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空間如何媒介時代感？ 探討博物館物質性與參訪者身體感實踐的交織
How Does Space Mediate Temproality? Exploring the Interweaving of Museum Materiality and Visitors’ Embodied Practices
研究論文
作者(中)
廖若閔、王淑美
作者(英)
Jo-Min Liao, Sumei Wang
關鍵詞(中)
身體感、物質性、空間媒介、時代感、時間性、博物館
關鍵詞(英)
embodiment, materiality, spatial media, sense of times, temporality, museum
中文摘要
本研究將博物館視為空間媒介，並討論博物館空間之物質性如何召喚身體感，而參觀者又如何運用感官經驗來詮釋博物館的空間文本。從媒介文化論視角切入，以新文化運動館為案例，採取感官民族誌方法分析博物館空間媒介的物質性，並瞭解參觀者與博物館的互動，包括其身體感如何領會媒介的物質性，以及如何產生多元詮釋。研究發現，作為空間媒介的新文化運動館，其建築風格與展示品的雙元物質性觸及參觀者的身體感知焦點，媒介了時代感。另一方面，參觀者的身體感承載社會文化的鑲嵌，其與空間媒介的物質性互動，召喚出各自過往的經驗與記憶，產生互異的詮釋，並建構出相異的展覽敘事。
英文摘要
Unlike the mass communication literature that usually focuses on message transmission and its effects, scholars in media cultural studies are more interested in the materiality of media, exploring how mediation occurs and how it is influenced by temporal and spatial contexts. Following McLuhan’s perspective, where the medium is the message, any “thing” may serve as a medium, thus mediating significance and message transmission. From this perspective, if one views museums as spatial media, then what theoretical concepts can be derived, and how might empirical research be conducted? To deepen our understanding of how space becomes text and how its materiality may mediate experiences, this research takes the Taiwan New Culture Movement Memorial Museum (TNCMMM) as a case study to investigate how a museum revitalized from historic sites mediates temporality.
Literature Review
Followers of media ecology and media cultural studies are concerned with the materiality of media, the temporal and spatial contexts of their emergence, and the socio-cultural relations therein. Functioning as communicators, museums similarly utilize visitors as audiences, disseminating various forms of information, knowledge, and opinions. If museums are regarded as spatial media, then their exhibits constitute content, while their architecture and curatorial forms represent technological forms. Museums act as intermediaries between knowledge and visitors, with their establishment, funding, purposes, structures, and collection sources reflecting complex negotiations within societal organizations and values.
When viewed as spatial media, the materiality of museums holds dual meanings: one is the materiality of their collections and exhibits, and the other is the materiality of museums’ architectural space. These correspond to what Silverstone calls the duality of media - namely, the technology and the content. However, unlike media representation, museums’ uniqueness lies in their demand for audiences’ on-site presence. By being there, knowledge that requires physical proximity can be passed on to them. The embodied experience cannot be replicated nor disseminated and serves a crucial role for appreciating the meanings of materiality (Yu, 2008).
Ingold’s (1993, 2000) concept of ‘taskscape’ helps explain how landscape can mediate temporality. He suggests that the present is an accumulation of human activities, which must resonate with other organisms, objects, and environments. Things afford us to recall the past. Because both materiality and embodiment take time to cultivate, they also invite a sense of times.
Research design and analysis
TNCMMM is situated in a restored historic building in Taipei. It was formerly a police station during Japanese colonial rule. The museum aims to preserve the history of the Taiwan New Cultural Movement. In the museum, various interactive devices exhibit documents and objects relevant to the movement. Details and processes of architectural restoration as well as the detention facility left by the former police department are presented to visitors.
The authors adopt sensory ethnography (Pink, 2015) to investigate visitors’ embodied experience inside the museum, incorporating participants’ observations and interviews. We observe how people perceive space and collaboratively construct narration with spatial media through walking with other visitors. Via purpose sampling, the research sample covers ten interviewees of different ages and socio-cultural backgrounds. We examine details of how the museum’s dual materiality mediates a sense of era, and how visitors’ embodied practices in the space generate various interpretations.
First, TNCMMM restores architectural styles and materials to re-create an atmosphere blending Western and Japanese aesthetics, evoking a sense of the 1930s in Taiwan. The architectural design and materials of the museum trigger collective memories of that specific era. The experience of emersion inside the building arouses childhood memories for many interviewees. The texture, style, arrangement, lighting, and sound of the museum also invite visitors to participate in constructing the spatial meaning, making the text more open-ended. Interviewees of different ages evoke various nostalgic feelings, which demonstrate the polysemy of spatial text interpretation.
Second, TNCMMM uses retro-reproduced objects as part of the exhibition, inviting visitors to interact and to initiate associations with the past. These installations transform history into memory-laden objects through materialization. This allows visitors to reproduce the activities of predecessors and to summon the tactile and imaginative experiences of later generations.
Third, the museum’s preserved dark heritage (i.e., the cells that held prisoners) with relatively fewer textual explanations allows visitors to directly feel the authority and oppression exhibited by the space through their bodies. Visitors express more imagination and emotion and use personal experiences and knowledge to fill in the narrative gaps. These aspects show how the museum leverages its dual materiality, including the spatial characteristics of its heritage site and the selection and reproduction of exhibits, guiding visitors to reflect on the past, and mediating between the past and the present.
Conclusion and Reflections
This study demonstrates the potential of viewing museums as spatial media through an examination of literature and empirical research. Museums’ dual materiality in their architecture and collections reflects changes in technique, society, and values. Such materiality mediates a sense of times. Visitors’ understanding of spatial media is not limited to exhibition descriptions, but also involves the emotions triggered by their embodied practices, summoning past experiences or knowledge for polysemous interpretations. This resonates with theoretical concepts such as spacing and operation of synthesis proposed by Löw (2016), who argues that the meanings of space not only depend on its material conditions and design intentions, but are also crafted and positioned through human participation, memory, imagination, and experience.
To sum up, through a case study of TNCMMM this paper reveals how the museum utilizes its dual materiality to engage with visitors’ bodily perception and experience. Moreover, differentiated individual interpretations relate to their embodied capital and habitus. The meanings of the museum are co-constructed by both its materiality and visitors’ embodied practices. It shows that medium theory can be applied to an analysis of space. We expand the scope of the media and communication literature and hope to attract more cross-disciplinary dialogues between space and media studies through our findings herein.
Literature Review
Followers of media ecology and media cultural studies are concerned with the materiality of media, the temporal and spatial contexts of their emergence, and the socio-cultural relations therein. Functioning as communicators, museums similarly utilize visitors as audiences, disseminating various forms of information, knowledge, and opinions. If museums are regarded as spatial media, then their exhibits constitute content, while their architecture and curatorial forms represent technological forms. Museums act as intermediaries between knowledge and visitors, with their establishment, funding, purposes, structures, and collection sources reflecting complex negotiations within societal organizations and values.
When viewed as spatial media, the materiality of museums holds dual meanings: one is the materiality of their collections and exhibits, and the other is the materiality of museums’ architectural space. These correspond to what Silverstone calls the duality of media - namely, the technology and the content. However, unlike media representation, museums’ uniqueness lies in their demand for audiences’ on-site presence. By being there, knowledge that requires physical proximity can be passed on to them. The embodied experience cannot be replicated nor disseminated and serves a crucial role for appreciating the meanings of materiality (Yu, 2008).
Ingold’s (1993, 2000) concept of ‘taskscape’ helps explain how landscape can mediate temporality. He suggests that the present is an accumulation of human activities, which must resonate with other organisms, objects, and environments. Things afford us to recall the past. Because both materiality and embodiment take time to cultivate, they also invite a sense of times.
Research design and analysis
TNCMMM is situated in a restored historic building in Taipei. It was formerly a police station during Japanese colonial rule. The museum aims to preserve the history of the Taiwan New Cultural Movement. In the museum, various interactive devices exhibit documents and objects relevant to the movement. Details and processes of architectural restoration as well as the detention facility left by the former police department are presented to visitors.
The authors adopt sensory ethnography (Pink, 2015) to investigate visitors’ embodied experience inside the museum, incorporating participants’ observations and interviews. We observe how people perceive space and collaboratively construct narration with spatial media through walking with other visitors. Via purpose sampling, the research sample covers ten interviewees of different ages and socio-cultural backgrounds. We examine details of how the museum’s dual materiality mediates a sense of era, and how visitors’ embodied practices in the space generate various interpretations.
First, TNCMMM restores architectural styles and materials to re-create an atmosphere blending Western and Japanese aesthetics, evoking a sense of the 1930s in Taiwan. The architectural design and materials of the museum trigger collective memories of that specific era. The experience of emersion inside the building arouses childhood memories for many interviewees. The texture, style, arrangement, lighting, and sound of the museum also invite visitors to participate in constructing the spatial meaning, making the text more open-ended. Interviewees of different ages evoke various nostalgic feelings, which demonstrate the polysemy of spatial text interpretation.
Second, TNCMMM uses retro-reproduced objects as part of the exhibition, inviting visitors to interact and to initiate associations with the past. These installations transform history into memory-laden objects through materialization. This allows visitors to reproduce the activities of predecessors and to summon the tactile and imaginative experiences of later generations.
Third, the museum’s preserved dark heritage (i.e., the cells that held prisoners) with relatively fewer textual explanations allows visitors to directly feel the authority and oppression exhibited by the space through their bodies. Visitors express more imagination and emotion and use personal experiences and knowledge to fill in the narrative gaps. These aspects show how the museum leverages its dual materiality, including the spatial characteristics of its heritage site and the selection and reproduction of exhibits, guiding visitors to reflect on the past, and mediating between the past and the present.
Conclusion and Reflections
This study demonstrates the potential of viewing museums as spatial media through an examination of literature and empirical research. Museums’ dual materiality in their architecture and collections reflects changes in technique, society, and values. Such materiality mediates a sense of times. Visitors’ understanding of spatial media is not limited to exhibition descriptions, but also involves the emotions triggered by their embodied practices, summoning past experiences or knowledge for polysemous interpretations. This resonates with theoretical concepts such as spacing and operation of synthesis proposed by Löw (2016), who argues that the meanings of space not only depend on its material conditions and design intentions, but are also crafted and positioned through human participation, memory, imagination, and experience.
To sum up, through a case study of TNCMMM this paper reveals how the museum utilizes its dual materiality to engage with visitors’ bodily perception and experience. Moreover, differentiated individual interpretations relate to their embodied capital and habitus. The meanings of the museum are co-constructed by both its materiality and visitors’ embodied practices. It shows that medium theory can be applied to an analysis of space. We expand the scope of the media and communication literature and hope to attract more cross-disciplinary dialogues between space and media studies through our findings herein.
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2024/ 秋
No.161
