Do Not Touch...?
An interview with Lauren Parker, Curator of V&A
Lauren Parker, Curator of contemporary programmes at the V&A , the lady in blue. When thinking about sense in relation to design I immediately thought about Lauren. I am impressed about her daring attitude in exhibiting contemporary art and design, which speaks for itself by saying TOUCH ME, instead of the typical museum label telling you DO NOT TOUCH.
Location: A mail exchange between London/Turin, January 2007.
Q. Dear Lauren, can you introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about the two shows, Shhh... and Touch Me that you have curated for the V&A?
A. I am head of the Victoria and Albert Museum's contemporary programmes and a curator of the two V&A exhibitions Shhh... Sounds in Spaces (2004) and Touch Me: Design and Sensation (2005). I am currently co-curating the major V&A exhibition China Design Now due to open at the museum in March 2008.
Shhh... was an exhibition that took place at the V&A in 2004 that grew and evolved from two different ideas. The contemporary programme at the museum was founded in 1999 in part to link contemporary practice back to the historical collections and to provide different kinds of entry points or routes through the museum for visitors. In 2001 we had collaborated with the serpentine gallery on a very successful exhibition, Give & Take, which sited a number of contemporary artists work throughout the galleries of the V&A, inserting art installations, photography and sound pieces in amongst the historical collections. Shhh... in part was a progression of these ideas. At the same time, I had also been involved in developing an ambitious live music strand at the V&A - a series of live music performances entitled Shhh... Music for Museums. Over the course of 3 or 4 years over 300 singers, bands and DJs had performed all over the museum and I was keen to develop this programme further.
So in 2004 we invited 10 artists, musicians and sound artists to create new audio work for a range of galleries and architectural spaces through out the museum - Cornelius, David Byrne, Elizabeth Fraser, Faultline, Gillian Wearing, Jane and Louise Wilson, Jeremy Deller, Leila, Roots Manuva, Simon Fisher Turner.
We recorded the work onto mp3 players and as visitors walked through the museum wearing headphones, pieces would automatically switch on and off, repeat and fade, triggered by infra-red points sited throughout the building. The technology itself was very basic, but what this allowed was the technology to disappear - visitors took part in an invisible journey of discovery. We were really interested in the idea of creating different pathways through the museum, to create a sense of dialogue - between the artists and their work, the visitors and the architectural spaces of the museum.
The following year, I co-curated the Touch Me: Design and Sensation exhibition in the V&A's contemporary space, a partnership project with the Wellcome Trust. I guess there were some similar impulses at work - to test a range of methods of engaging visitors with the subject matter, and also to showcase a range of contemporary practitioners (from furniture and product designers to fashion designers, crafts makers and interaction designers) - all of whom in different ways were interested in the multi-sensory and principally tactile qualities of art and design. Around 80% of the show was touchable by visitors - and we included a range of new commissioned works, including Tune Me, a sensory room devised by the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea.
Q. The theme of this issue of idCAST is "the senses", can you talk about what sparkled you to this idea of working with exhibitions closely related to senses?
A. I think it stemmed primarily from thinking about ways of actively engaging visitors with the objects and architectural spaces in the museum. Exhibitions are traditionally primarily visual experiences, although in terms of the way exhibitions are designed they are becoming more experiential - in terms of integrating audio-visual and interactive material. I guess I was interested in really pushing at the boundaries of what an exhibition could be, and trying to enable a different kind of relationship between an exhibition's contents and the visitor experiencing them.
In Shhh... this took the form of 'bleeding' an exhibition out of a fixed gallery space, and instead proposing a journey - controlled and experienced by visitors on an individual level. In Touch Me, we wanted to create a gallery environment, which encouraged participation rather than a passive experience.
Q. idCAST is aimed at interaction designers (designers who work primarily with technology). In both exhibitions you used technology to enhance the senses; can you tell us a bit about the overlap between working with senses and technology - what was your experience of the manipulation of senses using technology or computers?
A. The use of a range of technology was critical to both projects. In Touch Me, we wanted to present a whole spectrum of work that engaged with the notion of tactility. In some cases this was at a very basic material level - the use of soft, or hard materials in unexpected ways by designers, the sensation of silk on the skin, or the 'tactile education' shown by craft makers using traditional making skills.
However, we were also interested to showcase a range of work by designers using interactive technologies - from Tobi Schneidler, to Tomoko Hayashi to Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau.
We also included a range of student projects from the Royal College of Art, Central Saint Martins, Interaction Design Institute Ivrea and MIT Medialab. In many of these projects the technology was a means to an end; however, we were also interested in highlighting the potential for a range of technologies to enhance sensory inputs or encourage deeper interactions between people. Technology was both visible and invisible in the show.
In Shhh... we very much wanted to make the technology disappear as much as possible - to try and create a more or less unmediated experience for the visitor between the museum's spaces and the sound pieces which accompanied them.
Q. The tendency in technology has changed from being very detached from human interactions to now becoming the big factor of connecting people and adding layers of more intimate experiences. What are your thoughts on these new approaches and how will it affect the future museums?
A. I think this will have a big impact on museums. In general I think there is a move to see museums as visitor spaces as well as object spaces. What technology is doing is enabling visitors to have individualised, and more intimate experiences of museums - from audio and PDA guides, to Podcasts, to the use of RFid tags to personalise your journey through the museum, there are lots of ways in which the museum experience will change - even over just the next year or so.
In the past, the use of technologies (from interactive terminals, to sound pieces or the use of film in exhibitions) was seen as an add-on or an educational element of a project. I think the notion of connecting people to the museum through technology will become a natural extension of the museum.
Q. The common sense of art museums is ‘no-touch’ – what is your experience with the change of more sensorial behaviors in a museum?
A. Ha! Touch Me proved to be a big learning curve for the museum - in terms of the design, installation and maintenance of interactive projects, many of which were conceptual or newly commissioned works. It was really hard work to keep the exhibition up and running at times. And with over 25,000 visitors we realised how much wear and tear touching can produce.
When we first started planning the exhibition we were worried that people might be afraid to touch, because of the usual 'do not touch' signs in galleries and museums. So we planned the exhibition design to encourage a sense of tactility - from soft flooring to object labels that said 'do touch' instead.
We even encouraged visitors to take their shoes off, to become more aware of their bodies. It worked! We didn't need to give any encouragement for people to try things out in the gallery, and the show attracted lots of families with children too.
Q. Communication nowadays can hit you in any form; anywhere and anytime as all senses are now being approached. Do you have some examples you like to refer to from the art or the design world?
A. I think what Touch Me and Shhh… achieved were really test projects for the V&A - about different ways of experiencing a museum, and showcasing contemporary art and design. This has led onto further interactive projects at the museum - the most recent being a fantastic interactive light and sound installation called Volume, which has been installed, in the V&A's courtyard over the winter months. Created by UVA with sound by 3D of the band Massive Attack, this project really takes a multi-sensory approach, inviting visitors to experience a changing light and sound immersive environment.
Q. We are sight dominated creatures but as you mentioned we now take into account also our other senses in the museum. Senses like smell is well known as a memory stimulant: memories can be triggered by a smell even before our cognitive processes have recognised what that smell is. Do you see that the museum now start to consider food as an art piece?
A. Our sense of smell is something that is rarely touched upon in the museum experience, and yet as you so it is so evocative and immediate.
We have engaged in a range of projects at the V&A, which respond or activate our sense of smell. These have included 'scent trails' in the V&A garden as part of London's Architecture Week programme, in collaboration with the Arts Council, where a range of scents mimicked the smells of London - some nice, but some others not nice at all!
In Touch Me, we also included a number of multi-sensory projects, which included our sense of smell, for example, Jenny Tillotson's “Scent Dress”, which produced a range of scents as visitors touched the object. I'd love to showcase more projects at the V&A, which use food.
I am not sure if you could define food itself as an art form, cooking is certainly a form of creative expression, but a number of artists do use food and cooking in their art practice. As part of our Friday late regular events programmes, we collaborated with home gallery to organise an event called “Art and Food”, which showed the work of a range of artists who used food in art events, installations and performances. This event included projects and performances by Bob and Roberta Smith, Lisa Cheung and Bobby Baker among others.
I am currently co-curating an exhibition about contemporary Design and Architecture in China, and trying to find a way to include food - certainly an artform in China!
Q. A final question: some 8 years ago I experienced The Jewish Museum in Berlin, before they added the actual exhibition inside. It was a naked architecture a naked space, yet incredibly intense with experiences of a more sensorial art.
Considering a space and how it is shaped, totally depend on how our 5 senses react to each other to come to a conclusion about the shape of the space. Would you think that a naked space could be regarded as a museum space?
A. I think what you are describing is certainly part of an intense and creative experience. I think visiting a museum is a combination of your perceptions, the architectural space and the objects within it. In general, what makes museums and galleries unique is that focus on a 'thing' or an 'object' - it is being able to see, touch, experience the real thing as opposed to the mediated relationship one has with the television, a movie screen or the screen of your computer that makes museums so unique.
However, I think this division is no longer so clearly delineated. Exhibitions in museums are a lot of things - they can be educational, inspiring and also experiential, spectacular. Perhaps what we will see in the future is a much wider definition of the role and nature of a museum, and of an exhibition. Although, I think that if you remove this idea of the 'real thing', the authentic object, from the equation completely, I do think you are missing one of the great things a museum has to offer.
Thank you very much, its been a pleasure having this exchange.
Interview by LineUlrikaChristiansen
Links
Victoria and Albert Museum www.vam.ac.uk
Interplay by Lauren Parker
Image Credits
Lauren Parker by Eamonn McCabe
Shhh... www.progresspkg.co.uk www.davidbyrne.com www.urbanjunkies.com
Touch Me www.tomokohayashi.com
Scent Dress www.smartsecondskin.com
Volume www.uva.co.uk
The Jewish Museum Berlin www.juedisches-museum-berlin.de