The work of the audience: visual matrix methodology in museums

ABSTRACT

Visual matrix methodology has been designed for researching cultural imaginaries. It is an image-led, group-based method that creates a “third space” research setting to observe audience groups re-enacting lived experience of an event or process that takes place in the third space of a cultural setting. In this article, the method is described through its use in relation to an art-science exhibition, Human+ Future of the species, where three audience groups with investments in technology worked with exhibition material to achieve a complex ambivalent state of mind regarding technological futures. The visual matrix has been designed to capture the affective and aesthetic quality of audience engagement in third space by showing what audiences do with what is presented to them. We argue that such methodologies are useful for museums as they grapple with their role as sites where citizens not only engage in dialogue with one another but actively re-work their imaginaries of the future.

KEYWORDS:

• Visual matrix
• third space
• cultural imaginary
• aesthetic third
• civic museum
• technology

Acknowledgements

This study was supported by the ArtScience Museum Singapore. Visual matrices and analysis included partners at various stages: Nina Ernst, Associate Director, Programmes, ArtScience Museum, Katie Dyer, Senior Curator, Contemporary, Museum of Applied Arts and Science, Rachel Perry, Research Fellow, Australia Council.

Notes on contributors

Lynn Froggett has a Social Sciences/Humanities background. She researches socially engaged arts in clinical, community, cultural, arts and health and art-science contexts. Recent topics include memory loss, pain, disabilities, robotics, technology, and civic renewal. She is Professor/Co-Director of the Institute for Citizenship, Society and Change at the University of Central Lancashire, UK, Executive Chair of the Association for Psychosocial Studies and Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences.

Lizzie Muller is a curator and researcher specialising in interaction, audience experience and interdisciplinary collaboration. Her research explores the relationship between curatorial practice and shifts in contemporary knowledge formations, audience-centred curatorial methodologies, the impact of digital media on curating and museology and the history and future of museums as sites of knowledge creation.

Jill Bennett is Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow at the University of New South Wales (UNSW), where she is also Director of the National Institute for Experimental Arts, and Founding Director of The Big Anxiety – festival of arts + science + people. Her felt Experience & Empathy Lab (fEEL) advances the study of the subjective experience of ageing, mental health, marginalisation and stigma, combining psycho-social approaches with the use of immersive environments and virtual reality.

Notes

1 See Froggett, Manley, and Roy (2015) for an empirical comparison of results produced by a visual matrix and a focus group.

2 Associations branch, forming new clusters of imagery and “nodes” of ideas or affective intensities. The Deleuzian metaphor of the rhizome (Deleuze & Guattari, 1988) captures the images, affects ideas and non-linear thought processes of the visual matrix.

3 Currently also associated with the International Research Group for Psychosocietal Analysis (Hollway & Volmerg, 2010).

4 Agatha Haines (2013). Transfigurations [installation] see https://www.marinabaysands.com/museum/exhibition-archive/human-plus/life-edges.html.

5 Stelarc (2015). Propel: Body on Robot Arm [video 5m 29sec] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bRpTn0KKd8.

6 Julijonas Urbonas (2010). Euthanasia Coaster. http://julijonasurbonas.lt/euthanasia-coaster/.

7 Addie Wagenknecht (2012). Optimisation of Parenting, Part 2. http://www.placesiveneverbeen.com/details/optimization-of-parenting-part-2.

8 Institute for Media Innovation (IMI) Nanyang Technological University (NTU) Singapore (n.d.). Nadine [participatory installation] https://www.marinabaysands.com/museum/exhibition-archive/human-plus/life-edges.html.

9 Orlan (1994). Self-Hybridation, Entre-deux (Self-Hybridation, In-Between 1994). https://www.marinabaysands.com/museum/exhibition-archive/human-plus/augmented-abilities.html.

10 Nina Sellars (2006–2007). Oblique-Images from Stelarc’s Extra Ear Surgery. https://dublin.sciencegallery.com/humanplus/oblique—images-stelarc’s-extra-ear-surgery/.

11 Told in relation to Oron Katz and Ionat Zurr (2000). Semi-Loving Worry Dolls. https://www.marinabaysands.com/museum/exhibition-archive/human-plus/life-edges.html.

12 James Auger and Jimmy Loizeau (2009). Afterlife. http://www.auger-loizeau.com/projects/afterlife.

13 This distinction between subjective object (“for me”) and object objectively perceived (“for itself”) reflects Winnicott’s (1971) account of the tension between object qualities of “internality” and “externality”. This tension impels the creation of a third through symbolisation.

14 See Latchford (2018).

Additional information

Funding

Curating Third Space is supported by the Australian Research Council Linkage scheme [grant number LP150100481] and the Australian Government through the Australian Council, its arts funding and advisory body.