Museum as multisensorial site: story co-making and the affective interrelationship between museum visitors, heritage space, and digital storytelling

ABSTRACT

The museum in the digital age is not only a storyteller telling a fixed story to visitors through curatorial design, but a story co-maker in collaboration with visitors’ experience in the space. Building on the understanding that the co-production of stories lies in the interrelationship between museum visitors, museum space, and digital storytelling, this research is interested in the construction of affective stories, specifically the question of how the affective environment for such storytelling is understood and formed. By examining the Palace Museum, the heritage museum located on the heritage site of the Forbidden City, Beijing, we consider how the heritage space becomes a performative event, and how the virtual space acts as an extension of the physical site. We explore the quality of this heritage museum experience, which has implications for how heritage museums can harness and make practical use of the affective interrelationship within the designed museum space.

KEYWORDS:

• Affective experience
• digital storytelling
• heritage space
• story co-making
• heritage museum
• the Forbidden City

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The Forbidden City, which was the center of state power for over five centuries during late Imperial China, is listed as World Cultural Heritage by United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. The Palace Museum, which is the other name of this heritage site, demonstrates the layout and spatial design that has been inherited from and embodies Chinese traditional culture and reflects its ancient architectural hierarchy and design. The site contains religious buildings in the form of Buddhist chambers, which reflects the various Han, Manchu, Mongolian, and Tibetan ethnic cultures to show a sense of integration. The palace contains landscaped gardens, courtyards, and buildings with nearly 10,000 rooms filled with furniture and artworks.

2 See: https://www.dpm.org.cn/classify/exhibition.html

3 Weil conceptualizes museums as ‘social enterprise’, ‘treasure house’, and ‘establishment’.

4 See: https://en.dpm.org.cn/about/news/2016-02-29/2388.html.

5 See: https://en.dpm.org.cn/exhibitions/galleries/2017-10-10/2723.html.

6 The focus of this article is not on the aesthetics of Chinese traditional painting as reflected in composition and perspective, or any other painting techniques, such as brush marks, but rather the architectural space in terms of cultural residuals visually perceived through the presence of the painting

7 See Rettberg (2011) regarding various levels of interactivity impacting on storylines and building a sense of story coherence.

8 Nevertheless, some exhibitions have nothing to do with the heritage site, such as the Cartier show at Wu Men gallery. See: https://www.dpm.org.cn/show/226147.html

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Faculty Research Grant by Macau University of Science and Technology Foundation (FRG-21-029-FA).

Notes on contributors

Peng Liu

Peng Liu is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Humanities and Arts, Macau University of Science and Technology. His research is in the field of Culture studies and Visual Culture, with a focus on the notion of embodiment. His latest article ‘Walking in the Forbidden City: embodied encounters in narrative geography’ is published at Visual Studies, (Routledge, 2018). Recent publications include chapters in: Body Tensions: Beyond Corporeality in Time and Space (Brill, 2014); Engaging with Fashion: Perspectives on Communication, Education & Business Exploring (with L. Lan, Brill, 2018). Affective Architectures: More-than-representational Approaches to Heritage (Routledge, 2020), and Storytelling in Luxury Fashion Marketing: Visual Culture and Digital Technology (with L. Lan, Routledge, 2020). He is also a practicing visual artist working with wide range of mediums.

Lan Lan

Lan Lan is a Senior Lecturer at School of Fashion, Beijing Institute of Fashion Technology (BIFT). Her research area is in Museum Studies and Fashion studies. She has also deeply involved in curating exhibitions and fashion shows.