This article explores how individuals, both alone and together, examine exhibits in museums and galleries. Drawing on ethnomethodlolgy and conversation analysis, it focuses on the way in which visitors encounter and experience exhibits and how their activities are organized, at least in part, with intimate regard to the actions of others in the domain, both companions and "strangers." This study contributes to the long-standing concerns of symbolic interactionism with (mutual) attention and involvement, materiality and social relations, and interpersonal communication. The data consist of
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Dirk von LehnChristian HeathJon Hindmarsh
The MIT Media Laboratory, in collaboration with six museums, will develop the "Playful Invention and Exploration (PIE) Network," with the goal of engaging a broader audience in science inquiry and engineering by enabling more people to create, invent and explore with new digital technologies. PIE museums will integrate the latest MIT technologies and educational research into their ongoing public programs. The museums will organize MindFest events, modeled after a two-day event at MIT in 1999, at which youth, educators, artists, engineers, hobbyists and researchers came together to collaborate on invention projects. The PIE Network will disseminate PIE ideas and activities to educators and families nationally.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Mitchel ResnickNatalie RuskBakhtiar MikhakMike PetrichKaren Wilkinson
The American Museum of the Moving Image is refurbishing the traveling exhibit, "Behind the Screen: Making Motion Pictures and Television." The exhibit, which focuses on the science and technology underlying movies and television, opened at the World Financial Center in New York City and subsequently traveled to the Kulturhuset in Stockholm, Sweden and the Technisches Museum in Vienna, Austria. It currently is at the Exploratorium in San Francisco and is scheduled to travel to COSI Toledo, Ohio in October 2001. The American Museum of the Moving Image has requests for the exhibit from the Science City, Kansas City; the Franklin Institute, Philadelphia; and the Museum of Science, Boston. However, in order for the exhibit to travel to venues beyond the Exploratorium, it needs to be refurbished and upgraded. This grant provides the funds for the exhibit to remain viable and to travel to additional venues.