Experiencing exhibitions with all the senses – immersion is an enduring trend in exhibition design. Did video kill the radio star? – Is immersion as a design tool gradually replacing conventional exhibition design? And: does that make sense?
Following an inspiring talk on the subject by Katharina Erben, we would like to discuss the experiences, merits and drawbacks of immersive exhibition design with you. To this end, we would like to invite you to the first part of our event series 'gewerk in the garden'.
Katharina Erben holds a Master of Arts in Comparative Literature, English and Scandinavian Studies. She specialises in bridging the gap between content and design and also works as a translator of Swedish texts into German, including works by the Swedish feminist comic book author Liv Strömquist.
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Project Team
Gewerkdesign
Stefan Rothert
Birgit Schlegel
Jens Imig
Georgina Prüßing Mascarenhas
Christina Storch
Antoine Laurent
Kate Riep
Summary
The term ‘immersion’ is not clearly defined. Literally, it refers to submerging or soaking, and amongst many other experiences it also describes, for example, an effective method for learning a foreign language: placing oneself in an environment that engages all the senses, such as a foreign-language-speaking country, and immersing oneself in that environment just as one might in the water of an Alpine mountain lake at a Swiss language boarding school.
For us as designers of (not exclusively, but largely) spatial exhibition architecture, immersion is a creative tool for communication and an effect that this tool is intended to evoke – a deeply sensory world of experience and a delightful interplay between exhibit, design and audience.
In this context, exhibition architecture can either be designed to be so stimulating and all-encompassing that one dives into it and becomes immersed within it (thus moving from one world into another), or in such a way that the boundaries between the designed and ‘natural’ environments, and between the artwork and the viewer, merge (thus creating a fusion of different worlds).
For this to be successful, it is advisable for the visual appeal to be as strong and attractive as possible and, where possible, for the design to engage several senses. In the context of many immersive exhibitions, it is also said that exhibits are ‘brought to life’ – that is, ‘animated’, to use the Latin translation of the word. And indeed, immersion in exhibition design is today frequently understood as digital animation, and often as augmented or virtual reality.
Throughout the evening, the speaker Katharina Erben contrasted this very contemporary interpretation of the term with numerous examples from earlier eras, for the nature of the aesthetic experience in which the audience can become immersively engrossed was, of course, not the same in all eras and depends on the characteristics and reception habits of the target audience. A room in an ancient villa in Pompeii, with a life-size painting of a procession of Bacchantes running along all four walls, presumably had the same immersive effect in its day as a mammoth diorama did on primary school pupils in Kassel in the 1980s, or as the interactive, abstract digital projections in the six-metre-high rooms of the Digital Arts Museum, which opened in 2018, on its Tokyo visitors.
Intangible immersive spaces were also discussed: alongside digital environments, these included, for example, scents and social sculptures, performances and virtual exhibitions. The speaker ventured the prediction that events in intangible spaces such as Minecraft and Instagram will become increasingly important for museums and exhibitions in the future due to their immersive effect. Similarly, ‘scripted spaces’ – such as escape rooms or live-action role-plays – will have a greater influence on the public’s expectations of museum exhibitions.
Where is immersive design appropriate, and where is it not? How can the quality of immersion be measured? And: how exactly can sensations evoked by immersion be used to convey rational exhibition content? These are the questions we discussed on that May evening during an audience discussion over snacks and drinks.
