Configuring standpoints: Aligning perspectives in art exhibitions

Der Artikel untersucht, wie Teilnehmer ihre Ankunft vor Kunstwerken in Museen in der Interaktion organisieren. Die Analyse inspiziert Interaktionssequenzen dahingehend, wie Teilnehmer mit ihren Körpern Standpunkte vor Gemälden und Fotografien auf beobachtbare und nachvollziehbare Weise einnehmen. Es wird gezeigt, dass Besucher, die vor Kunstwerken ankommen, füreinander den Standpunkt und die Perspektive zum Objekt konfigurieren. Wo sie sich hinstellen und wie sie auf das Werk schauen, beeinflusst nicht nur was sie sehen, sondern auch wie andere Besucher sich zum Werk hin orientieren und es erfahren. Teilnehmer konfigurieren also füreinander ihre gemeinsame Orientierung zum Kunstwerk und Erfahrung desselben, indem sie ihre körperliche und visuelle Orientierung vor dem Objekt gestalten. Standpunkte, die Teilnehmer vor Ausstellungsstücken einnehmen, werden fortlaufend verändert, z.B. wenn sie einander anregen, bestimmte Aspekte eines Kunstwerkes zu betrachten und sie folglich ihre körperliche und visuelle Orientierung zum Objekt hin verändern und aufeinander abstimmen. Die Analyse basiert auf Videoaufnahmen, die in einer Reihe von Museen in Großbritannien gemacht wurden

Körper(welten) in Interaktion: eine video-basierte Untersuchung zur interaktiven Produktion von Erlebniswelten

'Die 'Körperwelten' sind eine Ausstellung menschlicher Körper, die seit einigen Jahren durch Europa, den Fernen Osten und die USA tourt. Die Manager und Kritiker der Ausstellung betrachten die Körperwelten aus unterschiedlichen Gründen als 'außerordentlich'. Kritiker argumentieren, die öffentliche Ausstellung toter menschlicher Körper sei unmoralisch und gesetzeswidrig. Die Ausstellungsmanager sehen die öffentliche Ausstellung der Plastinate dagegen als eine innovative Ressource, um ihren Besuchern 'außerordentliche' Erlebnisse zu ermöglichen. Dieser Artikel untersucht, wie Besucher der Körperwelten diese Ressourcen nutzen, um die Exponate zu erleben. Dadurch leistet er nicht nur einen Beitrag zum Verständnis der Besucherreaktionen auf die Körperwelten, sondern auch zu jüngeren soziologischen Debatten über die Art und Weise, wie Menschen mit den technischen und kulturellen Ressourcen umgehen, die ihnen von Ausstellungen geboten werden. Basierend auf einer Analyse von Videoaufnahmen und Feldbeobachtungen von Besuchern, die Exponate in den Körperwelten betrachten und inspizieren, argumentiert der Artikel, dass die außerordentlichen Erlebnisse der Ausstellung aus einer Koproduktion zwischen Ausstellungsorganisatoren und Besuchern hervorgehen.' (Autorenreferat)''Body Worlds' is an exhibition of human bodies that currently tours Europe, the Far East and the USA. The organisers of the exhibition and those criticising it consider Body Worlds to be 'extraordinary' for different reasons. Whilst the latter argue the public display of dead human bodies is unethical and unlawful the exhibition managers consider the exhibition of plastinated human bodies as an innovative resource that facilitates extraordinary experiences. This paper explores how visitors to Body Worlds practically use the resources provided by the exhibition managers to experience the exhibits. Thus, it contributes to recent sociological debates about the ways in which people make use of the technical and cultural resources provided by organisers of exhibitions to facilitate extraordinary experiences. Based on videorecordings and field observation of visitors examining the exhibits the paper argues that the extraordinary experiences of Body Worlds result from a co-production between exhibition organisers and visitors.' (author's abstract

Interaction and interactives: collaboration and participation with computer-based exhibits

It is increasingly recognized that social interaction and collaboration are critical to our experience of museums and galleries. Curators, museum managers and designers are exploring ways of enhancing interaction and in particular using tools and technologies to create new forms of participation, with and around, exhibits. It is found, however, that these new tools and technologies, whilst enhancing “interactivity,” can do so at the cost of social interaction and collaboration, inadvertently impoverishing co-participation, and cooperation. In this paper we address some of the issues and difficulties that arise in designing for “interactivity” and in particular point to the complex and highly contingent forms of social interaction which arise with, and around, exhibits. The paper is based on a series of video-based field studies of conduct and interaction in various museums and galleries in London and elsewhere including the Science Museum and Explore@Bristol

Exhibiting interaction: conduct and collaboration in museums and galleries

This article explores how individuals, both alone and together, examine exhibits in museums and galleries. Drawing on ethnomethodology and conversation analysis, it focuses on the ways in which visitors encounter and experience exhibits and how their activities are organized, at least in part, with intimate regard to the actions of others in the domain, both companions and "strangers." This study contributes to the long-standing concerns of symbolic interactionism with (mutual) attention and involvement, materiality and social relations, and interpersonal communication. The data consist of video recordings of naturally occurring action and interaction in various museums and galleries

Challenges and Opportunities in the International Reception of "Communicative Constructivism"

In this article, we offer some observations on the international standing of communicative constructivism (CoCo), as discussed in scholarship published largely in German over the past decade (e.g., KELLER, KNOBLAUCH & REICHERTZ, 2013; KNOBLAUCH, 2019a [2016]; REICHERTZ, 2009). We seek to explain why, in our view, CoCo has not thus far had a noticeable influence on academic discourse in international, particularly Anglo-American, sociology. Amongst others, we highlight issues regarding the name that was picked for the perspective and regarding the literal translation of German CoCo terminology into the English language. We also point to some theoretical and methodological choices that have made it difficult to link CoCo to interactionist sociology in general, and to ethnomethodology and ethnography in particular, i.e., perspectives that we are closely aligned with. We conclude with a summary of our observations and a few suggested steps communicative constructivists might consider taking to broaden and diversify the appeal of their program beyond German speaking sociology

Communication: part 2 - delivering findings and advice to the patient

The outcome and consequences of results from examination tests need to be communicated in a way that can be easily understood by the patient, encouraging them to follow the advice that has been given by the practitioner. For a number of reasons, the delivery of findings and advice to the patient is a highly complex communicative activity. The content of information given can vary widely in length and seriousness. In addition, patients can vary in their capacity to understand information delivered and in their ability to cope with ‘bad news’. Finally, the ways in which findings and advice are communicated can have a significant impact on patient adherence and compliance with management recommendations

Communication: part 1 - soliciting information from the patient

Soliciting information from the patient is a key part of the consultation. Successful clinical outcomes are reliant on the practitioner asking questions to gather relevant information regarding, for instance, the patient’s history and symptoms and their responses to examination tests. This information needs to be gathered in a time efficient manner and in a way that encourages the patient to feel relaxed and fully engage with the eye examination. Practitioners often report that soliciting relevant information can be made difficult by over-talkative patients who take up valuable time giving lengthy, perhaps irrelevant, answers. Alternatively, patients may provide insufficient detail due to discomfort, anxiety or a lack of understanding. Finally, patients can at times appear overly concerned with providing the ‘correct’ answer to certain questions. This article describes some ways to optimise the complex process of soliciting information from the patient focusing on selection of question type, question wording and the role of eye contact. Examples given are based upon research analysis of video-recorded optometric consultations

Participation at exhibits: creating engagement with new technologies in science centres

There is a growing commitment within science centres and museums to deploy computer-based exhibits to enhance participation and engage visitors with socio-scientific issues. As yet however, we have little understanding of the interaction and communication that arises with and around these forms of exhibits, and the extent to which they do indeed facilitate engagement. In this paper, we examine the use of novel computer-based exhibits to explore how people, both alone and with others, interact with and around the installations. The data are drawn from video-based field studies of the conduct and communication of visitors to the Energy Gallery at London’s Science Museum. The paper explores how visitors transform their activity with and around computer-based exhibits into performances, and how such performances create shared experiences. It reveals how these performances can attract other people to become an audience to an individual’s use of the system and subsequently sustain their engagement with both the performance and the exhibit. The observations and findings of the study are used to reflect upon the extent to which the design of exhibits enables particular forms of co-participation or shared experiences, and to develop design sensitivities that exhibition managers and designers may consider when wishing to engender novel ways of engagement and participation with and around computer-based exhibits

Crafting Participation: Designing ecologies, configuring experience

ABSTRACT There is a growing interest amongst both artists and curators in designing artworks which create new forms of visual communication and enhance interaction in museums and galleries. Despite extraordinary advances in the analysis of talk and discourse, there is relatively little research concerned with conduct and collaboration with and around aesthetic objects and artefacts, and to some extent the social and cognitive sciences have paid less attention to the ways in which conduct both visual and vocal is inextricably embedded within the immediate ecology, the material realities at hand. In this paper, we examine how people in and through interaction with others, explore, examine and experience a mixed-media installation. Whilst primarily concerned with interaction with and around an art work, the paper is concerned with the ways in which people, in interaction with each other (both those they are with and others who happen to be in the same space), reflexively constitute the sense and significance of objects and artefacts, and the ways in which those material features reflexively inform the production and intelligibility of conduct and interaction. They (these lectures) will begin with aspects of invention and design that express the artist's responses to the assumed presence of the spectator. These reactions develop in a way that can be presented schematically in three stages: from awareness and acknowledgement, to the spectator entering the artists subject and completing the plot, and finally from that kind of involvement to its exploitation, the artist assuming, now, the complicity of the spectator in the very functioning of the work of art. in Only Connec