The Multisensory Museum

Author: Nina Levent
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 075912356X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 411

Book Description
Recent research in the cognitive sciences gives us a new perspective on the cognitive and sensory landscape. In The Multisensory Museum: Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives on Touch, Sound, Smell, Memory, and Space,museum expert Nina Levent and Alvaro Pascual-Leone, professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School bring together scholars and museum practitioners from around the world to highlight new trends and untapped opportunities for using such modalities as scent, sound, and touch in museums to offer more immersive experiences and diverse sensory engagement for visually- and otherwise-impaired patrons. Visitor studies describe how different personal and group identities color our cultural consumption and might serve as a compass on museum journeys. Psychologists and educators look at the creation of memories through different types of sensory engagement with objects, and how these memories in turn affect our next cultural experience. An anthropological perspective on the history of our multisensory engagement with ritual and art objects, especially in cultures that did not privilege sight over other senses, allows us a glimpse of what museums might become in the future. Education researchers discover museums as unique educational playgrounds that allow for a variety of learning styles, active and passive exploration, and participatory learning. Designers and architects suggest a framework for thinking about design solutions for a museum environment that invites an intuitive, multisensory and flexible exploration, as well as minimizes physical hurdles. While attention has been paid to accessibility for the physically-impaired since passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, making buildings accessible is only the first small step in elevating museums to be centers of learning and culture for all members of their communities. This landmark book will help all museums go much further.

The Senses

Author: Ellen Lupton
Publisher: Chronicle Books
ISBN: 1616897740
Category : Design
Languages : en
Pages : 232

Book Description
A powerful reminder to anyone who thinks design is primarily a visual pursuit, The Senses accompanies a major exhibition at the Cooper-Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum that explores how space, materials, sound, and light affect the mind and body. Learn how contemporary designers, including Petra Blaisse, Bruce Mau, Malin+Goetz and many others, engage sensory experience. Multisensory design can solve problems and enhance life for everyone, including those with sensory disabilities. Featuring thematic essays on topics ranging from design for the table to tactile graphics, tactile sound, and visualizing the senses, this book is a call to action for multisensory design practice. The Senses: Design Beyond Vision is mandatory reading for students and professionals working in diverse fields, including products, interiors, graphics, interaction, sound, animation, and data visualization, or anyone seeking the widest possible understanding of design. The book, designed by David Genco with Ellen Lupton, is edited by Lupton and curator Andrea Lipps. Includes essays by Lupton, Lipps, Christopher Brosius, Hansel Bauman, Karen Kraskow, Binglei Yan, and Simon Kinnear.

The Multi-Sensory Image from Antiquity to the Renaissance

Author: Heather Hunter-Crawley
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1315519836
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 210

Book Description
This volume responds to calls in visual and material cultural studies to move beyond the visual and to explore the multi-sensory impact of the image, across a wide range of cultural and historical contexts. What does it mean to practise art history after the material and sensory turns? What is an image, if not a purely visual phenomenon, and how does it prompt non-visual sensory experiences? The multi-sensoriality of the image was a less challenging concept before the ocularcentric modern age, and so this volume brings together a global array of scholars from multiple disciplines to ask these questions of imagery in premodern or non-western contexts, ranging from Minoan palace frescoes, to Roman statues, early church sermons, tombs of Byzantine saints, museum displays of Islamic artefacts of scent, medieval depictions of the voice, and Stuart court masques. Each chapter presents a means of appreciating images beyond the visual, demonstrating the new information and understanding that consequently can be gleaned from their material. As a collection, these chapters offer the student and scholar of art history and visual culture an array of exciting new approaches that can be applied to appreciate the multi-sensoriality of images in any context, as well as prompts for reflection on future directions in the study of imagery. The Multi-Sensory Image thus illustrates that it is not only possible to explore the non-visual impact of images, but imperative.

The Routledge Handbook of Sensory Archaeology

Author: Robin Skeates
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317197461
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 564

Book Description
Edited by two pioneers in the field of sensory archaeology, this Handbook comprises a key point of reference for the ever-expanding field of sensory archaeology: one that surpasses previous books in this field, both in scope and critical intent. This Handbook provides an extensive set of specially commissioned chapters, each of which summarizes and critically reflects on progress made in this dynamic field during the early years of the twenty-first century. The authors identify and discuss the key current concepts and debates of sensory archaeology, providing overviews and commentaries on its methods and its place in interdisciplinary sensual culture studies. Through a set of thematic studies, they explore diverse sensorial practices, contexts and materials, and offer a selection of archaeological case-studies from different parts of the world. In the light of this, the research methods now being brought into the service of sensory archaeology are re-examined. Of interest to scholars, students and others with an interest in archaeology around the world, this book will be invaluable to archaeologists and is also of relevance to scholars working in disciplines contributing to sensory studies: aesthetics, anthropology, architecture, art history, communication studies, history (including history of science), geography, literary and cultural studies, material culture studies, museology, philosophy, psychology, and sociology.

Sneakers Unboxed

Author: Alex Powis
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781872005539
Category : Sneakers
Languages : en
Pages : 196

Book Description
This is the first book to gather leading designers, creators and industry insiders to reflect on sneaker design and its ground-breaking impact on popular culture. Contributors provide insights into the evolution of sneakers from sport-wear to style icons, the processes and people involved in sneaker design and its global future.Through conversations with the people directly involved in the creation of sneakers, it speaks to the the next generation of sneaker designers and wearers by asking: who are the people involved in the design of a sneaker? How do their roles and approaches differ? How does their individual work contribute to the collective effort of making a sneaker? What will the future of sneaker design be?Richly illustrated, it includes iconic sneakers, drawings and sketches, prototypes as well as glimpses in the manufacturing process. Across three chapters - Style and Culture, People and Processes, The Future - the approaches and experience of industry leaders unfold the past, present, and future of sneakers as style icons and cultural facilitators. Contributors turn to the next generation of designers with an open challenge to move the industry towards a more positive direction for both the people and the planet.

The Power of Touch

Author: Elizabeth Pye
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 131541743X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 271

Book Description
Despite the fact that we have a range of senses with which to perceive the world around us, museums and other cultural institutions have traditionally used sight as the main way to convey information. In everyday life, though, we use touch constantly in conjunction with sight. Why, then, does it play so small a role in the study and enjoyment of museum objects? Contributors to this volume explore how the sense of touch can be utilized in cultural institutions to facilitate understanding and learning.

Making Senses of the Past

Author: Jo Day
Publisher: SIU Press
ISBN: 0809332876
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 445

Book Description
Since the nineteenth century, museums have kept their artifacts in glass cases to better preserve them, and drawings and photographs have become standard ways of presenting the past. These practices have led to an archaeology dominated by visual description, even though human interaction with the surrounding world involves the whole body and all of its senses. In the past few years, sensory archaeology has become more prominent, and Making Senses of the Past is one of the first collected volumes on this subject. This book presents cutting-edge research on new theoretical issues. The essays presented here take readers on a multisensory journey around the world and across time. In ancient Peru, a site provides sensory surprises as voices resound beneath the ground and hidden carvings slowly reveal their secrets. In Canada and New Zealand, the flicker of reflected light from a lake dances on the faces of painted rocks and may have influenced when and why the pigment was applied. In Mesopotamia, vessels for foodstuffs build a picture of a past cuisine that encompasses taste and social activity in the building of communities. While perfume and flowers are examined in various cultures, in the chamber tombs of ancient Roman Palestine, we are reminded that not all smells are pleasant. Making Senses of the Past explores alternative ways to perceive past societies and offers a new way of wiring archaeology that incorporates the senses.

Identity and the Museum Visitor Experience

Author: John H Falk
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1315427044
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 302

Book Description
Drawing upon a career in studying museum visitors, renowned researcher John Falk attempts to create a predictive model of visitor experience, one that can help museum professionals better meet those visitors’ needs.

Multi-Sensory Interaction for Blind and Visually Impaired People

Author: Jun Dong Cho
Publisher: Mdpi AG
ISBN: 9783036530581
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 300

Book Description
This book conveyed the visual elements of artwork to the visually impaired through various sensory elements to open a new perspective for appreciating visual artwork. In addition, the technique of expressing a color code by integrating patterns, temperatures, scents, music, and vibrations was explored, and future research topics were presented. A holistic experience using multi-sensory interaction acquired by people with visual impairment was provided to convey the meaning and contents of the work through rich multi-sensory appreciation. A method that allows people with visual impairments to engage in artwork using a variety of senses, including touch, temperature, tactile pattern, and sound, helps them to appreciate artwork at a deeper level than can be achieved with hearing or touch alone. The development of such art appreciation aids for the visually impaired will ultimately improve their cultural enjoyment and strengthen their access to culture and the arts. The development of this new concept aids ultimately expands opportunities for the non-visually impaired as well as the visually impaired to enjoy works of art and breaks down the boundaries between the disabled and the non-disabled in the field of culture and arts through continuous efforts to enhance accessibility. In addition, the developed multi-sensory expression and delivery tool can be used as an educational tool to increase product and artwork accessibility and usability through multi-modal interaction. Training the multi-sensory experiences introduced in this book may lead to more vivid visual imageries or seeing with the mind's eye.

Touch in Museums

Author: Helen Chatterjee
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000323730
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 281

Book Description
The value of touch and object handling in museums is little understood, despite the overwhelming weight of anecdotal evidence which confirms the benefits of physical interaction with objects. Touch in Museums presents a ground-breaking overview of object handling from both historical and scientific perspectives. The book aims to establish a framework for understanding the role of object handling for learning, enjoyment, and health. The broad range of essays included explores the many different contexts for object handling, not only within the museum, but extending beyond it to hospitals, schools and the wider community. The combination of theoretical analysis, policy assessment and detailed case material make Touch in Museums invaluable reading for students and professionals of museology or cultural heritage.