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SUMMARY:Towards a history of interactivity (through interactive objects) -
  Arne Schirrmacher (Humboldt University\, Berlin)
DTSTART:20150219T153000Z
DTEND:20150219T170000Z
UID:TALK57276@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Richard Staley
DESCRIPTION:In the course of the 20th century\, science museums stalled\, 
 science centres\, however\, surged. This is presumably due to politics of 
 display or economic constraints\; but it is also related to the use of obj
 ects. The focus has shifted from artefacts to interactives\, as a new para
 digm of interactivity greatly influenced how science was exhibited in the 
 public space. In my paper I will discuss some preliminary results of a lar
 ger project in preparation\, which attempts to write a history of interact
 ivity by studying the development of the science museum in Europe and Nort
 hern America between the late 19th and the late 20th century. It appears t
 hat a line can be drawn from the Berlin Urania founded in 1888\, which lea
 ds to the Deutsches Museum and the Science Museum in London as well as to 
 a number of American museums of science and industry opened since the 1920
 s\, which not only carries the idea of interactivity\, but which actually 
 is one of 'objects in transit'. By following push-button experiments\, han
 ds-on demonstrations\, working models and the like from one place to anoth
 er\, a transatlantic discourse on interactivity may become apparent. While
  the Exploratorium in San Francisco has absorbed much form East Coast muse
 ums and European institutions at the end of the 1960s\, the first European
  science centres imported – or re-imported? – many interactives from t
 here some twenty years later. Clearly\, my approach is meant to deconstruc
 t the purported singularity of the Exploratorium and its concept invented 
 by Frank Oppenheimer to some extent by putting it into a wider setting. At
  the same time this may question the 'political machines' pushing the inte
 ractive turn\, which replaces artefacts of curiosity and narratives of pro
 gress\, which can be scrutinised\, by context-free presentations of entert
 aining phenomena\, which rather cannot.
LOCATION:Seminar Room 2\, Department of History and Philosophy of Science
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