Medienanthropologie im Museum: eine Ausstellung als Forschungslabor

Abstract

As a result of a practice-oriented research project, the Museum of Communication in Berne opened a new exhibition space entitled «Living Room of the Future» in Spring 2012. It is designed to complement the existing permanent exhibition «As Time Goes Byte» on the history of computing and digital culture. The new exhibition module not only addresses future computing technologies and their use but also forward-looking technologies. Within the framework of the research project, the authors conducted a user-centred evaluation of a prototype of the exhibition module, which was also conceived as a laboratory for practice-based media-anthropological studies. Specific test groups were observed during their visits to the exhibition and immediately afterwards interviewed about their experiences. The results of the evaluation were then converted into the final realisation of the exhibition. These findings represent valuable ethnographic evidence on the experiences of human beings with familiar and unfamiliar media at a time of increasing integration of everyday life with communication and information technologies.