Re-inscriptions: Text to Object
An investigation of the use of ICT in the reproduction of historical texts, including archival materials, in museum contexts
Participants: Louise Purbrick, University of Brighton and Rebecca Reynolds, Victoria and Albert Museum
Abstract
What is the relationship between looking and reading in museums? What role can listening play? This project investigated whether the use of digital technologies, particularly portable audio files, can create a time and space for concentration on a particular museum object. The curriculum of arts students is packed with secondary sources, texts that offer skilful re-interpretations of art and design histories. This project produced prototype podcasts that reinstated primary sources and considered how their use in museum contexts could offer a more direct engagement with past and present designed forms. Podcasts ranged from evidence presented to the Select Committee of Arts and Manufactures in 1835 to Ann Oakley’s, 1974 text, Housewife.
Each provides a an established or alternative context for a series of objects, including Joseph Paxton’s sketch of the Crystal Palace and Homemaker tableware sold in Woolworth’s between 1956 and 1968. Addressed to key issues in design theory and practice, such as the meanings of Great Exhibitions, the relationship between work and art, the problem of exploitation in the production process and that of production itself in an ecological society, each podcasts also can be used in other teaching contexts.
The General Bearing of the Great Exhibition on the Progress of Art and ScienceWilliam Whewell, "The General Bearing of the Great Exhibition on the Progress of Art and Science" Lectures on the Results of the Great Exhibition, 1852, read by Martin Nichols. To listen to the podcast, click the play button to the right: |
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Last Words on the Exhibition"Last Words on the Exhibition", Reynolds Newspaper, 12 October, 1851, read by Martin Nichols. To listen to the podcast, click the play button to the right: |
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