1:1 Stijlkamers by Andreas Angelidakis1:1 Stijlkamers by Andreas Angelidakis

Floor van Spaendonck, head of Policy at Het Nieuwe Instituut, wrote this text about the Share this event

The "Share this" research process, a collaboration together with Upload Cinema, Stedelijk Museum, Image & Sound, started for Het Nieuwe Instituut through its connection to the 'Interior' program by the question related to the forms of presentation through the notion of the period room.

The period room was a phenomenon in the 19th century whereby a collection of original furniture and furnishings, usually recreated in a historical era or presenting an aesthetically pleasing combination, was presented in a room that may never existed in that form in a particular building. The period rooms were also used in the earliest museums for presenting works of art and furniture in matching context. From 1938 on -when the director of the Stedelijk Museum (Willem Sandberg) demanded white walls for his presentations- the so-called 'White Cube' was introduced and the period rooms mostly disappeared as an educational or presentation model for museums. Either way studies and theories about ways of presenting and notions on the interior have never disappeared and nowadays the focus is not only on presenting 'without walls' in a physical sense but also on presenting in a virtual sense.

In order to look more closely to the presentation in a virtual context and more precisely in the context of social media platforms I like to refer to a classic work in media theory; The Language of New Media (2001) from Lev Manovich.

Manovich attempts to get to grips with the specific characteristics of new media by comparing them to old media in general and film in particular. Crucial in this respect is how he attempts to define the 'language' of new media.

Manovich's starting point is the specificity of the material (zeros and ones) that lends itself to certain techniques (cutting and pasting) and results in a specific visual idiom. In his analysis of the unique qualities of new media, he makes use of his knowledge of the medium of film, and attempts to use the codes and techniques of the 'old' medium' to understand the new (such as montage versus composition). Although Manovich does not succeed in defining the language of new-media products, he does manage to describe them in terms of their specific structure. Put simply, the narrative structure of film contrasts with the database structure of new media. I believe he hits the nail right on the head when he complains that '...today we have too much information and too few narratives'. Inspired by Manovich and making use of several of his lines of reasoning, I would like to answer the following question with analogy to the question we posed during our research: does the online platform offer a new means of presentation comparable to that of a museum?

**Do new media have the potential to present museological objects or is 'presentation' the cultural form of a bygone age, an age in which the museum was the representative medium that conjured up our culture and dictated and reflected our consciousness? **

New media are most prevalent in websites, social media and computer games. 'Online media' is the collective noun for all internet manifestations. Just as a library contains many different types of books, the internet comprises a variety of websites and social media platforms. Online media is thus the nomenclature for the vehicle (the internet) rather than for the specific characteristics, language or objectives of these media manifestations. It is, in short, an enormous database comprising an array of smaller databases made up of data, surrounded by membranes that function as interfaces and that determine and make visible the routes through the data.

The link between the (informative) website and the computer game is the genre of the virtual museum. Here the user can explore the collection of a virtual museum by navigating through its virtual spaces. By using space as a metaphor, the interface of the DVD helps the user to understand what a new media product actually is: a container for data through which routes have been laid out: a library, a museum, a warehouse, an archive in which visitors can find their own way.

However, doesn't the museum also consist of a collection of spaces with objects that are unified by the curator? What, then, is the difference between both interfaces?

In the old media, the individual elements are connected in a unique structure; the component parts are not separate from this structure. When the curator has finished, the exhibition is realised as a final, physical vehicle. The exhibition forms a whole that offers viewers meaningful components on the basis of which they construct a whole. By contrast, in digital media the individual elements and their connective structure are independent of each other. Both the data and the structure can be endlessly modified so that there is no definitive result in which data and structure are inextricably linked. In new media objects the form/medium and content are independent of each other.

Related to this is another important difference between new media objects and museums: the distinction between linear and 'random' modes. Whereas the museum curator's working process results in a story with a beginning and an end, presented in a gallery, digital media objects can be approached from different angles: there are many roads from a to b. The internet is an enormous building with countless entry points that increase in number every day.

Because each new-media object essentially forms a database - a three-dimensional space - it requires an interface that makes the data visible, that indicates the routes through the data and helps the user to orient within the database space. The choices users makes on the basis of the information offered by the interface result in their personal routes through the spaces, consisting of various screens encountered in their chosen sequence.

**You are the presentation **

Museums organise spaces and objects, and orientation is a prerequisite in focusing the viewer's attention on the objects on display. New media organise spaces, and the cursor is the necessary instrument to allow users to move through the space. The choices made by users result in a sequence of screens. The screens appear one after the other. However, this sequence is not prescribed but is determined in real time by the users. Is this therefore an instance of a chain with a narrative effect? Do the screens represent a chain of causality? If the screens represent a story, this must be considered the users' story. This story emerges only from the users' meta-relationship to their own actions. I contend that if we take the comparison between an online presentation and the museum as our starting point, the conclusion should be that the new media story is uniquely that of the users.

In concluding this research phase, where we harvested great series of 'art' works on the social media platforms and divided them in 5 categories, I found the sub-questions related tot the manifestation on the platform, as relevant but also it addressed the urgency for redefining the values of the presentation. The transformation of society caused by the digital era also effects the classical presentation of arts and the position of the museum. If we demand the museums to adopt the digital, we should also look into the parameters of the digital, like Manovich does in his work. And then maybe we conclude that it takes more then a museum to make a shift, maybe we conclude that it takes you.