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→MODELS OF THE KUNST- UND WUNDERKAMMER
<big>Towards The Electronic Kunst- und Wunderkammer:
Spinning on the European MuseumsNetwork EMN</big>
by Achim Lipp <ref>Visual Resources, Vol. X, pp. 101-118, ©Gordon and Breach Science Publishers S.A., 1994
.</ref>
== THE PLAN ==
Two special programs have been developed in 0S7 based on the requirements of the museum experts.
a. The multimedia acquisition program MDA is designed as an input tool for museum scientists and educators, and is orientated towards the needs of the lay user. lt it is unique in its overall concept, and it is user friendly lt it covers most aspects of multimedia in-house production; it is flexible in its handling, processing, and clarification of all information types. Its multi-media data-design lends a hand in seven languages to the untrained &Tut user and offers a dear scope of media integrating screens.
Images, graphics, sounds, text, and video may be incorporated into information units. These consolidated, may be accessed differently in the visitor system—via hot areas in texts or images, or via indexes.
Additionally, each exhibit needs to be furnished with a set of keywords; this provides the links to other objects. The pool of more than 1,000 terms has been developed by museum experts and is valid for all exhibits. The composer and producer associates up to 50 terms out of the pool and provides the seemingly boundless lirddng power of the exhibit. This power comes into play and is unfolded in the adventurous nagivation of the visitor system.
b. The visitor program of the EMN system provides two different approaches: <big>Keyword-Navigation </big> and <big>Guided Tours</big>. Guided Tours follow a more traditional way of teaching and informing. They are composed by museum experts, e.g., educators and curators, or by teachers and professors. The visitor can explore their topics by a series of simple steps and gather information, in a new way, from participating museums and research sources. The eight museums involved specialize in the following areas: fine arts, ethnography, technics, archaeology, and science. lt It can be, therefore, guaranteed that from this creative and informative potential an all-embracing grasp of a topic can be developed from an individual aspect. The variety of materials and sources represented by the eight museums allows the user to be innovative and to discover themes and topics, and to elaborate and visualize them, in a new way. Once fixed as a Guided Tour, the same program may be retrieved by every user.
<big>The Keyword -Navigation is the most important, and the truly innovative, part of the program. </big> The navigation by keywords is dedicated to a general public that may prefer a more gamelike approach to exhibits of cultural relevance—a public without specific or scientific interests which dislikes being taught. The users themselves find the coordinates of their routes through the museum landscape. The discovery tour stimulates them to find their very own interests while dealing with museum artefacts. By following his or her own inspiration, the user may get closer to the correlation between the artefacts and their meaning, motives, and values.
The adventurous tour starts with a local museum object. Once chosen, the system displays the object on the screen. Having explored different aspects offered in its information packages, the user is ready to face the attributed keyword pool. A maximum of 50 everyday life words outline the scope of meaning, sense, and associative power radiated by the object. (By the way, the content of the keyword pool is in permanent discussion, and the discussion will go on.)
Finally, the EMN systems gives the user a summary of what has passed during the adventurous tour. The user may select which items he or she wants to be printed out for taking home (software not implemented yet).
<gallery>
Vision1.jpg|Vision 1
Vision2.jpg|Vision 2
Vision3.jpg|Vision 3
Vision4.jpg|Vision 4
</gallery>
== VISION ==
There are many ideas not realized in the current system. For instance, the Vision of the visitor's cabinet: the user installs his or her selected exhibits in a virtual 3-D space, gives it a verbal comment and defines how he or she would like the onlooker to walk through the exhibition to perceive the intended context.
The electronic visitors cabinet is your own cabinet.
===Installation:=== synopsis of the linked items and the linkage elements, final decision and selection, preparation for the electronic exhibition: frames, pedestals, any other kind of outfit and attributes to be picked out of a special repertoire, light setting, special effects, definition of size and details; arrangement in the 3-D exhibition space, context and order.
===Request:=== discover and register missing links, ordering more or less specified new input, request to the experts; growth of The Electronic Kunstkammer guided by interest, meaning, knowledge, understanding and curiosity—not just systematical and formal.
===Walking:=== the preferred route; look through the eye of the beholder, walking through the gallery space; define the mode of perception—define the way of understanding the concept of installed gallery; title at top and description at the bottom.
The target of the aimed application is to have the user experience more than a concerned meaningful constellation. The understanding user would interact further with the man-machine interface to visualize, install, and finally absorb, that meaningful constellation. Following a set of rules, the system offers him to assimilate his contribution and make it—part it part of the game.
== FLASH BACK: THE KUNST- UND WUNDERKAMMER ==
===MODELS OF THE KUNST- UND WUNDERKAMMER===
==== Kunstkammer-Schrank ====
At almost the same time artists created pocket editions of the Kunst- und Wunderkammer: gallery paintings and special cabinets, called Kunstkammer-Schrank. Such a cabinet was not for hiding away belongings, for example, although it had numerous drawers, secret boxes, etc. The Kunstkammer-Schrank was dedicated to keep and to display a supreme composition of rare and meaningful man-made objects and natural specimen, a selection of "naturalia" and "arteficialia."
Such a Kunstkammer-Schrank had been specially made for one of those nobles and was designed for only one reason: for looking, reflecting, and absorbing the spirit of the whole conception. As this was not too easy even for a nobleman, he could get some help: if you were King Gustav Adolf II of Sweden, for example, Mr. Hainhofer, the famous producer, craftsman, and artist from Munich, would give you a guided tour through this cabinet. He would show you one specimen after another and tell you how to read it, how their singularity is interpreted, how the scope of the universe is represented, and how their references reflect universality—indeed, this was the aim of the Kunstkammer-Schrank: to indicate and transmit the universal consciousness of being a part, and of being an explorer, and designer, and wheel of the world—Vanitas included.
Such a cabinet was understood as a model of a model of that which was housed in smaller or bigger spaces in residences: A Kunst- und Wunderkammer en miniature.
==== Gallery paintings ====
Gallery paintings referred directly to given Kunstkammers. These depicted Kunstkammers had developed in the meantime and presented a more specific collection, although all categories of exhibits might be on display. But you can easily recognize the change: art pieces play the major role, as in the collection of the Dutch businessman, van der Geest. The Kunstkammer is on stage now: besides numerous exhibits, the painting introduces different social circles as aspects of van der Geest's activity as collector: high social ranking guests like the Archduke and Archduchess of the Nether-lands, the Burgomaster of Antwerp, the King of Poland, the Master of the Mint, the famous artists, Rubens and van Dyck—and van der Geest as a link to the next group of important collectors and consultants. Furthermore, on the right side are groups of painters and sculptors, all of them deeply involved in seeing and talking.
The picture reveals a more complex structure and meaning than appears at first sight. Thus, the painting of van der Geest's gallery can neither be regarded as the rendering
of a specific historical event nor as a faithful record of the contents or the arrangement of the collection at a given moment. lt seems rather to be a condensation into one picture of van der Geest's role in society and as friend of the arts. This theme reaches its climax in the inscription above the door: Vive lEsprit.
The people and exhibits depicted in the painting had been in the gallery of van der Geest—but most of them had never met each other at this spot in reality. In fact, they had visited the Kunstkammer within the range of some ten or twenty years—one by one. <br>That the depicted event is happening on one canvas now is resulting from a concept developed by the commissioner of the painting and the painter—by van der Geest and van Haecht. [[Der Galeriebesuch - ein Riesenpuzzle]]
Being aware of the possibilities of artificial images, they tried out almost everything to visualize their concept: they shifted times, places, occasions, meetings, persons, exhibits, even the architecture, to follow their idea of weaving a special context by visual means.
They are set up as nets of interrelations and presenting contexts of understanding and representation.
Instead of just recording reality, the invention and design of a gallery painting is using reality: congruence of time, space, and action is not binding anymore; the anticipation of seemingly limitless manipulations of the visual world allows the visualization of references, interests and life style—but, you have to be able to read the code, know about the location, neighbourhood, space, environment, communication, social interaction, politics—and people. If this knowledge is not at hand any longer, the painting will be misunderstood, its invention will be lost.
===YEARS LATER: CONCEPTS OF REMODELLING THE KUNST- UND WUNDERKAMMER===
