VIRTUAL REALITIES AND THE MUSEUM EXPERIENCE
How VR is improving the visitor experience at
the Anne Frank House, Het Scheepvaartmuseum
and Tropenmuseum
Jennifer Willcock
MA Heritage: Museum Studies Thesis
University of Amsterdam
Submitted to the Graduate School of Humanities at the University of Amsterdam in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree
Master of Arts in Heritage Studies: Museum Studies
Author: Jennifer Willcock Student Number: 11592702 Word Count: 17,194
Supervisor: Dr. Dos Elshout
Secondary Reader: Prof.dr. Bram Kempers
ABSTRACT
Virtual Reality (VR) has recently become a trend in museums worldwide. In 2018, three museums with very different missions incorporated VR into their exhibitions, each to diverse effect. By analysing the cases of the Anne Frank House, Het Scheepvaartmuseum and Tropenmuseum, it is possible to explore the many
possibilities that VR technology now offers museums. This thesis will explore to what extent the interactive capabilities of VR can be used to enrich visitors’ experiences, and how it can encourage their engagement with the museums respective topics.
Key Words:
Virtual Reality, Visitor Experience, Authenticity, Interactivity, Accessibility, Edutainment, Disneyfication, Intangible Cultural Heritage
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank the staff and my fellow students of the MA Museum Studies course for their support over the last 20 months - to share our enthusiasm for museums has been a joy, and I hope we will one day be colleagues again. I would also like to extend my thanks to Charlotte Bosman and Titia Zoeter, my interviewees, who were so generous with their time and provided many valuable insights on this topic.
Thank you to the Jansen family who have been so generous in sharing their home with me. Thank you to Jan for his continuous encouragement.
Finally, thank you to my parents for their constant support, whatever I do and wherever I go.
This thesis is dedicated to my grandfather, Ken Willcock, without whom this Masters would not have been possible.
CONTENTS
Abstract ……….…………....……….……… 2
Acknowledgements ………...……... 4
Introduction ………...………. 8
1. Authenticity and Accessibility at the Anne Frank House ………..……… 16
Constructing an Authentic Experience………...……….. 18
A Virtual Museum is an Accessible Museum ………...……….. 27
2. Edutainment, Spectacle and Disneyfication at Het Scheepvaartmuseum ……… 32
Interactivity and Edutainment ………...……… 34
Spectacle and the Experience Economy ………..………….. 37
Disneyfication and Dare to Discover ………...………… 40
3. Virtual Reality and Intangible Cultural Heritage at the Tropenmuseum ……..….. 44
Making the Intangible, Virtual …..………....……. 47
The Practicalities of VR ………...….. 51
Conclusion ……….……….. 56
Bibliography ………....………. 61
Appendix A: Images ……….…….. 65
Appendix B: Interview Transcripts ……….……….. 81
1. Charlotte Bosman, Digital Project Manager, Anne Frank House ……..…. 81
2. Titia Zoeter, Exhibition Maker, Tropenmuseum ………..….. 88
INTRODUCTION
In his 2001 essay The Law of Accelerating Returns, the inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil states that “an analysis of the history of technology shows that
technological change is exponential, contrary to the common-sense ‘intuitive linear’ view. So we won’t experience 100 years of progress in the 21st century - it will be 1 more like 20,000 years of progress (at today’s rate)”. Indeed, there is no doubt that in this Digital Age, technological innovations are ever more frequent, and that digital technology has now transformed many experiences in daily life. Museums are no exception. Since photographing their collections in the late eighteenth century, museums have had a long history of adopting the latest technology to improve their working practices. However, it is only in recent years that digital technology within museums has become a specialism, with there now being departments and
conferences entirely dedicated to the topic. This drive within the sector to embrace new technology demonstrates that museums not only preserve the past, but are also continuously looking to the future.
One of the more recent trends has been Virtual Reality (VR). The prevalence of VR in museums, galleries and biennales of late has demonstrated the
technology’s wide-ranging potential in the field of arts and culture. So far, VR has 2 been used to offer virtual tours , virtual experiences , and even entire virtual 3 4 museums. With its ability to create a deeply personal interaction by placing the 5 participant in another reality, VR is an attractive option for museums who wish to engage and inspire visitors. What could be more effective at conveying a different time or place than (virtually) transporting the museum visitor there? Inspiring new
1 Kurzweil (1948) is known for his many correct predictions for the future of technology. In 1990 he
famously claimed that a computer would defeat a world chess champion before 1998 - it did, in 1997. He has an 86% rate of accuracy, and Bill Gates called him “the best person I know at predicting the future of artificial intelligence”. He is currently Director of Engineering at Google.
2 2017 was the first time VR was shown at Venice Biennale, to great success. In 2018, 40 pieces were
shown. https://submarinechannel.com/venice-vr-2018-vr-in-competition/
3 British Museum: https://blog.britishmuseum.org/new-virtual-reality-tour-with-oculus/ 4 The World’s First Photography Exhibition:
https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-travel-1839-worlds-first-photography-virtual-reality
5 The Kremer and EUseum:
http://www.thekremercollection.com/the-kremer-museum/
perspectives and capturing the visitor’s full attention is not so easily done with text, images and objects alone. VR is rich with potential.
Through an exploration of three cases studies, in this thesis I will question to what extent can the interactive and immersive capabilities of VR be used to enrich visitors’ experiences, and how can it encourage their engagement with the
museums’ respective values?
What is VR?
At this point, it is important to define exactly what is meant by the term “Virtual Reality”, which is used to describe both the artificial environment and the technology used to create the experience (merriam-webster.com). VR is characterised by its use of a headset, which covers the participant’s eyes in order to fully immerse them in the visual experience. Headphones and audio also work to create a completely new reality by further occupying the user’s senses, but these are not always used. This is different to Augmented Reality (AR), which predominantly uses smartphones to combine the participant’s real physical surroundings with “an overlay of digital
information” (merriam-webster.com). AR has been used by many museums as it can be easily integrated with exhibitions - for example, the Rijksmuseum Twenthe’s AR app for the Louise te Poele exhibition in 2016 encouraged visitors to use their
phones to scan the still lifes, which would then “subtly start to move and come to life - with the help of animations, text, films and sound clips” (rijksmuseumtwenthe.nl). The use of AR by museums has already been the focus of much scholarly research, and so this thesis will focus solely on VR, which in comparison has received little academic attention regarding its use in museums. I will also be looking specifically at VR which has been integrated into a pre-existing museum – not stand-alone
experiences such as those exhibited at the Venice Biennale. This is because I wish to explore how VR can benefit and contribute to what already exists within the museum space.
This current trend of using VR is the result of many years of technological progress. VR has been available since the 1980’s, but its recent boom has been spurred on by the development of truly realistic software and - crucially for museums
- the increasing affordability of quality headsets. These range from €450 for the high-end Oculus Rift and €200 for the Oculus Go, to mobile phone compatible options such as Google Cardboard, priced at just €10. The combination of
widespread creative potential paired with its recent affordability has made VR an attractive prospect for a huge range of museums.
As VR technology continues to improve, it will become clear whether we can expect VR to emerge as an integral part of the museum experience, as many
Audio-Visual technologies already have, or whether this current trend will come to an end when the novelty of VR has worn off, or a new technology arrives to replace it.
The Case Studies
This year (2018) in Amsterdam, three museums with very different backgrounds have incorporated VR into their exhibitions, each to diverse effect. By analysing the cases of the Anne Frank House, Het Scheepvaartmuseum and Tropenmuseum, it is possible to explore the many possibilities that VR technology now offers museums.
By focussing on three case studies in Amsterdam, I hope to give a clear comparison of how different types of museums have used VR within the same cultural, social and economic context. My hope is that this offers a fairer comparison than if I had chosen museums in a variety of locations, and so will allow me to focus on how VR can be used to approach different topics. In choosing local museums I will also benefit from being able to conduct face to face interviews with museum professionals who have been involved in the VR projects of their respective
museums. The reason I have selected these three museums in particular is that they give three very different perspectives on VR. The themes and objectives of the Anne Frank House, Het Scheepvaartmuseum and Tropenmuseum are each distinctive, as are their visitor demographics. Because of this, the ways in which they have all employed VR are equally diverse.
In June 2018, the Anne Frank House introduced a virtual tour of the annex. This is available for VR users online at oculus.com, for museum visitors at partner institutions around the world, and exclusively for disabled visitors at the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam. Through digital reconstruction, the tour shows the annex as it
was during Anne’s time there; by “using cutting-edge visualization technology and extensive historical research, the end result opens up the experience to an even wider audience in a fully immersive way” (Oculus.com). This VR experience raises questions about how museums must work to present themselves as authentic, an issue that is thoroughly discussed by Pine and Gilmore (2007). The sensitive subject matter of the Anne Frank VR means that it is imperative that the VR connects users to Anne’s story without it appearing gimmicky or distasteful. However, the immersive capabilities of VR have also been proven to promote empathy, which suggests that the medium of VR is ideally suited to this subject. This case study also serves to show how VR can be used to create greater accessibility for a wider audience. The main motivation for creating the tour was to allow disabled visitors to experience the museum, as well as reach a wider global audience who cannot visit the real museum site.
In contrast, at Het Scheepvaartmuseum, VR is being used to attract visitors to the museum in person. Launched in December 2017, Dare to Discover - A VR
Journey is described as “a spectacular time travel journey back to the VOC ship Amsterdam during the Golden Age” (hetscheepvaartmuseum.nl). Visitors are given a
flying tour of the bustling seventeenth century shipyard, whilst sat in a specially designed studio in the museum’s replica of the Amsterdam. As a purely cinematic experience, this case demonstrates the “edutainment” aspect of VR - a term which has been coined to describe the tendency of museums to combine education with elements of entertainment and interactivity. For many visitors, Dare to Discover will be their first encounter with VR, and so the novelty of the virtual experience will leave as great an impression as the historical content. Should museums use such
novelties to engage visitors? This case will be an opportunity to explore the ongoing debate over whether the primary role of the museum is to educate or entertain. “Disneyfication” is the phrase which is frequently used to present the risks of
edutainment, with the fear that such approaches render the museum no more than a theme park. It is widely documented that museums are becoming more hybridised in order to position themselves as part of a wider cultural scene (see Kotler, 2001), and that now more than ever before must focus on the visitor experience. This chapter
will evaluate whether interactive attractions such as VR are a necessary requirement for museums to remain popular with visitors.
My third case study shows yet another perspective on the topic of museums and VR. Intangible cultural heritage will be brought to life in the Tropenmuseum’s temporary exhibition Longing For Mecca, which promises to “take visitors on a pilgrimage to Mecca” (tropenmuseum.nl). A VR headset in the centre of the exhibition will show Luca Locatelli’s 360 degree video Pilgrimage: A 21st Century
Journey Through Mecca and Medina. Intangible cultural heritage has gained
considerable importance since UNESCO’s 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of
the Intangible Cultural Heritage and is a crucial topic for the Tropenmuseum, which
has been transformed from an ethnographic museum to a museum of world cultures. I will be discussing how VR has the potential to convey the experience of intangible cultural heritage to visitors, which is often difficult to present practically within the museum space. The VR footage shows the holiest Islamic sites in the cities of Mecca and Medina. It was taken (with the Saudi government’s permission) during the minor pilgrimage of Umrah, which may be completed at any time of year - unlike Hajj, which is scheduled in accordance with the Islamic calendar. It shows pilgrims praying, completing Tawaf (the ritual of circling the holy Kaaba), and taking tourist photographs of their visit. Significantly, only Muslims are permitted to travel to Mecca, and so this VR experience is the closest that many of the Tropenmuseum’s visitors will ever get to experiencing the holy site. Whilst a conventional film could give a similar effect, the 360-degree capabilities of VR allow the participant to feel surrounded by the crowds of pilgrims. This gives an impression of the immensity of the Islamic pilgrimages, which is otherwise difficult to grasp, and provides essential context to the material culture that is shown in the exhibition.
I have some personal insight into this case study, as in the spring of 2018 I completed a five-month internship at the Tropenmuseum, during which one of my responsibilities was obtaining the rights to the VR video from The New York Times. It was this task which inspired the subject of my thesis. This experience, along with my interview with Exhibition maker Titia Zoeter provides some insight into the practical arrangements necessary to providing VR. Although the focus of this thesis is how VR benefits the visitor, it is also important to question whether these benefits
outweigh the logistical, financial and practical difficulties VR often causes for the museum. Although these practical issues will be raised in relation to the
Tropenmuseum VR, they are relevant to all three cases studies.
Finally, a note on the sequence of my analysis; I have chosen each of my cases to be distinctive from each other. Therefore, I will discuss a single case per chapter, and compare it to similar examples from museums around the world (and in some cases, online). Naturally, there will be comparisons drawn between the
museums, but for the most part I wish to focus in detail on the diverse ways in which VR is being used to bring each museum’s subject to life.
Methodology
With all three case studies, I hope to analyse how the interactive qualities of VR can encourage visitors to engage with diverse topics. My selection also gives a broad overview of the current ways in which VR is being used in museums and heritage institutions, and allows me to speculate about the potential this technology holds for museums in the future - both in the Netherlands and across the world. The case studies take precedence in this thesis, as it has been necessary for me to take an inductive approach to my research. This is because VR is a relatively new
technology to be incorporated into museums, and so there is scarce academic discourse specific to the subject. I have therefore relied greatly on analysing examples of VR, and on the information gained from interviews with museum
professionals. As far as I am aware, the research in the following pages breaks new ground on the topic of VR and museums.
Despite this, I have found it is possible to apply concepts from texts that predate VR. For example, Pine and Gilmore’s definition of authenticity can be used to discuss how museums can effectively incorporate VR to be in line with their core values and objectives - an important issue for all three case studies (“Museums and Authenticity” 2007). This text is one which I return to throughout the thesis, although it never mentions VR. Similarly, Walter Benjamin’s renowned discussion of aura in
The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility (1936) can easily be
Benjamin never having known of VR. Charity Counts’ explanation of “Spectacular Design in Museum Exhibitions” (2009) is useful for exploring VR’s impact upon visitors, as is Andrew Barry’s description of how museums have evolved from
traditional collections to interactive exhibitions which encourage visitors to physically experience scientific concepts for themselves (Political Machines, 2001). Yet, while these texts have been helpful for my analysis, it is the case studies and interviews which provide the most insight.
I conducted interviews with museum employees who have been fundamental in initiating and materialising the VR projects featured as case studies (for interview transcripts see Appendix B). At the Anne Frank House, Digital Project Manager Charlotte Bosman gave me a great deal of insight into the VR project. The VR software was co-created by Oculus and ForceField, with research input from the museum. She explained the motives behind the project, which concur with the museum’s values of education and creating greater access to Anne Frank’s story. Titia Zoeter, Exhibition maker at the Tropenmuseum was also extremely helpful. The
Longing for Mecca exhibition was adapted from its previous format at the
Volkenkunde museum (Leiden) in 2013. Notably, whilst many elements of the Tropenmuseum exhibition were part of the previous version, it was Titia Zoeter’s suggestion to incorporate VR into the new exhibition. I had also arranged an interview with Saskia Oranje, who worked on the VR project at Het
Scheepvaartmuseum, but unfortunately due to scheduling conflicts this was not possible. These interviews gave me insight into how museums are currently using VR, and the decision-making processes which were behind each of these projects.
In addition, I have placed myself in the position of the museum visitor by experiencing each VR first hand - making my research truly first-hand and inductive. Although the full virtual experience is impossible to convey in writing, I have include many photographs and screen captures of the VR footage. These can be found in Appendix A, and will go some way in showing what each VR consists of. The video from the Longing For Mecca VR can also be viewed online, which I encourage readers to view.
Through a combination of interviews with museum professionals, analysis of each museum’s VR experience and use of relevant (albeit scarce) academic
literature, I hope to be able to assess whether the interactive and immersive capabilities of VR are successfully being used to enrich visitors’ experiences, and evaluate whether its presence is benefitting museums and their visitors.
CHAPTER ONE
The Anne Frank House Foundation was established in 1957, when Prinsengracht 263 was saved from demolition by Amsterdam citizens and Anne’s father, Otto Frank. Its purpose was to preserve the annex and open it to the public, as well as to promote the ideals of Anne Frank (“How it all began” annefrank.org). Since it’s restoration and opening in 1960 it has received a steadily increasing number of visitors, and it is now considered one of Amsterdam’s top sites for tourists. Of the museum's impressive 1.2 million visitors in 2017, only 6% were Dutch, proof that Anne’s story has reached people all around the world. This was Otto’s intention, 6 who said the museum “was set up to increase awareness of the events of the dark years of the Second World War and the persecution of the Jews and to fight
discrimination, prejudice, and oppression in the world today” (“Otto Frank’s Mission” annefrank.org).
In June 2018, on what would have been Anne’s 89th birthday, the Anne Frank Foundation (which oversees the museum, collection, and worldwide educational programme) launched its first VR experience. It consists of a full digital
reconstruction of the secret annex, as it would have appeared when Anne and seven others lived there between 1942-1944 (Fig. 1-4). The reconstruction is significant because when the museum opened Otto Frank requested the rooms remain empty. 7 The annex’s literal and metaphorical emptiness is a poignant memorial to those whose lives were taken. However, the VR shows all the annex rooms fully furnished and complete with the inhabitants’ belongings, giving a substantially different
impression of the space. Participants can either navigate the annex space
independently in Tour Mode, or choose the guided Story Mode. The latter consists of a 25 minute tour which highlights significant objects in each room and also includes key quotations from Anne’s diary (Fig. 5). In 1999 a project with a similar objective was implemented when the annex was temporarily furnished and then photographed (Fig. 6 and 7). However, the capabilities of the latest VR technology have resulted in an immersive, interactive experience which has never before been achievable. This
6 For comparison: 25% were American, 15% British, 9% German, 5% French. Source: 2017 Annual
Report, annefrank.org
7 “After the Anne Frank House had been restored, they asked me if I wanted to have the rooms
refurbished. But I said, ‘No. They took everything out during the war, and I want to keep it that way.’” Otto Frank in het Vrije Volk, 24 mei 1962 Source: “How it all began” annefrank.org
is a unique case, which I have selected because of its interactive nature, its sensitive subject matter, and the way in which VR has been successfully utilised to achieve the museum’s main goal – to share the story of Anne Frank with as many people as possible.
The VR was created in collaboration with Force Field, a Dutch video game developer based in Amsterdam, and Oculus, an American company which is at the forefront of developing VR hardware and software. This partnership has resulted in an immersive, high quality experience in which users can explore a simulacrum of the annex with a 360°, three-dimensional view of each room. Developing custom made software (rather than using video footage) is a time consuming and expensive process which takes a lot of planning, discussion and skill to implement, and
therefore the final product deserves to be scrutinised. I met with Charlotte Bosman, the Digital Project Manager who was in charge of the project, to learn more about the Anne Frank Foundation’s perspective on VR (see Appendix B). Our conversation was enlightening, as she explained the process and outcomes of the project. With the help of this interview, and by comparing the Anne Frank VR to other similar cases, this chapter will consider to what extent the interactive capabilities of VR can be used to enrich the visitor/user experience. It will also explore how VR has been 8 utilised by the Anne Frank museum to support its values of authenticity and
accessibility.
Constructing an Authentic VR Experience
The term “virtual reality” is an oxymoron which claims VR technology to be both virtual and real – and yet engaging with VR is nonetheless a real, lived experience for the participant. Similarly, it appears paradoxical to describe a VR programme which reconstructs a physical place as authentic; by definition “authentic” is to be original, not an imitation or copy. Yet despite being a virtual copy of the annex, the Anne Frank VR nevertheless creates an authentic experience for users. This is
8 The Anne Frank VR is being used almost exclusively outside of the Amsterdam museum site, and so
it must be noted my use of “visitors” in this chapter is a loose definition. For the sake of coherence with the rest of this thesis, I will consider VR users who are not at the Anne Frank museum to be
attested by their reviews, which praise the VR programme for creating the feeling of “actually being in the annex” and “seeing it for real” (Oculus.com). The complete virtual replica raises many questions surrounding authenticity, including: how does the visitor’s experience of the VR differ from their experience of the physical
museum? How does the VR encourage visitors to engage with the story of Anne Frank in ways that visiting the real-life annex cannot? And finally, is VR an appropriate medium for this subject?
The specific concept of authenticity that I refer to here is that discussed by Pine and Gilmore in their 2007 article “Museums and Authenticity”, in which they propose that “people increasingly see the world as real or fake” (76). Because of the shift to an Experience Economy, in which consumers increasingly want to have “memorable events that engage them in an inherently personal way”, Pine and Gilmore assert that museums “must learn to understand, manage and excel at rendering authenticity” (76) in order to attract visitors and compete with other leisure activities. But how can authenticity be rendered when it comes to VR, which is always a reconstruction or simulation? The Anne Frank House VR experience demonstrates how authenticity can be achieved, and why this is such a desirable quality sought by museum visitors and VR users.
Authenticity Through Values
Pine and Gilmore’s article proposes two “key dimensions” which are needed for museums to “compose the essence of what it means to be authentic” (79). The first instructs the museum to be true to itself, by ensuring everything it does upholds the institution’s values and purpose, and never repudiates its heritage (79). In the case of the Anne Frank House, the Foundation’s values and goals are clearly explained in the “About Us” section of its website, which states:
Our first task is to (1) increase global awareness of Anne Frank’s life story. We use the museum, our exhibitions, and (online) publications to do so […] We (2) develop educational programs and publications based on Anne’s life story. We manage the collection and open Anne’s hiding place up to the
public. It is our way of (3) making young people aware of the dangers of
antisemitism, racism, and discrimination, and the importance of freedom and equal rights. (annefrank.org; emphasis and numbers added)
As I will now explain, each of these values has been considered in the creation of the VR experience.
1. Global Awareness and Public Access
The most obvious value that has been adhered to is the increasement of global awareness, as the technology is able to recreate the annex anywhere in the world, allowing many people who will never have the opportunity to visit the real site to experience the space. In fact, the VR is only available for disabled visitors (who cannot access the annex) to view at the museum in Amsterdam meaning VR users are an entirely different group of people than those who visit the real-life annex. The VR is currently being used by many of the Anne Frank Foundation’s international partners in Berlin, Argentina, Brazil, Hong Kong, and several museums in the US. The VR programme can also be downloaded for free by owners of Oculus headsets and experienced in their own home. According to Charlotte Bosman, reaching
people who are not able to visit the museum was one of the key reasons the VR was created. She explained that the Anne Frank Foundation has many international partners and that there are “more than 200 exhibitions all over the world about Anne Frank, in Europe and the US, also in Asia, well you name it and there’s an Anne Frank exhibition. We want to use the VR experience […] to make the story of Anne more accessible for the whole world” (Appendix B). In fact, accessibility is such a fundamental part of why the VR has been created, that I will discuss it in greater detail in the next part of this chapter. For now, it is clear that the VR experience promotes the museum’s goal of creating greater global awareness and its aim to open the annex to as many people as possible.
2. Educational Programme
Another of the museum’s aims is to develop educational programmes based on Anne’s life story. The VR experience was designed from the outset with this value in mind, because the project was initially proposed by ForceField and Oculus precisely
because they were keen to develop their first educational VR programme (Appendix B). The intention to educate is most apparent in the programme’s “Story Mode” option, as this begins with a brief introduction that explains the historical events which caused the Frank family to go into hiding. Story Mode also includes extracts from Anne’s diary, which are read aloud to the user when they encounter specific objects in each room. These quotations explain in Anne’s own words what it was like to live in the annex. For example, when the radio in the kitchen is viewed by the user, an extract from Anne’s diary explains its importance. Oculus’ website describes this feature as “imbuing each room and piece of furniture with significant weight”, as her comments on daily life in the annex have an inescapable poignancy.
Furthermore, research has shown that the medium of VR is a highly effective educational tool, due to the immersive experience it provides. The stimulating environment created by VR has been proven to “attract learners’ attention and
support inquiry-based learning” (Liou et al. 2017: 110). In fact, in other industries, VR is being used to teach practical skills such as medical procedures because of its ability to simulate real life scenarios.
The museum’s website already has a huge wealth of information for anyone who wants to learn more about Anne Frank and cannot visit the museum, but only VR can provide such a unique educational experience, which Charlotte Bosman acknowledged in our discussion:
Of course, with all the other things we do here at the museum, like the
workshops and also the stories on the website, we try to tell the story of Anne Frank. But the VR really adds to the experience, it’s immersive, it’s something that only VR can do. Of course, on a computer you can click through the rooms and read the stories and watch videos, but VR is really like you’re there (Appendix B)
The Anne Frank museum’s VR experience therefore is an educational tool which offers something completely different to the rest of its educational programme.
3. Educating Young People
The final value which the museum must uphold in order to be considered authentic is their vow to “educate young people about the dangers of antisemitism, racism, and
discrimination, and about the significance of freedom, equal rights, and democracy” (annefrank.org). VR is an effective way of engaging young people in these difficult issues because the immersive medium virtually places the user in another person’s perspective - in this case, Anne’s. This encourages users to connect with Anne’s story on a personal level, and empathy is surely the most effective way to prevent prejudice. In fact, Researchers at Stanford University’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab have conducted several experiments on the topic of VR and empathy. In the experiment “Becoming Homeless”, they discovered that “participants who completed a VR perspective-taking task had more positive attitudes and signed a petition
supporting helpful initiatives toward the homeless at significantly higher rates than the participants who just imagined what it would be like to become homeless or performed a less immersive perspective-taking task” (Herrera et al., 2018: 33). This suggests that VR is more effective at provoking empathy than other mediums, such as film. As one of the researchers stated, “experiences are what define us as
humans, so it’s not surprising that an intense experience in VR is more impactful than imagining something” (Bailenson quoted by Shashkevich, 2018).
The Anne Frank House is not the first to use VR technology to convey a sensitive topic to its audience - there have been several other projects with similar objectives commissioned by organisations worldwide. For example, The New York
Times’ VR App has a library of 360-degree videos which allow viewers to “join [their]
award winning journalists at the center of it all”, from Iraqi forces fighting ISIS to the experience of a deaf person hearing sound for the first time. In 2015 three video portraits were created of children who, like Anne, were “driven from their homes by war and persecution - an 11-year-old boy from eastern Ukraine named Oleg, a 12-year-old Syrian girl named Hana and a 9-year-old South Sudanese boy named Chuol” (nytimes.com). That The New York Times, a respected source for news and journalism, have developed their own VR App demonstrates how well regarded VR now is as a medium for delivering educational and compassionate stories. As editor Jake Silverstein explained, “this new filmmaking technology enables an uncanny feeling of connection with people whose lives are far from our own” (nytimes.com).
Be Another Lab is another VR developer which has also been using VR with
racism, and generally engender empathy for others” (Souppouris 2014). Their experiments in creating empathy include “body swap” experiences in which users switch places with people such as the parent of a victim of police brutality in Rio de Janeiro, or an asylum seeker arriving in London. A similar experience is offered by the VR film Clouds Over Sidra, which is from the perspective of a 12 year old Syrian girl living in one of Jordan’s refugee camps . The film’s power to create empathy from a virtual experience is the subject of Chris Milk’s 2015 TED Talk (ted.com). Milk is an entrepreneur, developer and artist famous for his work with VR. In the talk, he spoke about how he developed Clouds Over Sidra, which was made for the United Nations’ VR project, UNVR (Fig. 8):
I started thinking about, is there a way that I can use modern and developing technologies to tell stories in different ways and tell different kinds of stories that maybe I couldn't tell using the traditional tools of filmmaking that we've been using for 100 years? So I started experimenting, and what I was trying to do was to build the ultimate empathy machine.
He also explained why VR is more effective at generating empathy than any other medium:
when you're sitting there in [Sidra’s] room, watching her, you're not watching it through a television screen, you're not watching it through a window, you're sitting there with her. When you look down, you're sitting on the same ground that she's sitting on. And because of that, you feel her humanity in a deeper way. You empathize with her in a deeper way. And I think that we can change minds with this machine.
For obvious reasons of sensitivity, the Anne Frank VR does not place the user next to Anne, or in her place - although it is arguably more poignant that her voice and belongings are present, whilst she herself is not. Her absence from the annex signifies the events which followed her time living there.
Finally, it’s important to note that the technology itself is beneficial for
attracting the attention of young people, as VR is still rarely accessible, and therefore for many it is unfamiliar and intriguing; although Biosca et al. warn that young people can be distracted by the novelty of VR equipment, which “can lead students to
understanding of information” (quoted by Economou and Tost 2008: 247). On the other hand, according to Bergamasco and Carrozzino, VR is especially effective in educating young people:
As for our experience, immersive VR has all the potentials to become a very effective means to communicate cultural content […] examples have shown that this technology, thanks to its compelling and appealing features, might act as a “picklock” particularly useful to target segments of the public, especially young people, more comfortable with new media than with traditional communication means (2010: 457)
VR is therefore a medium which is best suited to the Anne Frank Museum’s target audience of young people, and the immersive effect is proven to promote empathy. By seeing the annex from Anne’s point of view, young people will be able to
experience for themselves the consequences of anti-Semitism, racism, and
discrimination. In addition, as the research from Stanford University shows, the VR experience will have a positive, long term effect on their perspective of the world.
By analysing the VR alongside the museum’s stated values, it is clear that the Anne Frank VR upholds each of its values and thus, in accordance with Pine and Gilmore’s first dimension, can be considered an authentic experience.
Authenticity Through Appearance
The second key dimension that is needed to render a museum authentic is to “be what you seem to be and seem to be what you really are”, by never advertising the museum to be anything it is not (Pine and Gilmore, 2007: 79). In the case of the Anne Frank house, its unique selling point and main attraction for visitors is that it is the exact location at which Anne wrote her bestselling diary. Replicating the historic site in digital form therefore seems futile; as Walter Benjamin noted when he wrote about the reproduction of artworks, “the whole sphere of authenticity eludes
technological reproduction” (1936: 13). That is, even an exact replica will fail to capture the original’s “aura” - the intangible value that has been attributed to it by history. Yet the VR has been designed and implemented with great care, so as not to betray what a visit to the annex “really is”, and the digital experience is not without its own unique “aura” of history, interaction and poignancy. For this reason, I propose
that the VR should not be considered a replica, nor a substitute to visiting the museum, but an additional and alternative experience.
The research that was undertaken during the preparation of the VR
programme demonstrates that this is a new, yet faithful, adaptation of the real annex. The digital tour was designed to be as historically and factually accurate as possible to how the annex would have appeared from 1942 to 1944 when the Franks and their friends were living there - as opposed to the bare rooms of the current annex now on display at the museum. One of the key reasons for creating the VR was to have a furnished version of the annex - as Executive Director Ronald Leopald attests, “it is difficult to imagine what the hiding place looked like with furniture, and how cramped it was” (oculus.com 2018). The VR project is not the first to undertake 9 this task, as in the 1990’s the annex was filled with furnishings and photographed. Until recently, this could be viewed as a tour on the museum’s website. However, the software will soon be inaccessible with modern devices, and so VR was chosen as the new medium. Charlotte Bosman explained that research tasks for the VR programme included using “the photos from the 1990’s, Anne Frank’s diary, and other letters she wrote about the house” to select objects for the virtual rooms. Items such as Margot’s glasses, Otto’s books and a board game were verified by Otto’s photographs or descriptions written by Anne. A historian specialised in the 1930’s - 1940’s was also consulted. The objects were then checked with the museum’s Collections department, and although none were the original items (which were removed after the annex was discovered), according to Charlotte Bosman “they were the best we [the museum] could do to have an idea of how they lived” (Appendix B). Photos were then made of every angle of each object, so that they could be
accurately recreated in digital 3D (Fig. 9 and 10).
However, the VR tour is not simply a reproduction of the annex but a whole experience in itself, as the full potential of the medium has been used to offer an entirely immersive encounter. This includes the use of extracts from Anne’s diary, which are narrated to the user at different points throughout the tour, as well as sound effects, such as military planes flying overhead and birds singing outside the windows. These details make the user feel as if they have been transported back in
time. They also make the virtual space more convincing - for example, the sound of a dripping tap in the bathroom gets louder or quieter as the user moves their head nearer to or further from the sink in the corner. Whereas physical reproductions of the annex and Anne’s bedroom have been made before (Hope House by Simon Fujiwara at Kunsthaus Bregenz 2018, Anne Frank + You at Liverpool Cathedral 2008, Fig. 11, 12, 13), this is the first to capture not only the physical surroundings, but also the intangible qualities of light and sound which are so essential in creating the “aura” of the annex.
Another significant way in which the VR creates an additional and alternative experience to visiting the museum is that it provides an entirely solo encounter with the annex. Because of the individual headsets, users interact with their surroundings alone, which would never be possible at the busy museum site. This is beneficial for the sensitive topic, as it allows visitors to have a more personal, reflective and poignant interaction with the space. This is proven in the user reviews, with
comments such as “I felt I knew the story of Anne Frank, but this brought it to life in such a new and vivid way” (Oculus.com, 13th June 2018) and “it [the VR] makes the most of what it can provide in ways that both capture the participant and compels them to join on a short but emotional journey” (Oculus.com, 5th July 2018). This demonstrates the advantages of interactive tools such as VR, which have become integral to museums in recent years. In 2001, Andrew Barry wrote that science museums were increasingly expected to replace traditional displays with interactive exhibitions, as “putting the interactive model into practice promises to turn the unfocused visitor-consumer into the interested, engaged and informed” (129). By now, the interactive trend has spread to all kinds of museums, as visitors have come to expect “memorable events that engage them in an inherently personal way” (Pine and Gilmore, 76: 2007). Therefore the Anne Frank House’s VR experience is an example of how the museum is adopting new methods of engaging the public. Much like it’s website, which provides extensive information on the story of Anne Frank and a floorplan of the annex, VR can be seen as a useful modern addition to the
museum.
Because the VR tour offers an entirely different, yet no less valuable,
separate, new entity, and not simply a replica of the annex. With this qualification, a digital annex does not reflect badly on the authenticity of the Anne Frank House museum but is instead an asset.
A Virtual Museum is an Accessible Museum
The Anne Frank VR has many benefits but, according to Charlotte Bosman, the museum’s primary motivation for creating the experience was to make the secret annex more accessible for a greater number of people; specifically disabled visitors who are unable to navigate the steep attic stairs, and anyone who cannot travel to the museum site in Amsterdam (Appendix B). This is in keeping with the museum’s aim to reach as many people as possible and open the annex to the public, although the press releases for the project focussed on the VR’s recreation of the furnished annex rather than its benefits for visitors who cannot physically access the real, unfurnished annex. Nevertheless, the VR is a huge improvement for these visitors, who were previously catered for with a 360° photographic tour, available on the museum’s webpage. As Charlotte Bosman explained in her interview, the Adobe Flash software needed to provide this will soon be obsolete, and so Force Field and Oculus’ proposal to create a VR experience of the annex came at the perfect time (Appendix B). “Accessibility” is a broad term when it comes to museums, who are increasingly trying to engage with as diverse an audience as possible. In this case, I will focus on how VR has been used to benefit visitors to the museum site who have mobility issues which restrict their access to the annex, as well as the wider
international public who wish to better know Anne’s story but are unable to travel to Amsterdam. I will also consider how the technology itself can both provide more opportunities for access, but can also prove inaccessible or unfriendly to certain visitors too.
VR for Disabled Access
For many visitors, the most anticipated part of their trip to the Anne Frank House is seeing the famous bookcase which once hid the entrance to the annex. Yet for those with mobility issues, it is impossible to step beyond this point. Behind the secret door
are steep, narrow stairs, and there is no other entrance. This limitation is made clear on the museum’s website:
Unfortunately, the old part of the museum and the Secret Annex are not accessible for people using wheelchairs. A special entrance for people using wheelchairs provides access to the modern part of the museum, with the temporary
exhibition, the museum cafe, and the museum shop (annefrank.org) Whereas previously visitors with mobility difficulties could only access the annex through an online tour, the new VR experience at the Anne Frank House enables disabled visitors to experience the annex digitally, whilst they are inside the museum building. The advantage of having the tour available on site should not be
underestimated, as it allows disabled visitors to fully benefit from the “museum effect”, which is produced by them being at the historic location at which Anne Frank lived. 10
As previously noted, the VR experience is very different to the real,
unfurnished annex. However, the effect of being transported to another person’s reality has proven to be an emotive and powerful experience. It seems unlikely that a VR of the empty rooms could convey the same poignancy. Therefore, instead of directly translating a visit to the annex to a digital medium, the Anne Frank VR has replicated the emotional effect that the annex has upon visitors. In 2017, a similar approach was taken at the Hirshhorn museum in Washington D.C, when the museum used VR to recreate Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Mirrors exhibition for
wheelchair users (Fig. 14). The exhibition consisted of 6 rooms which were filled with mirrors to create a kaleidoscopic infinity effect; three of these rooms had narrow entrances unsuitable for wheelchairs. However, it was impossible to replicate the mirrors exactly, so instead the artist’s intention was recreated with “a digital replica of the room as it appears to the viewer, including black lines where the seams of the mirrors would appear. Early screen captures of the project earned Kusama’s approval, and a representative from her studio signed off on the final version”
(Overly, 2017). Thanks to this, “nearly 100 visitors with mobility constraints were able to use headsets to experience VR versions of the rooms” (hirschhorn.ci.edu, 2017).
These examples demonstrate VR can provide creative interpretations of real life experiences. They also prove that VR technology is now a viable solution for
providing access to disabled visitors, which is an important step towards making the museum as inclusive as possible.
VR for Remote Users
Thanks to the rise of digital technology, museums can no longer focus just on the visitors who walk through their doors, but must reach out to remote users who will only ever engage with online resources. According to Bergamasco and Carrozzino, “real users, potential users, and remote internet users are new categories of public which museums must address by exploiting new technologies so as to communicate and promote at best its heritage” (2010:453). This has been demonstrated by
museums creating increasingly sophisticated websites and apps,
as well as platforms such as Google Arts & Culture (artsandculture.google.com), which makes the collections of museums and galleries from across the world accessible to anyone with an internet connection.
At the Anne Frank House, the museum’s use of VR demonstrates their commitment to reaching more remote users. As well as being shown at international partner institutions, the virtual tour is also available to owners of Oculus headsets, who can access the experience for free in their own home. Although VR headsets are still a fledgling market, sales of affordable, quality headsets such as the Oculus Rift and Oculus GO have been steadily increasing - global shipments for VR
headsets reached 1.9 million units in the third quarter of 2018 (idc.com 2018), and in
this same quarter Oculus was the top manufacturer “capturing 25.9 percent of the entire VR market” (Graham, 2018). The Anne Frank VR therefore has a huge
potential market of remote users, reaching beyond the 1.3 million visitors who come to the museum’s Prinsengracht site every year.
The tour has also received much critical acclaim in the world of VR, proving that it is successful as a stand alone project, and not just because of its association with the museum. It won the Gold award for Best Nonfiction VR, as well as the Bronze Cinematic award at the 2018 Halo Awards, which celebrates European VR projects and is judged by a panel of industry experts (vrdays.co). Charlotte Bosman
also commented on the success of the tour in terms of the VR market: “you can review the app and give a maximum of 5 stars and I think it’s [average is] 4.6 or 4.8. It was received as one of the best apps of this summer, so that’s really good” (See Appendix B). In fact, the only major criticism from VR users has been that the current tour isn’t interactive enough - it was designed for the Oculus GO, which unlike the Oculus Rift does not let users walk around within the space, only look around from a fixed standing point.
As of yet there are no other examples of other museums engaging with remote VR users (VR is only used within the museum’s walls). However, 360° photographic tours of galleries are common on museum websites and are also
available through Google Arts and Culture, which gives access to institutions such as the Rijksmuseum, Van Gogh Museum, MoMA and Uffizi. This “Street View” option is very different to the submersive effect of VR. In contrast, there are a few examples of digital museums which are only accessible through VR. The most renowned of these projects is The Kremer Museum (Fig. 15 and 16). The virtual museum was
developed by The Kremer Collection, a non-profit organisation which was founded in 1994 by Dutch art collectors George and Ilone Kremer who wished to share
seventeenth century Dutch and Flemish art with the public. Their paintings are regularly loaned to museums across the world. In October 2017, the Collection launched The Kremer Museum, which is accessible exclusively through VR and displays all of its 74 artworks (thekremercollection.com). Each painting was
photographed 3,000 times to create an accurate 3D image that was then “set in an imagined celestial sphere” designed by architect Johan van Lierop (Siegal 2018). Founder George Kremer describes the VR as a combination of the best museum experiences: “perfect lighting, the possibility to look at the back of the painting, and a perfectly designed space” (kremercollection.com). However it was not for these reasons that VR was chosen, but its potential to reach remote users. As Mr Kremer told The New York Times, “we’ve been trying to spread knowledge about our
collection as wide as possible over many years, and this is a much faster way of reaching many more people” (quoted in Siegal). Like the Anne Frank Museum, the Kremer Collection recognised that VR has the potential to share the museum’s work with as many people as possible, and so by investing in this technology it is “ truly
possible for the public to experience masterworks in a museum setting, regardless of background and location” (George Kremer, quoted at kremercollection.com).
With technology such as VR making geographical limits redundant, museums with international reputations as great as the Anne Frank House must evolve to engage with remote users from around the world. Given the Anne Frank museum’s aim is to tell Anne’s story to as many people as possible, it is beneficial that the virtual tour has the potential to engage with more visitors digitally than the small museum building could ever have through its doors. However, when discussing how VR can be used by museums, it should be noted that the Anne Frank House is far from a typical example, as the museum is dedicated to engaging with a global
audience, whether they are able to visit the Prinsengracht site or not. In contrast, the next two chapters will explore how museums which focus on attracting local visitors are using VR as an addition to exhibitions, in order to improve upon their visitors’ experience within the museum.
CHAPTER TWO
Edutainment, Spectacle and Disneyfication at
Het Scheepvaartmuseum
Het Scheepvaartmuseum is the National Maritime Museum of the Netherlands. Founded in 1916, its collection of over 400,000 objects includes ships, ship models, paintings, maps and weapons, and is one of the largest maritime collections in the world. Since 1973, the museum has fittingly been housed in ‘s Lands Zeemagazijn (The Arsenal), an impressive building which was built in the Golden Age as a storehouse for the Admiralty of Amsterdam (“The Building”
hetscheepvaartmuseum.nl). Between 2007 and 2011 the museum was completely refurbished, with over 75 million euros spent on the building, interior and exhibitions.
Since these renovations, visitor numbers have settled to around 300,000 a year,
11
with 70% of visitors being Dutch. The museum identifies its key visitor groups as 12
“Culture Lovers” and “Families”, which (combined) account for over half of total visitors. Evidently, Het Scheepvaartmuseum’s visitor demographic is entirely 13
different to the Anne Frank House and, as a consequence, so is their use of VR. Opened in 2017, Dare to Discover: A VR Journey is a permanent addition to Het Scheepvaartmuseum, which takes visitors back in time to the Golden Age. The VR can be found in a custom built studio, which is situated in the bow of the
Amsterdam, an impressive full-sized replica of a VOC ship. The studio has around
15 headsets suspended from the ceiling, with seats below which allow users to swivel 360° during their virtual journey (Fig. 17). Starting from the location of the museum, as it was 400 years ago, the VR comprises of an aerial flight over Amsterdam’s harbour, taking in sights such as ships being built, launched and
sailed, and eventually ending with a scene of sailors saying goodbye to their families before departing on a VOC voyage. The visitor’s point of view is as if they are a seagull flying over the shipyard at a dizzying height, and this combined with the video game like graphics results in an experience which is not realistic, but sensational (Fig. 18).
11 Renovation expenses: 58 million euros (funded by the Dutch government)
Museum refurbishment expenses (interior and exhibitions): 17.5 million euros (funded by The National Maritime Museum) source “the building” hetscheepvaartmuseum.nl
12 Source: Het Scheepvaartmuseum Jaarverslag/ Annual Reports. Total number of visitors, and
percentage that were Dutch: 2015 (302,155 - 70% Dutch), 2016 (289,666 - 66% Dutch) and 2017 (349,292 - 67% Dutch)
13 Source: Het Scheepvaartmuseum Jaarverslag/ Annual Reports. Percentage of total visitors in 2016
Speaking from her experience as a science museum director, Ann Mintz writes that “the fundamental goal of most museum uses of digital media is to deepen and enrich these encounters. This is a worthy goal - the right thing to do. However, museum use of technology reveals the difference between doing the right thing and doing the thing right” (1997: 9). In light of this statement, I wish to determine whether Het Scheepvaartmuseum is “doing the [VR] thing right”, or whether it has gone beyond providing a fun educational activity (commonly referred to as “edutainment”), to one that is purely entertaining and spectacular. This is not be the first time that Het Scheepvaartmuseum has been accused of “losing the role of the museum as a knowledge center”, as in 2014 seven historians wrote an article for de Volkskrant with the headline “The Management of Het Scheepvaartmuseum Chooses
Amusement Park Course” (Balai et al.). The article argued that by continuing to 14
follow commercial interests and cut funding for research, the museum would risk a “loss of expertise, stagnation and robbery of existing knowledge”. Four years later, 15
and the same debate continues with Dare to Discover.
Whereas the first chapter looked at how VR has been used to provide extra services to visitors, this chapter will explore the risks associated with new technology such as VR, in particular regards to the debate surrounding the Disneyfication of museums. Does Dare to Discover deepen the visitor’s understanding of the Golden Age and improve their engagement with the museum, or is it a novelty attraction used to increase visitor numbers?
Interactivity and Edutainment
The shift towards visitor focussed museums has produced two buzzwords in museology: “interactive” and “edutainment”. These terms refer to the methods of exhibition design which museum professionals use to attract more visitors and, once they have come to the museum, encourage these visitors to better engage with the museum’s collection. Interactivity can be seen as the result of visitor-centred
14 Translated from Dutch: “ze laat tevens de rol van het museum als kenniscentrum verloren gaan”,
“De directie van het Scheepvaartmuseum kiest voor pretparkkoers”
museums, where curators no longer expect visitors to be passive viewers, or objects to “speak for themselves”. Instead, interactive displays promise to turn museum 16
visitors into active and interested participants (Barry 2001: 30-31). Interactivity can be encouraged in a number of ways, from touching a plasma ball at a science museum to adding comments or drawings to a reflection wall. Frequently, it is enabled through technology such as ipads, augmented reality and virtual reality. As Ann Mintz notes, “successful uses of technology provide context, tell stories, and involve people in dynamic processes. They invite interaction with realms that cannot be experienced directly, such as distant geological or historical eras” (1997: 9). Similarly, edutainment - a portmanteau of education and entertainment - is now frequently used to describe the approach of many museums who wish to increase visitor numbers and become more widely accessible. Museums are now frequently conflated with other leisure attractions, and so there is a greater expectation that visits should be simultaneously educational and entertaining for visitors (Mintz 1994: 9, Stephen 2001: 304). Exhibitions should provide memorable and enjoyable
experiences as much as an educational one.While interactivity will often facilitate edutainment, but the two terms are not mutually exclusive.
In the case of Het Scheepvaartmuseum, Dare To Discover: A VR Journey forms part of the museum’s wider portfolio of interactive and edutaining exhibitions - as the website describes, “discover more than 500 years of maritime history through stimulating and interactive exhibitions”. In fact, upon receiving my ticket at the start of my last visit to the museum, I was informed by front of house staff that the West and North wing were more interactive and fun, whereas the East wing was a traditional museum experience. Currently the interactive exhibitions include The Tale of the
Whale and See you in the Golden Age, along with the full sized replica of the East
Indiaman ship - which is where the VR is situated. By contrast, the East wing contains the museum’s collection of navigational instruments, maps and yacht models. Evidently, there is a clear and acknowledged distinction within the museum
16 Barry neatly summarises this now old fashioned view when he refers to a 1997 lecture at the British
museum in which banker and patron of the arts Sir Nicholas Goodison “urged the audience not to take ‘a headlong plunge into the still somewhat murky waters of the new technologies [for objects] should be allowed to speak for themselves and not be debased’” (2001:132)
between what is edutainment and what is straightforwardly educational, which exemplifies the shift of museums towards visitor-focussed exhibitions.
Het Scheepvaartmuseum’s use of VR is particularly interesting because it is firmly posited as an edutainment activity - although the medium of VR isn’t inherently so, as the Anne Frank House’s VR experience demonstrates. In fact, I believe Het Scheepvaartmuseum’s Dare to Discover is perilously close to becoming a purely entertaining activity due to its lack of educational content. As previously described, the VR experience takes the visitor back in time to the Golden Age, where the perspective gives an “out of body experience”, as the viewer floats above the activities happening in the busy shipyard below. There is no introduction to the content of the VR, although staff do explain how to operate the VR. Throughout the experience there is no narration, or explanation of what is happening or why.
Although the use of pure experience perhaps aims to fully immerse visitors in the time period, it is difficult to identify what exactly is educational about the VR.
Arguably, the Dutch Golden Age is already a topic that the majority of visitors will be familiar with, and so perhaps a certain level of prior knowledge may be assumed. It is also possible to consider the VR as a supplement to the museum’s Welcome to
the Golden Age exhibition, or that it gives context to the replica VOC ship in which
the VR studio is found - although the original ship’s maiden voyage was in 1749, after the end of the Golden Age.
However, there is no explicit connection made between the physical museum and the virtual experience, in museum texts, signs or promotional material. In fact, because tickets for the VR must be reserved online in advance, the experience is separated somewhat from the rest of the museum’s galleries in terms of access. The PR for the VR also suggests that this experience is designed to entertain, as even the title does not mention what the VR actually shows, with all the publicity material using the enticing and ambiguous “Dare to Discover: A VR Journey” (Fig. 19). From this alone it is impossible to know that the VR will show seventeenth century
Amsterdam.
Whilst I am sceptical of the extent to which this interactive and entertaining experience may be considered educational, there are nevertheless benefits to this approach, as I will continue to discuss in the next two sections.
Spectacle and the Experience Economy
“De zes spectaculairste minuten van het jaar” (The six most spectacular minutes of
the year) is the headline for Het Parool’s review of Het Scheepvaartmuseum’s VR,
and certainly every aspect of the experience seems intended to create a spectacle. From the huge replica ship in which it is situated, to the shiny mirrored VR studio that is hidden behind a golden door, Het Scheepvaartmuseum’s approach to VR is
ostentatious (Fig. 20). The motive for creating a spectacle can be attributed to the rise of the Experience Economy, in which visitors want “memorable events that engage them in an inherently personal way” (Pine and Gilmore 2007: 76). Further confirmation of the experience trend can be found in Balloffet et al.’s article “From Museum to Amusement Park”, for which nine museum directors and curators were interviewed. One interviewee explained “we’re attempting to offer the consumer a 17
richer experience; we’re moving towards an experience-driven culture as a result of the democratization of culture … we have to accept the trend or we’ll be lost” (2014: 11). With experiences becoming ever more crucial for attracting and satisfying visitors, how can the concept of spectacle be incorporated into museology? My analysis of Dare to Discover as a spectacle shall reflect on this question.
Charity M. Counts’ “Spectacular Design in Museum Exhibitions” comprehensively discusses the topic of spectacle, citing several examples of museums who have successfully deployed this method in order to encourage
“participants [to] become more engrossed in the new or virtual reality; feel as though they are a part of the story being told; and imagine that they have been transported to a new time or place” ( 2010: 274). She cites four design techniques (280-281) which facilitate the creation of a spectacle: dramatic effects, grand scale, plot and authenticity. Aspects of all of these can be found in Dare to Discover.
Dramatic effects are plentiful - before entering the VR studio, visitors must queue in front of a gold door which will open at their allotted time slot (Fig. 20). A countdown in minutes and seconds is projected onto the wall next to it, building the
17 The writers confirm that their small sample of interviewees are representative: “The views of
