interests, attitudes or values effectively, due to the visitors’ discovery or some level of communication in meanings to the objects displayed or where a discovery that is stimulated and sustained by the visitor’s confidence is perceived in the authenticity of those objects.” (Dexter, 2001).  Museums through the digital age based on virtualization has brought so much freedom as a way to attract, educate and entertain the youth.  This as a way helps provide additional information, insight, and freedom to people in the world of museum art. It has also helped museums reach wider audiences and increase the accessibility of their collections.

Moreover, digitization of a design in the museum world of art is based on the understanding in which the visitor’s museums exhibitions are created online without the effort of the visitors going there in person. Through the digital process collections are posted online depending on the type of medium used as communication channel. Thus, its helps with self-guided tours and the possibility to select exhibits within the environment they live in.

The digital museum becomes an effective medium of extending the life of most cultures and their accompanying knowledge where more online traffic is dedicated to collections and the stories they share.

Digital means enable the co-production of exhibitions, oral histories, and other forms of display and archives based on personal remembrance, recollection, and interactivity (Adair et al. 2011).

To conclude, museums embracing the digital technology is an important tool to innovate in all areas of the museum institution. This aspect of work and social change comes with an advocacy of thinking around engagement and participatory experiences.

 

References

Arinze, Emmanuel N. “The Role of the Museum in Society,” 1999, 4.

Gail Dexter Lord. “The Manual of Museums Exhibition,” Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 2001.

Bryan Shelmon. “Digitizing the museum: A New kind of Interaction,” 2018.

Adair, Bill, Benjamin Filene, and Laura Koloski (editors) 2011 Letting Go? Sharing Historical Authority in a User-Generated World. Left Coast, Philadelphia. [Google Scholar]