10.54103/ai/19907
The present contribution wants to investigate how the use of technology is redefining the performative role of visitor bodies within museum environments. It will address the topic of the physical body of museum goers as an experiential tool and discuss to what extent its active, at times performative, use across museum settings has been and is considered as an important element of the cultural experience. This research offers a storeographical account which begins from visitor engagement in the early 17th to 19th century museums, continues with an account of the ‘disappearance’ of the visitor body in modern museums (Candlin, 2004), and proceeds analysing the revival of a more systemic and bodily understanding of these spaces (Howes, 2014), with technologies playing a very important role in incentivizing and characterizing this shift. The case for the positive interplay between museums and technological artistic experience towards a performative engagement of the visitor’s physical presence will be made through the case study of the Nxt Museum, in Amsterdam. The specific project that will be here analyzed is the Shifting Proximities exhibition, which explores human experience and interaction in the face of social and technological change. Through this last institutional account the research will complete its itinerary through performative action across museum experiences in time and space, arguing for the relevance that technological media can play in transforming visitors’ relationship with art through their bodies.&nbsp;
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Anna Calise
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AN-ICON. Studies in Environmental Images [ISSN 2785-7433]
Proximities
Inhabiting the museum: a history of physical presence from analog to digital exhibition spaces
Text.Serial.Journal
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2023-12-29
2024-02-23
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Anna Calise
2023/12/29
10.54103/ai/19907
IULM University of Milan
2785-7433
II
Proximities
en
Stadler, F., ed., Encyclopedia and Utopia: The Life and Work of Otto Neurath, (London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1996).
Inhabiting the museum: a history of physical presence from analog to digital exhibition spaces
https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/anicon/article/download/19907/20010
2
                 Inhabiting the
                 Museum: A History
of Physical Presence from Analog
to Digital Museum
           Exhibition Spaces
by Anna Calise
                 Visitor body
                 Technology
                 Exercise of power
                 Proximities




                      Issue №2            Year 2023
                      → Immersions and Dives:
                      From the Environment
                      to Virtual Reality
                      Edited by Roberto P. Malaspina,
                      Elisabetta Modena, and Sofia Pirandello
Inhabiting the Museum: A History
of Physical Presence from Analog
to Digital Exhibition Spaces
ANNA CALISE, Università IULM – https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2966-7613 https://doi.org/10.54103/ai/19907

Abstract                       From summer 2021 to spring 2022 the Nxt Mu-
                 seum in Amsterdam has run the exhibition Shifting Proximities,
                 meant to investigate the ways in which global events and de-
                 velopments, mediated by technologies “are continually shifting
                 the proximities between us, both literally and metaphorically.”
                 This study wants to offer an account which, starting from this
                 exhibition experience, addresses the temporal variations of
                 the relationship between museums, visitors and their bodies,
                 trying to investigate the extent to which technological devel-
                 opments, guided by changing epistemic paradigms, have
                 contributed to influence display and curatorial choices and
                 their relationship to the visitor’s body. In this interplay artistic
                 intuition – intertwined with technical innovations – will prove
                 essential to trigger institutional changes, together with phil-
                 osophical undertakings of the political ideologies that inform
                 power dynamics in the museum system. The visitor’s body,
                 in its materiality and motion habits, will be seen as engaging
                 in continuously changing ways with the museum space, mir-
                 roring the evolving epistemological paradigms of its times.
                 Through an historical account of bodily practices and customs
                 across museum spaces, this study aims to discuss the ways in
                 which citizens’ dives through museum halls have been and are
                 used to establish socially shared ideas of art and knowledge.


Keywords         Museum                          Visitor body                          Technology
                 Exercise of power                 Proximities
To quote this essay: A. Calise, “Inhabiting the Museum: A History of Physical Presence from Analog
to Digital Exhibition Spaces,” AN-ICON. Studies in Environmental Images [ISSN 2785-7433] 2, no. 2
(2023): 56-73, https://doi.org/10.54103/ai/19907.

ANNA CALISE                                       56                                          AN-ICON
                             From summer 2021 to spring 2022 the Nxt Mu-
               seum in Amsterdam has run the exhibition Shifting Proxim-
               ities, meant to “explore human experience and interaction
               in the face of social and technological change.”1 Beginning
               from the premise that “global events and developments,
               whether socio-political, technological or environmental, have
               a significant impact on how we communicate, how we move
               and how we live in the world”2 the exhibition aimed to inves-
               tigate the ways in which these “are continually shifting the
               proximities between us, both literally and metaphorically.”3
                            The museum presented eight artworks by dif-
               ferent artists which allowed the visitor to experience the
               change in distance – or closeness – with others and with
               oneself, through the mediation of technological devices, at
               times transparent, others opaque.4 The key to the aesthetic
               experience inside the museum space, as we will see through-
               out this article, was the visitor’s body, and its motion. The
               knowledge required in order to fully dive into this exhibition
               had to do with one’s ability to move through space and in-
               teract with light, screens, cameras: media.
                             With this exhibition, the Nxt Museum becomes
               part of a series of museums which have structured their
               cultural paradigms around the idea of a performative rather
               than informative museology,5 one which stands in a more
               reflexive position towards its own operations, and admits to
               problematize the epistemological premises which underlie
               cultural and curatorial choices. In this line of thought the
               visitor’s body becomes an instrumental tool that guides a
               different kind of museological experience, which does not
               rely on vision6 as the main guiding sense, and encompasses

      1 “Shifting Proximities,” Nxt Museum, https://nxtmuseum.com/event/shifting-proximities/,
      accessed May 15, 2023.
      2 Ibid.
      3 Ibid.
      4 J.D. Bolter, R. Grusin, Remediation: Understanding New Media (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 1998).
      5 B. Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, “The Museum as Catalyst,” keynote address at ICOM Sweden
      conference “Museum 2000: Confirmation or Challenge?,” Vadstena, September 29, 2000,
      http://www.michaelfehr.net/Museum/Texte/vadstena.pdf, accessed May 15, 2023.
      6 For a discussion on visuality cfr. N. Bryson, Vision and Painting: The Logic of the Gaze
      (London-Basingstoke: Macmillan Press, 1983): 36; P. de Bolla, The Education of the Eye
      (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003); C. Otter, The Victorian Eye (Chicago: Chicago
      University Press, 2008): 24.

ANNA CALISE                                     57                                          AN-ICON
              the sensorium more widely, reinstating visit practices that
              can be dated to early museum history.7
                           This study wants to offer an account which,
              starting from this fairly contemporary yet not isolated new
              mode of diving into the museum, addresses the temporal
              variations of the relationship between museums, visitors and
              their bodies, trying to investigate the extent to which techno-
              logical developments, associated and guided by changing
              epistemic paradigms, have contributed to influence display
              and curatorial choices. In this interplay artistic intuition – in-
              tertwined with technical and creative innovations – will prove
              essential to trigger institutional changes, together with philo-
              sophical undertakings of the political ideologies that inform
              power dynamics in the museum system. The visitor’s body,
              in its materiality and motion habits, will be seen as engag-
              ing in continuously changing ways with the museum space,
              mirroring the evolving epistemological paradigms of its times.
                           The paper will begin by presenting the Shift-
              ing Proximities exhibition, and observing the topics it raises.
              Amongst these are the use of technology for artistic prac-
              tices inside the museum space and the use of the body for
              aesthetic experience during the cultural visit. Moving from
              this case study, a wider theoretical and historical scenario
              will be discussed, trying to identify some key positions which
              can help to contextualize today’s museum behavior within
              a more complex understanding of the use and discipline
              of the body within the museum space. Tony Bennett’s and
              Douglas Crimp’s use of the Foucauldian philosophical ap-
              paratus will prove extremely helpful to conceptualize how
              power systems and ideological stances can translate into
              behavioral etiquettes and technological artistic endeavors.
                            Parallelly, an account of the change of the use of
              the senses and the body inside the museum space through
              time – addressing mainly shifts from the late seventeenth
              century to the early nineteenth century and then again in
              the late twentieth century – will help historicize museum

      7 C. Classen, The Deepest Sense: A Cultural History of Touch (Chicago: University of Illinois
      Press, 2012): 136-146.

ANNA CALISE                                     58                                          AN-ICON
               experiential habits with reference to changing epistemic par-
               adigms. As human beings today dive into museum halls,
               what kind of influence is the environment surrounding them
               exercising on their physical bodies? And how are these ex-
               periences used to establish an idea of art and knowledge?

                                Shifting Proximities at Nxt Museum

                            Nxt Museum is a fairly recent institution, opened
               in early 2020 in Amsterdam North, the new upcoming neigh-
               borhood of the city, over the lake IJ. The area is already home
               to another important institution, the Eye Filmmuseum,8 and
               houses a number of art galleries and studios. NXT is part of
               those institutions which are resignifying the district, function-
               ing as symbolic references9 which advocate for new urban
               agendas, impacting the city from a socio-political perspec-
               tive. The area, originally “location of shipbuilding and other
               heavy industries […] evolved into a hotspot for the creative
               sector since the 1990s and has been the […] subject of ac-
               tive urban redevelopment since the 2000s.”10
                            As the website promptly declares:

Nxt Museum is the first museum in the Netherlands dedicated to
new media art. We focus on art that uses modern tools to embody
modern times. We believe that the tools used in artistic expression
reflect the times we live in. That makes them the perfect means
to understand contemporary compl   11
                                      exities allowing us to recognise,
relate and reflect on our realities.
                           The museum highlights how it is devoted only to
               new media art, the only kind of art capable of capturing and
               addressing contemporary times. It does not hold a perma-
               nent collection, directly curating and producing exhibitions
               which thematically address diverse issues. The building itself

       8 Eye Filmmuseum, https://www.eyefilm.nl/en, accessed May 15, 2023.
       9 F. Savini, S. Dembski, “Manufacturing the Creative City: Symbols and Politics of Amsterdam
       North,” Cities: The International Journal of Urban Policy and Planning 55 (2016): 139-147,
       https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2016.02.013.
       10 Ibid.: 140.
       11 Nxt Museum, https://nxtmuseum.com/about/, accessed May 15, 2023.

ANNA CALISE                                    59                                         AN-ICON
               was designed and furnished in order to be able to cater for
               these kinds of programmes:

the space is built specifically to explore new media art [.. ] that ex-
pands technical possibilities and applications, is dynamic and unbound
by form and that generates movement whether physical, mental or
emotional. The space provides all the ingredients for these progres-
sive art forms to grow, flourish and evol12ve. Nxt Museum is a place
where creatives bring their visions to life.
                             The technological capacity of the museum is
               fundamental to the identity of the space: it unlocks the cre-
               ativity of the artists invited to exhibit, and enables the mo-
               tion which qualifies the power of the aesthetic experience.
               Not unrelated, the whole museum is heavily sponsored by a
               giant of the tech industry, Samsung:13 “With a full technical
               Samsung set up including hi-tech hardware […] integrated
               throughout the museum, we seek to enrich the experience
               for our visitors and extend our educational programme.”14
                             As aforementioned, the case study here ana-
               lyzed is the exhibition Shifting Proximities,15 which directly
               investigated the concept of proximity and its change due
               to the engagement of technology. The exhibition purposely
               addressed the active dimension of proximity, creating expe-
               riential environments where visitors were called to, precisely,
               activate the artwork through their engagement. Overall the
               programme hosted eight different artworks,16 each designed
               by a different artist. Upon entering the museum, the visi-
               tor was invited to cross a door which led into a dark room,
               beginning a journey linearly dictated by the alternation of a
               series of smaller rooms, with information on the next artwork,

       12 Ibid.
       13 The topic of the connection between industries, infrastructures, technologies and artistic
       endeavors is a complicated one, which is not necessary to address in the present discussion.
       For an account which draws the relationship between infrastructure studies and digital media
       studies please cfr. J.C. Plantin, A. Punathambekar, “Digital media infrastructures, pipes,
       platforms and politics,” Media, Culture and Society 41, no. 2 (2018): 163-174,
       https://doi.org/10.1177/0163443718818376.
       14 “Parternships,” Nxt Museum, https://nxtmuseum.com/partnerships/, accessed May 15, 2023.
       15 The exhibition was open from the August 29, 2021 to May 8, 2022.
       16 The complete list of artists can be found in the exhibition page on the museum website:
       https://nxtmuseum.com/event/shifting-proximities/, accessed May 15, 2023.

ANNA CALISE                                    60                                         AN-ICON
               and a series of bigger rooms, where the installations were
               hosted. In each introductory room the visitor was advised
               on how long to spend in the next room and given some ge-
               neric information on a screen on the meaning of the follow-
               ing artwork. Among the various works two have been here
               chosen as interesting for the discussion at hand: Connected
               (Fig. 1) by Roelof Knol17 and Zoom Pavillion (Fig. 2) by Rafael
               Lozano-Hemmer.18




                                                                                       Fig. 1. R. Knol,
                                                                                    Connected, 2022,
                                                                                view of the exhibition
                                                                                Shifting Proximities at
                                                                                         Nxt Museum,
                                                                                            May 2022.




                                                                                   Fig. 2. R. Lozano-
                                                                                      Hemmer, Zoom
                                                                                 Pavillion, view of the
                                                                                   exhibition Shifting
                                                                                   Proximities at Nxt
                                                                                 Museum, May 2022.




      17 Amsterdam born, raised and based, Robert Knol is a new media artist and developer, who
      works with projection mapping, augmented reality and coding to design interactive- reactive
      experiences. His website can be accessed at https://roelofknol.com/.
      18 Born in Mexico City in 1967, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer is a media artist working at the
      intersection of architecture and performance art. He creates platforms for public participation
      using technologies such as robotic lights, digital fountains, computerized surveillance, media
      walls, and telematic networks. For a more in depth biography see his website at
      https://www.lozano-hemmer.com/bio.php, accessed May 15, 2023.

ANNA CALISE                                     61                                          AN-ICON
                            Connected19 was the first installation of the ex-
              hibition, introducing the experience. The visitor was asked
              to join

in a ritual of connection. Each visitor is represented by an in-
teractive visual projected on the floor. Together, they form new
networks of connections between the visitors who will navi-
gate through the exhibition. As personal space becomes shared
space, Connected sets the tone 20
                                  of the exhibition by examining
the type of space we inhabit.
                            Through one’s own motion in the room, and ac-
              tivation of the interactive visuals that follow visitors around
              the space and connect them with other participants, the
              artwork activates. The emphasis on the role played by tech-
              nology in building and tracing connections between people
              is evident, as is the dialogue between visitors, their bodies,
              and the devices used. It appears as the technological layer
              is already there, embedded in reality in an almost undetect-
              able and natural21 way, yet it is through people’s presence
              and motion that it manifests itself.
                            Zoom Pavillion, further into the exhibition path,
              is described by the artist on his website as

an interactive installation that consists of immersive projection on
three walls, fed by 12 computerized surveillance systems trained on
the public. The piece uses face recognition algorithms to detect the
presence of participants and record their spatial relationship within
the exhibition space [...]. The zooming sequences are disorienting




      19 While audio-visual artist Roelof Knol designed the installation, he commissioned the sound
      design to sound-artist Marc Mahfoud.
      20 “Connected,” Nxt Museum, https://nxtmuseum.com/artist/connected-roelof-knol/,
      accessed May 15, 2023.
      21 On the naturalization of technology in the environment cfr. R. Eugeni, La condizione
      postmediale: Media linguaggi e narrazioni (Milan: La Scuola, 2015): 46-47.

ANNA CALISE                                    62                                         AN-ICON
as they change the entire image “landscape” from easily
                                                      22
                                                         recog-
nizable wide shots of the crowd to abstract close-ups.
                           The technological layer appears, in this case,
              even more evidently than in the previous installation. Devices
              are surrounding visitors, and their activity is shown in real
              time on the walls of the room: they trace distance between
              visitors while picturing them, providing images which portray
              frontal representations and capturing motion from above.
              Realistic and more graphic and technical images are mixed
              in a random manner, conveying the message that our ap-
              pearance can be translated into different visual languages,
              depending on who is looking. The problematic paradigm
              of surveillance23 is exposed by the author in a way which
              uncovers the dialectic relationship between human beings
              and the technological ecosystem that surrounds them.24
                           The two artworks, and the exhibition in itself,
              testify for a new way of understanding museum journeys
              in contemporary culture. One which assumes an embod-
              ied, extended, embedded and enacted25 idea of cognition,
              granting a more participative nature to the aesthetic expe-
              rience. In the museum logic, the visitor needs to be guid-
              ed into an environment which elicits stimuli and activates
              a physical dynamic, one which anticipates a mediated –
              meaning media related – and technologized way of living art.
                            Surely this is the case of a single museological
              instance, clearly not representative of a pervasive and over-
              riding trend in museums policies. Yet is has been argued26

      22 “Zoom Pavilion,” Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, https://www.lozano-hemmer.com/zoom_pavilion.
      php, accessed May 15, 2023. As the website further specifies, Zoom Pavilion marks the first
      collaboration between artists Rafael Lozano-Hemmer and Krzysztof Wodiczko. It was originally
      conceived for the Architecture Biennale in Beijing.
      23 For an analysis of contemporary artistic projects which problematize the relationship
      between surveillance and facial imaging in today’s visual culture cfr. D. Borselli, G.
      Ravaioli,“Facing Power: Fotografia, partecipazione e tattiche di resistenza artistica nella
      sorveglianza contemporanea,” VCS. Visual Culture Studies, no. 5 (2022): 115-132,
      https://hdl.handle.net/11585/922401.
      24 For an overview on the topic of surveillance and aerial view in relation to visual culture
      studies see A. Pinotti, A. Somaini, Cultura visuale: Immagini sguardi media dispositivi (Turin:
      Einaudi, 2016): 251-253.
      25 A. Newen., L. De Bruin, S. Gallager, The Oxford Handbook of 4E Cognition (Oxford: Oxford
      University Press, 2018).
      26 D. Howes, “Introduction to Sensory Museology,” The Senses and Society 9, no. 3 (2014):
      259-267, https://doi.org/10.2752/174589314X14023847039917.

ANNA CALISE                                    63                                          AN-ICON
               that since the last two decades of the twentieth century,
               and onwards, there is a tendency that can be observed in
               museums towards a more body related and sensory en-
               gaged understanding and planning of the experience. One
               which encompasses different conceptions of knowledge,
               accepting also more horizontal and even possibly human-
               izing27 epistemological stances. Engaging the body, from
               this point of view, seems to be in line with the idea of de-
               mocratizing access to the museum. Instead of expecting
               visitors to possess the intellectual cultural capital28 neces-
               sary to access the aesthetic elitarian museum experience,
               this curatorial account somehow lowers the bar, requiring
               epistemic grounds which have more to do with everyday
               experiences than higher education.
                              This shift, today as much as in museum histo-
               ry,29 is related to the use of media: new technologies which
               are expected to increase accessibility. Yet, as much as in
               the past, the introduction of technological devices in mu-
               seums comes with a conflicted debate which carries the
               weight of the discussion on the material conditions of tech-
               nological production30 and consumer culture31 debacles.
               Whilst these devices – and device hosting museums – are
               seen as attracting and engaging a wider public, the dan-
               ger that they represent has to do with parallelly building a
               control system that collects data and works as a feedback
               accumulator:32 exploiting visitors under a false inclusivity




      27 The idea of organizing museum experiences on humanizing premises to knowledge
      belongs to the Austrian physicist and museum director Otto Neurath, who operated in
      Vienna at the beginning of the twentieth century. For an account of his work and principles
      see F. Stadler, ed., Encyclopedia and Utopia: The Life and Work of Otto Neurath, (London:
      Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1996); O. Neurath, Encyclopedia and Sociology, ed. M. Neurath,
      R.Cohen (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1973).
      28 P. Bourdieu “Three Forms of Capital,” in A.H. Halsey, ed., Education: Culture, Economy and
      Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997).
      29 Neurath’s museum is also to be understood in a line of mediatized museums, institutions
      which employ media and technologies to make the cultural experience more accessible.
      30 A. Barry, Political Machines: Governing a Technological Society (New York: Athlone Press, 2001).
      31 T. Adorno, M. Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments (1947),
      trans. E. Jephcott (London: Verso, 1986).
      32 A. Barry, Political Machines: 130.

ANNA CALISE                                      64                                            AN-ICON
               pretense. Even more so in the era of big data33 when the
               controlling potential of technology is ever more striking.
                            Further, this framework becomes more complex
               if enriched through the perspective, in museological litera-
               ture, that has addressed the disciplining power of museums.
               Primarily since the last decade of the twentieth century, a
               number of authors have started applying the theoretical
               framework developed by Michel Foucault on apparatuses
               and discipline34 to museum environments, highlighting the
               multiple ways through which these spaces have historically
               exercised their power on people. These accounts can help
               to conceptualize the relationship between epistemic prem-
               ises, dominant ideologies, art, technologies and bodies.

                                Museums inhabiting bodies

                             While the discussion on the place and time
               where museums were born is still an open one, scholars
               seem to agree on the fact that, since the early days, mu-
               seums have been meant to host people. Their inhabited
               nature is somewhat intrinsic to their identity, as renowned
               museologist Krzysztof Pomian points out in the introduc-
               tion of his three volume publication Le musée, une histoire
               mondiale. When faced with the task of defining museums
               he qualifies them as “all the public collections of natural
               or artificial objects exhibited in a secular or secularized
               environment and destined to be preserved for an indefinite
               future.”35 Inherent to the public character of museums and

       33 V. Mayer-Schönberger, C. Kenneth, Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live,
       Work, and Think (Boston-New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcour, 2013).
       34 While Foucault’s corpus is extremely wide and identifying the publications which most
       influenced the museological discourse would be a delicate and somehow futile effort, guiding
       concepts to the present discourse can be found by M. Foucault, The Order of Things: An
       Archaeology of the Human Sciences (1966) (London: Vintage, 1994); M. Foucault, Archaeology
       of Knowledge (1969), trans. A. M. Sheridan Smith (London: Routledge, 2002). With reference
       to publications which directly address the author’s discourse on museums see A. Kauffman,
      “Manet, museum, modernism: Michel Foucault and modernist art history,” Journal of Art
       Historiography, no. 22 (Jun 2020): 1-21; K. Hetherington, “Foucault, the Museum and the
       Diagram,” Sociological Review 53, no. 3 (2011): 457-475, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-
       954X.2011.02016.x; B. Lord, “Foucault’s museums: difference, representation, and genealogy,”
       Museum and society 4, no. 1 (March 2006): 11-14, http://www2.le.ac.uk/departments/
       museumstudies/museumsociety/documents/volumes/1lord.pdf.
       35 K. Pomian, Le musée, une histoire mondiale, 2 vols. (Paris, Gallimard, 2020), vol. 1, “Du
       trésor au musée:” 47 [my translation].

ANNA CALISE                                    65                                         AN-ICON
               their collections, and to the exhibited status they acquire,
               lies the assumption that their value is to be deeply con-
               nected with their appreciation by people. After all it is their
               being experienced by citizens which seems to have been
               the emancipatory factor which led to the shift from cabinets
               of curiosities to museums.36 Inaugurating what German
               Bazin has famously defined the “museum age,”37 when the
               beauty of objects which were before the privilege of a few
               became available to many.
                            While museums can be hence imagined as
               born to be inhabited, it is legitimate to wonder to what
               extent this relationship is reciprocal, and how museums
               themselves end up inhabiting their audience. Which envi-
               ronment is materialized through their existence and how
               this causally affects the people who enter it. Tony Bennett,
               in The Birth of the Museum. History, theory, politics38 draws
               from the Foucauldian philosophical corpus, renownedly
               linking museums’ political and governmental ambitions to
               the semiotic organization of museum environments and
               the behavioral influence on the visiting public.
                            As the author argues throughout his work, ideo-
               logical stances and conceptions of visibility heavily un-
               derline museums displays through history, influencing the
               structural conditions of learning in the museum space. The
               epistemic paradigm the museum is based on becomes
               actively governmental insofar as visitors inhabit the muse-
               um and in it perform the kind of behavior which will allow
               them to internalize what they are seeing. This entails also
               designing an environment which

deploys its machinery of representation within an apparatus which
[...] is concerned not only with impressing the visitor with a message
       36 As Pomian had already argued in a previous work, it is the phenomenological structure of
       collections which discloses the kind of relationship that is implied between the visible – the
       collected objects and how they appear – and the invisible – what these objects represent and
       which is meant to be conveyed to posterity. K. Pomian, Collectors and Curiosities: Paris and
       Venice, 1500-1800 (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990). In the organizational dynamics which
       explicit the public destination of the museum can therefore be identified the change in scope
       and target which marks the passage from private to public collections.
       37 G. Bazin, The Museum Age (New York: Universe Books, 1967).
       38 T. Bennett, The Birth of the Museum: History, Theory, Politics (London-New York:
       Routledge, 1995).

ANNA CALISE                                      66                                          AN-ICON
of power but also to induct her or him into new forms of pro-
gramming the39self, aimed at producing new types of conduct and
self-shaping.
                           Shaping ones’ habits and modes of behavior,
              especially in terms of conduct and appearances, emerges,
              in this reading, as one of the programmatic objectives of
              nineteenth and twentieth century museum policy, encour-
              aging self-regulation and self-monitoring, making the mu-
              seum a proper reformatory of manners.40 As these words
              anticipate, a direct connection can be found historically
              between museum environments and displays, on the one
              hand, and the behavioral etiquette which is expected when
              entering the temples of knowledge, on the other. As Helen
              Rees Leahy writes in Museum Bodies. The Politics and
              Practices of Visiting and Viewing, during the nineteenth
              century there were well known guidebooks and periodicals,
              openly advising proper museum conduct.41 In 1832 The
              Penny Magazine of The Society for the Diffusion of Useful
              Knowledge,42 prescribed the three rules which would guar-
              antee enjoyment of the museum, whilst also ensuring not to
              trouble either fellow visitors or museum authorities. These
              included first “touch nothing,” secondly “do not talk loud”
              and third “be not obtrusive,”43 aiming towards a discipline
              of behaviors which directly addressed the use of the senses
              during the visit. Touching, talking, and obstructing – un-
              derstood as physical disturbance of others – were heavily
              discouraged. As the pamphlet spells out “real knowledge




      39 Ibid.: 46.
      40 M. Henning, Museums, Media and Cultural Theory (Maidenhead UK: Open University Press,
      2006): 13.
      41 H. Rees Leahy, Museum Bodies: The Politics and Practices of Visiting and Viewing
      (Farnham UK: Ashgate Publishing, 2012): 7-8. As the author here specifies, these publications
      targeted readers which were deemed most deficient in techniques of self-restraint and
      attentive viewing. Amongst these mainly women and working-class visitors.
      42 “The British Museum,” The Penny Magazine of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
      Knowledge 1, no. 2 (April, 7 1832): 13-15.
      43 Ibid.: 14.

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                 […] can only be obtained through self-discipline of the body
                 as well as the mind.”44
                             Acceptable behavior, moreover, contributed to
                 ensure the success of the aesthetic experience:

the behavior of visitors to early museums [...] and art exhibitions
[...] was scrutinized, not only for compliance with the institution’s
rules of admission, but also for evidence of aesthetic receptivity
and cultural competence. [...] modes of walking and looking had
to be re-tuned in accordance with changing practices of display
and conditions of visuality - that is, the practical
                                              45
                                                     and discursive
dimensions of seeing - within the institution.
                             This mode of behavior, far from being required
                since the beginning of museum history, was actually an
                innovation brought by nineteenth century policy. As Con-
                stance Classen widely addresses in The Deepest Sense: A
                Cultural History of Touch,46 museum habits regarding the
                use of the senses have not always been as binding and
                restrictive as The Penny Magazine would suggest. Especial-
                ly touching artifacts, she argues, was a common practice
                during the late seventeenth century and throughout the
                eighteenth century. Through the sense of touch, visitors
                were deemed able to enrich their experience, gain more
                information about the objects, and build a connection with
                their history. They were actively incentivized to navigate
                through the museum space, open glass cases and choose
                for themselves how to build their own cultural experience.
                Only since the beginning of the nineteenth century, for a
                number of reasons which span from practical concerns
                to ideological positions47 – touch started to be identified
                with an unmediated and uncomplicated mode of learning48
               – freer exploration became prohibited inside the museum.
               “Touch what you like with the eyes, but do not see with
                the fingers” was the inscription which headed the Picture
       44   Ibid.
       45   H. Rees Leahy, Museum Bodies: 4.
       46   C. Classen, The Deepest Sense: 136-146.
       47   Ibid.: 137.
       48   F. Candlin, Art, Museums and Touch (Manchester: University of Manchester Press, 2010).

ANNA CALISE                                     68                                         AN-ICON
              Gallery of the Bodleian Library of Oxford,49 and the new
              norm.
                            On the one hand, as Bennett points out, muse-
              ums are and always seem to have been governing appara-
              tuses which start from specific epistemological conditions
              and build performative environments which are designed to
              condition the visitors. These, by abiding to a dictated eti-
              quette and performing in a specific way, begin to internalize
              and embody a wider and complex ideological paradigm.
              Yet, history testifies to a more varied than expected body of
              bodily practices in museums, one which has shifted from
              a full hands on approach to a purely visual one and that is
              today reinstating a freer and wider sensorily encompass-
              ing set of habits. Intuitively, being free to use one’s’ own
              senses, instead of being intimidated by the white cube
              aesthetic,50 seems to represent a less coercive undertaking.
              By allowing the visitor to move at his or her own pace – and
              taste – through the museum, cultural institutions seem to
              be operating in a way which is more respectful of individual
              freedom. Yet, the issue might be that this kind of permis-
              sive behavior would enable a merely positive51 and in itself
              still heavily predefined conception of liberty, which alludes
              to the space for autonomy while representing a strongly
              defined set of possibilities. In this sense, the concerns ex-
              pressed at the beginning with reference to the controlling
              power of new technologies, heavily employed in today’s
              sensory museums – become ever more relevant. Perhaps
              by investigating the relationship between epistemic para-
              digms, technological and technical possibilities and art in
              museums further insight can be offered.

                                 Technologies inhabiting art

                           Douglas Crimp, in On the Museum’s Ruins, also
               follows in Foucault’s step and qualifies the museum as an
      49 C. Jr. Dickens, Dickens’s Dictionary of the Thames (1893) (New York: Taurus Press, 1972): 153.
      50 B. O’Doherty, Inside the White Cube: The Ideology of the Gallery Space (Berkeley-Los
      Angeles: University of California Press, 1976).
      51 For a critique of positive conceptions of freedom cfr. I. Berlin, “Two Concepts of Liberty,” in
      Four Essays on Liberty (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969): 118-172.

ANNA CALISE                                      69                                           AN-ICON
              “institution of confinement” with its proper “discursive for-
               mation,”52 the discipline of art history. He operatively devel-
               ops the archeological53 analytical approach envisioned by
               the French philosopher, studying museums across time as
               institutions which carry, and enable, the historical marks of
               the “tables on which their knowledge is formulated.”54 He
               argues for a strong and visible connection among museo-
               logical logics, artworks, and the techniques that are used
               to produce them, emphasizing how an artwork, especially
               through the technology that was used to produce it, can
               unveil paradigmatic cultural and ideological shifts. The an-
               alytical framework offered by Crimp, therefore, seems to
               widen the discussion, yet at the same time also offer a
               more targeted viewpoint.
                             On the one hand the author himself remarks
               the connection between different time periods and ideo-
               logical positions, also emphasizing how museum strate-
               gies and policies change decade after decade, debunking
               the presumed a-temporal logic which these institutions
               attempt to elicit.55 On the other hand, Crimp directly ad-
               dresses the connection between artworks and technology
               through time, remarking to what extent different tech-
               niques unveil significant aspects of the ideology of an era.
               It is in the technological possibilities which structurally
               impact the artwork that one can read the shifting historical
               and artistic perspectives.56
                             If scrutinized through Crimp’s account, mu-
               seums through time express their dominant positions not
               only by organizing their space and advising for a specific
               behavior, but also by exhibiting artworks which represent
               the ways in which technologies are changing reality and
               the way we perceive it. Read through this analysis, the
      52 D. Crimp, On the Museum’s Ruins (Cambridge MA-London: MIT Press, 1993): 48
      53 In Foucault’s account, an archeological analysis entails on the one hand being attentive to
      discontinuity, more than to linear developments, within the history of ideological paradigms; and
      on the other being focused on the materiality of the research object, which holds the parameters
      that should guide the research process. See M. Foucault, Archaeology of Knowledge.
      54 D. Crimp, On the Museum’s Ruins: 47.
      55 Ibid.: 50. Differently from Bennett and Classen, Crimp offers an account which focuses
      more on the connection between ideology, technology and art, less with the overall museum
      organization and behavioral etiquette.
      56 Ibid.: 58.

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              apparatus nature of the museum, understood in the Fou-
              cauldian sense, is even more evident: it spans from the
              wider epistemic meaning of the system of power to the
              somewhat lower and more down to earth level of the func-
              tioning of the technology employed.57
                            Following this line of thought, it could be ar-
              gued that different technologies call for different uses of the
              visitor’s body throughout the museum environment. From
              artifacts kept in openable glass cases to aesthetic experi-
              ences structurally built thanks to technological devices, the
              role played by technology in shaping cultural experiences
              in museums is central. It changes, as Crimp would argue,
              together with the epistemic paradigms which characterize
              each epoch. As does the way in which these technologies
              impact the visitor body, and help mediate the museologi-
              cal experience which is taking place. As Helen Rees Leahy
              writes, citing de Bolla’s definition of a customized “specific
              activity of looking”58 within the space of the museum, “a
              successful performance of spectatorship therefore invoked
              and enacted a precise set of socio-cultural coordinates.”59
                            Except at this point in order to perform suc-
              cessfully as a spectator the visitor of the Nxt Museum has
              to engage with his or her own body, and not just look. What
              is asked in the museum space is to relate with the tech-
              nologies which structurally support the artwork in order
              to live the experience, abiding to the aesthetic, technical
              and informational systems which are behind them. The
              socio-cultural coordinates which guide the performance
              are still invoked with the utmost precision, yet they call
              for an evident degree of motion, one which requires to
              engage with the technology. Without moving through the
              space, and activating the technology behind the installa-
              tions, feeding it one’s own data, the performance would not
              exist. Retracing Marcel Mauss’s 1935 argument discussed

      57 Cfr. R. Eugeni “Che cosa sarà un dispositivo: Archeologia e prospettive di uno strumento
      per pensare i media,” in J.L. Baudry, Il dispositivo: Cinema, Media, Soggettività, ed. R. Eugeni
      (Brescia: La Scuola, 2017) for a breakdown of the different levels at which an apparatus can
      be understood to be operating: epistemic, situational, technological.
      58 P. de Bolla, The Education of the Eye: 72.
      59 H. Rees Leahy, Museum Bodies: 6.

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               in Techniques of the Body60 Rees Lehay specifies how “the
               habitus of the practiced museum spectator is palpable in
               their demonstration of socially acquired and sanctioned
               bodily techniques within the exhibition; for example, stand-
               ing at the ‘correct’ distance from the artwork, walking at a
               pace that is neither too fast nor too slow, and judiciously
               editing the number of artworks deserving their closest scru-
               tiny.”61 In NXT the bodily behavior required to appreciate
               the artwork is not learned within the museum, but in real
               life. After all, the title of the exhibition, Shifting Proximities,
               recalls purposely how concepts of closeness and distance
               are actually changing in our society, due to technology.
               What is interesting if Mauss’s paradigm is used to interpret
               the experience of the visitor, is that the curators and artists
               engaged in the exhibition do draw on habits that visitors
               have developed62 in order to build the exhibition script,63
               yet these are customary to our technologically mediated
               everyday life.
                              Rather than as a liberating and emancipatory
               story, which sees the visitor’s body gradually being freed
               from physical inhibitions inside the museum space and
               incentivized to move in an experimental and autonomous
               manner, the history of physical presence through museum
               halls appears to be more linear than expected. Whilst it
               can be argued that different philosophical and epistemic
               positions have surely guided a change in experiential and
               bodily access to knowledge and collections – shifting from
               a more sensorial account in the early museum towards
               an exclusively sight dependent aesthetic visit throughout
               the nineteenth and most of the twentieth century and then
               towards a more active bodily undertaking in the last fifty


      60 M. Mauss, “Techniques of the Body,” trans. B. Brewster, Economy and Society 2 (1973):
      70-88.
      61 H. Rees Leahy, Museum Bodies: 6.
      62 On media related cognitive habits cfr. J. Fingerhut, “Habits and the enculturated mind:
      pervasive arti-facts, predictive processing, and expansive habits,” in F. Caruana, I. Testa, eds.,
      Habits: Pragmatist Approaches from Cognitive Neuroscience to Social Science (Cambridge:
      Cambridge University Press, 2022): 352-375, https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108682312.018.
      63 J. Noordegraaf, Strategies of Display, Museum Presentation in Nineteenth and Twentieth-
      Century Visual Culture (Rotterdam: Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, 2004).

ANNA CALISE                                      72                                           AN-ICON
               years – it is difficult to read these changes as other than
               changes in prescriptive accounts.
                             Perhaps the museum has in part ceased to ac-
               tively discipline visitors, and operates more in an observant
               manner to contemporary experiential habits, mutuating
               from reality more than shaping it. Yet today’s motion inside
               museums seems still heavily guided by ideologies, con-
               ceptions of knowledge and the technologies which inform
               them and our habits, leaving open the question whether art,
               within museums, can still represent a transformative and
               free space for creativity, or if it caters more to the – bodily
              – reinforcement of the status quo.




ANNA CALISE                           73                              AN-ICON
AN-ICON has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme. Grant agreement No. 834033 AN-ICON.
The project is hosted by the Department of Philosophy “Piero Martinetti” – Department of Excellence at the State University of Milan.



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