THE MUSEÉ IMAGINAIRE
Science, Art and Technology: Using PDA in Cultural Environments
Daniel del Saz, Sylvia Molina and Ana Navarrete
Research Group Indevol, Facultad de Bellas Artes,Universidad de Castilla la Mancha, Spain
Keywords: Museum, Flâneur, Distributed data base, e-culture, Navigation, Internet, Virtual Museum, PDA, Portable
Museum, Didactic Classroom, Mobile device, multi-touch sensor, accelerometer, proximity sensor,
gestures, zooming user interfaces, Internet navigation, virtual museum, Indevol.
Abstract: Mobile devices for an imaginary museum is a proposal of a new mobile device, specifically created for its
use in museums. Through the analysis of the of existing devices’ characteristics, and the satisfaction grade
by their users, we cogitate on how it could be like, and which features it should include.
1 INTRODUCTION
The Information Society, known as e-culture cannot
afford to overlook the impact of new Technologies
on institutions connected to memory: archives,
libraries and museums.
The impact of new technology can be seen in
many ways but the most striking in relation to the
museum, the institution with which we are
concerned here, is the appearance of a new type of
museum, called a virtual museum and the online
museum.
The online museum has digitalized its collections
and now provides services never before available
such as access to databases and all types of
documentation. The purpose of the institution is
being redefined.
The Museum, has always been a discredited
institution, mostly because it has never fulfilled the
purposes for which it has been created, the
democratization of culture and knowledge, in brief.
It’s definition has always been controversial,
nowadays the basic definition of museum by ICOM,
is being reconsidered. The history of thought and
critics regarding the museum has shown that one of
the problems is to keep on using a transhistorical and
universal category.
Amongst the most distinguishable aims and
purposes of a museum, since it’s origin, are the
democratisation of culture and knowledge
through education, and the spreading of
knowledge (Universal Knowledge) -a legacy of
Enlightenment thought that gave birth to it- and the
preservation and dissemination of heritage.
New digitalization methods have allowed to
stand up to conservation and storage problems.
Nevertheless, the most difficult issue is to solve the
compatibility problems between these memory
storages, this is one of the challenges of e-culture to
which a lot of effort is being dedicated, and from
many fronts. A remarkable example is what
UNESCO is doing for this matter. The spreading
through internet, enables people from different parts
of the world to access the contents, even if in a
virtual way, but it cannot be forgotten that direct
experience have never been replaceable.
Moreover, nowadays, homogenization and
universalization are possible thanks to virtual and
digital museums, their emergency, just as the blogs-
that would be the downside of this story- is going
trough a spectacular peak, the possibility of the
utopian “Imaginary Museum”, thought by Malraux,
that holds the whole of artistic creations since the
birth of Humanity, is getting closer, there is no
museum that takes itself into account that does not
have a virtual version.
The utopia of democratizing culture and
knowledge, thanks to new digital reproduction
techniques, could be in process of converting itself
into an aporia. What is called a Digital Breach is not
just a subject concerning Global South countries, the
digital breach is also patent in developed societies,
and not just in the access to technology but also in
the users ability to use it. Memorandum of
Understanding for Multimedia Access to European
484
del Saz D., Molina S. and Navarrete A. (2007).
THE MUSEÉ IMAGINAIRE - Science, Art and Technology: Using PDA in Cultural Environments.
In Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies, pages 484-489
DOI: 10.5220/0001292304840489
Copyright
c
 SciTePress

Cultural Heritage of the European Union, has been
one of the initiatives determined to overcome the
problem.
The development of new technologies –NTIC-
does not entail, as it is repeatedly said, a positive
capability for social development. If initiatives such
as Bill Gates’ ones, are to carry on, the breach will
be bigger and bigger; Gates created Corbis:
http://pro.corbis.com/default.aspx in 1989, a
company that is gathering the biggest collection of
photographies, art images, engravings and
illustrations, on which, of course, he holds the
copyrights. It is estimated to have more than 30
million images…we could be talking about
Malraux’s nightmare.
On the other hand, the didactic basis has shown
its big aporías, mainly because it overlooks
something basic such as cultural differences and also
the diversity of cultural products.
In fact, in the conclusions of the International
Congress CULTURTEC 2002:
http://www.ucm.es/info/cavp2/culturtec2002/
it has been stated that “the promotion of the
conception of the museum as a conservative element
of the memory of the cultural difference, that
promotes the common cultural elements from the
diversity, thanks to its communication capacity
through new technologies. The ineluctable task of
extending and, at the same time, amplifying the
concept of cultural heritage, which is not limited to
objects, monuments, historical spaces and museums,
but includes the full spectrum of human knowledge,
exceeding the old conception and integrating it into
the daily life of the citizens.”
These days, the concerns related to financing,
visitors and users number are holding much of the
museums’ attention and efforts. Even so, museums
do not cease to proliferate and visitors do not stop do
decrease, as the numbers show in annual reports. To
overcome this situation, on one hand, virtual
museums are being created; and on the other, the use
of devices that can outwit the reception’s passivity
through computer and audiovisual systems and that
enable a recreational and creative learning that are
symbolically close. Something that contemporary art
museums have already assumed, since they have
started to lodge works that are based on systems,
multimedia and hypermedia installations; we are
talking about the nineties of the 20
th
century.
We could even say that the contemporary art
museum was, thanks to these works, the first
museum institution to go on its own deconstruction
process, forced to rethink concepts concerning the
objects exhibited and the reach of cultural space, its
historical, communicative and educative aims.
Moreover the aim was to establish a meeting point
between virtual reality, culture industry, cybernetics
and robotics, in which the implications between art,
technology and society are studied; in this sense, it is
worth pointing out: ZKM/Media Museum in
Karlsruhe, Germany (1997): http://www.zkm.de/, or
Ars Electronica Center or Museum of the Future:
http://www.aec.at/en/index.asp that organizes since
1979 the Ars Electronica Festival:
http://www.aec.at/en/festival2006/program/index.as
p
Science, Technique and innovation Museums
were the first in using theses new technologies, here
are several examples: Exploratorium of San
Francisco (1969): http://www.exploratorium.edu/,
the City of Science and Industry in Paris (1986):
http://espanol.pidf.com/page/p-311/art_id-1222/idf-
PCUIDF0000000017/, Sony Wonder Technology
Lab in New York: http://wondertechlab.sony.com/,
Tech Museum of Innovation in Silicon Valley,
California: http://www.thetech.org/
In our country, good practice proposals ensue, as
it can be seen in:http://www.icom-ce.org/ and in
local or national range projects, though with
slowness. An example is the Museo Nacional de
Ciencia y Tecnología:
http://www.mec.es/mnct/museo.html, of the
Universidad Politécnica de Madrid and the
Ministerio de Educación y Cultura.
A virtual museum should be something more
than a online museum, it shouldn’t consist
exclusively in digitalizing collections and archives, -
or in creating a self tailored imaginary museum-,
which most museums end up being. We should think
about the possibilities that it allows: to put in
context, more widely, the conceptual threads, the
objects and the historical context in which the works
have been created, access to related documentation
that could be found in other places and institutions,
at a global level, that would deal with the same
subjects…that is to say, the possibility to think about
devises of knowledge and education, through the
interconnection between electronic communications
online, access to search engines, information
management, digitalization processes, database
organization, hypertext, interactivity, multimedia,
virtual reality…at the service of knowledge.
In addition, and starting with the fact that real
experience can not be replaced by virtual experience
and vice versa, the online museum does not replace
the visit. It should encourage the real visit but
differing diametrically at the same time. We must
recall that a real visit is an open space-time layout,
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485

in which each visitor builds his path and uses his
time at his own free will, and the museum should
recognize the opinions, the needs and users’
appreciations, as well as their routes and visiting
times.
Douglas Crimp brought Malraux back to us,
reminding that Museum Without Walls is a bad
translation, or better even, a very creative
translation of Malraux’s French title: Le musée
imaginaire, literally the imaginary museum. This
translation poses an interesting paradox, since
actually, the museum walls are precisely the ones
confining cultural production, separating, in this
manner, culture from life, the transcendental from
the everyday life, the artistic from the social;
however, cultural practices and their users
nowadays, have pulled down these walls.
To the disappearance of the museum walls, we must
add up the disappearance of the passive viewer in
favour of the active one, in fact, this viewer or user
is part of the team. Thus writes Gardner:
“(…) a widely spread notion of intelligence,
recognizes that seldom or never, productive
humans work alone, merely using their head. In
fact, usually the individuals work with all kinds of
human and inanimate or prosthetic objects; these
entities get to take part so fully in their activities
that it sounds logic to consider them as part of
the individual’s intellectual arsenal.
“1
Simple things should be simple, complex things
should be possible.
—Alan Kay
In spite of all efforts and progresses made, at the
moment, it is still difficult to find mobile devices
that satisfy us fairly, and even less to completely
satisfy their users.
Sometimes, it might be due to the complexity in
using the interface, to the lack or excess of
functions, contents, to aesthetics…in any case, the
final result is that the device will end, one way or
another, frustrating and deceiving the user.
If the device were to have a long term use,
conditioned, for example, by its cost, it would force
the user to adapt his own logics to the device’s one.
It would be a failed device, but in use.
However, if we counted on a short period of
usage time, and eliminated the cost element, as in
the present case, the result would be that the user
would become frustrated and deceived. By not being
1
Manuel Oliveira. Les projets culturels dans leur contexte.
http://www.lafriche.org/nta/ressources/contributions/molveira.html
forced to continue to use the device, he would just
simply stop using it. Our device would be a failed
device and of no use.
But, why does this happen? , Of all devices we
know of, which would be the most suitable for its
use in a museum? The problem might be the
question itself, maybe the appropriate device still
doesn’t exist, and for that reason a new one can’t be
created by adapting software based upon the existing
hardware.
2 DEVICE PROPOSAL
People who are really serious about software should
make their own hardware.
—Alan Kay
Through the analysis and critic of existing
mobile devices at the present time, that fulfil the
needs of the users, we can get into the conclusion
that it is possible that the ideal device to be used in a
museum, would be a combination of hardware and
software, specifically created for this purpose,
capable of communicating with other devices, and
that would include a physical interface provided
with advanced sensors, that would permit the use of
a multiscale graphic interface.
2.1 Advanced Sensors
2.1.1 Multi-touch Sensor
Figure 1: Sensor Multi-touch.
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Figure 2: Sensor Multi-touch. (US Patent Application
Publication US 2006/0097991 A1. Hotelling et al.).
Multi-touch is the name given to both the
human-computer interaction technique, and the
hardware that contains a touch sensitive mechanism,
usually placed on a display, and able to recognize
simultaneously several contact spots.
Consequently, as opposite to traditional touch
sensitive devices that can only recognize one, this
kind of sensor allows to identify gestures made by
different fingers, both hands or even its
simultaneous use by several users.
Gestures allow the user to manipulate the objects
directly, which converts this kind of device into the
most suitable for interaction with zooming user
interface (ZUI), a kind of graphic interface that has
turned out to be difficult to handle through a single
“click” device like the mouse, the stylus, etc…
The first commercially available device to
include a multi-touch sensor will be Apple’s iPhone
(http://www.apple.com/iphone). While watching the
product’s presentation one can reach the conclusion
that, chances are, that in the next few years we will
live through a revolution similar to the one that
introduced the mouse and GUI.
We will see how these devices develop, and
consequently, our way of interacting with them.
Figure2: Apple iPhone.
Copyright © 2007, Apple Computer Inc
Another example of a device integrating a multi-
touch sensor can be found on this link:
http://cs.nyu.edu/~jhan/ftirtouch/
2.1.2 Accelerometer
Figure 3: Accelerometer. (US Patent Application
Publication US 2006/0017692 A1. Wehrenberg et al.).
An accelerometer is a kind of sensor that apart from
measuring the acceleration of the device in which it
is integrated, just as its name suggests, allows to
measure the relative inclination of the device,
regarding the three axes.
As a result, a device that has it as a feature, would
allow new ways of interacting with it.
Figure 4: Apple iPhone. (Copyright © 2007, Apple
Computer Inc).
The use of this kind of sensor made by the
formerly referred Apple iPhone, is an example.
Through the sensor, the device can detect if it is in a
horizontal or vertical position, an act in
consequence, either rotating the graphical interface,
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or rotating a landscape image until it fills the whole
screen, or even activating other software features.
But this kind of sensor allows making gestures that
are much closer to the human imaginary. Combining
a connexion system to other devices (Bluetooth, wi-
fi, or others) it could allow us to make the gesture of
pouring, as if pouring water on a glass, to pass
information from one device to another.
2.1.3 Other Advanced Sensors
Other advanced sensors that could be integrated in
this hypothetical device, would be the ones on
proximity and presence. Proximity of one device to
another, of not necessarily the same kind, and
presence both of a user and of a device. This way,
the device could detect another, and also find out if
it was being used by someone, in order to know if it
could shut down.
2.2 Communication
Apart from the former sensors, this mobile device,
specifically developed for its use in a museum,
should include different possibilities of wireless
connection to communicate with other devices. This
way the device would be able to increase its
functionality.
The most logic options, at the moment, would be to
provide it with Bluetooth and Wi-Fi.
2.3 Zooming User Interface
Multiscale interfaces represent a big leap facing the
traditional concept of graphical interface (GUI).
We mean by multiscale interface (ZUI – Zooming
User Interface) a graphic environment that allows
interaction between the users and the objects, and
choosing different scale levels, and consequently, of
detail. This makes more room available in a reduced
space, which is supposed to be a big advantage
regarding traditional GUI devices with small
displays, just as it happens in many mobile devices.
In multiscale interfaces, information elements are
shown directly on an infinite virtual desktop (usually
created with vectorial graphics) instead of windows.
Users can pan across on the virtual surface in two
dimensions and move towards the objects of interest.
For example: if zooming on a text, represented by a
dot, this one would convert into a thumbnail image,
and zooming further to a full size editable file.
Multiscale interfaces are the interface paradigm,
considered by some as the most flexible and more
realistic heir of traditional GUI based upon
windows, but for the moment, the effort dedicated to
multiscale interface development is small when
compared to efforts dedicated to traditional GUI
improvements. Although each day we can find more
of them.
The biggest and largest effort dedicate to ZUI
development was a project called PAD++, started by
Ken Perlin, Jim Hollan and Ben Bederson in New
York University, and continued subsequently in
New Mexico University, under Jim Holland’s
direction.
The PAD++ project was abandoned after being
seduced by Jazz project and later by Piccolo project
developed by Ben Bederson in Maryland University,
with Java language and C#.
Recent efforts in ZUI field, include an Archy project
idealized by Jef Raskin and currently developed in
The Raskin Center for Human Interface.
2.3.1 Projects and Tools
Pad++ (Abandoned).
http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/pad++/
Piccolo.
http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/piccolo/
ZoomDesk.
http://www.btinternet.com/~duncan.jauncey/zoomdesk
/index.html
AutoBAHN.
http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/piccolo/applications/autob
ahn/
GeoPhoenix Zoomspace.
http://www.geophoenix.com/products.htm
2.3.2 Examples
2.3.2.1 Web navigation Leo Burnett.com
http://www.leoburnett.com/
Relevare. http://www.relevare.com/site/
2.3.2.2 Applications
Archy The Raskin Center's Humane Interface.
http://rchi.raskincenter.org/index.php?title=Core_Princ
iples
Topicscape.
http://www.topicscape.com/download/demo/MBA_Co
ntrol_Panel.html
PhotoMesa.
http://www.windsorinterfaces.com/photomesa-
demo/photomesa-demo-swf/photomesa-demo-
swf.html
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3 CONCLUSIONS
The best way to predict the future is to invent it.
—Alan Kay
If mobile devices that are actually being used in
museums do not satisfy the user, it is, to a great
extent, because, they are based upon existing devices
that have been adapted through software.
Nevertheless, if our approach to the project would
also comprehend the development of a new specific
hardware, provided with advanced sensors, we could
create a device that would really fulfil the users
needs.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We would like to thank the Spanish grant PCC05-
005-2 from the Junta de Comunidades de Castilla-La
Mancha (JCCM).
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