Title:	MUSEUMS OUTSIDE WALLS: MOBILE PHONES AND THE MUSEUM IN THE EVERYDAY
Author(s):	Konstantinos Arvanitis
ISBN:	972-8939-02-7
Editors:	Pedro Isaías, Carmel Borg, Piet Kommers and Philip Bonanno
Year:	2005
Edition:	Single
Keywords:	Camera phones; Everyday life; Museums; Monuments .
Type:	Short Paper
First Page:	251
Last Page:	255
Language:	English
Cover:
Full Contents:	click to dowload
Paper Abstract:	Ever since the Internet has been introduced into museums, it is often repeated that Andre Malraux’s notion of the museum without walls (La musée imaginaire) has met its best realisation. Mobile media have, also, been seen by museums as part of that effort to create a ‘museum without walls’. In other words, museums treat mobile media mainly as vehicles to enter the everyday, bring the museum information and expertise out of the museum walls and into the everyday life of people. In this way, museums extend their physical and conceptual presence, creating ‘museum niches’ and ‘museum moments’ away from the museum building. This paper argues that such use of mobile media does not take full advantage of the opportunities that they can offer to museums. At the same time, it reflects a museum concept, that although it is lined with the democratisation of the museum knowledge that Malraux’s ‘museum without walls’ suggests, it does not bring on board current museological developments. Based on Eilean Hooper-Greenhill’s concept of the post-museum and Michel de Certeau’s perception of everyday life, the paper discusses a role that mobile media can have in museums. Drawing on fieldwork and qualitative investigation regarding the use of mobile phones to capture everyday meanings of material culture in Greece, the paper argues that mobile media can be used not only to bring museums into the everyday life, but also to create a gateway for everyday knowledge to become available in museums. In this way, Malraux’s ‘museum without walls’ is further developed and transformed into a museum that happens in the everyday, through the active participation of the public and the use of mobile media.
	Go Back