The Second Living Exhibition of the SHAPE project: supporting innovative exploration of artefacts with novel learning technology in the museum

comprising sixteen cognate projects, investigating how novel and emerging computational technologies can be deployed to enhance people’s everyday lives. The aim of SHAPE is to exploit the growing repertoire of pervasive and ubiquitous computer technologies to enhance museum and gallery spaces in ways that are educationally and socially meaningful. The first major public SHAPE exhibition (First Living Exhibition) took place at Nottingham Castle and Museum in the UK in July 2002; visitors completed a computer-augmented quest for clues related to kings Richard I, and Edward II. The second SHAPE exhibition will happen in the Hunt Museum, Limerick, from June 9th to 19th. For this second exhibition, we are dividing the museum’s sizeable gallery room into two parts: the first, a reproduction of John Hunt’s study room, where visitors will search for replicas of artefacts that ordinarily go unnoticed during standard/typical visits to the museum. The replicas will contain embedded RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) tags. And in an adjoining secret room, a number of collaborative, and interactive RFID-activated computer installations will afford new possibilities for visitors to physically handle, and learn about the replica artefacts they uncover in the study room. Pedagogical rationale for the Second Living Exhibition in the Hunt Museu