Museum Experience through Interpretive Devices: Cognitive Process in the Perception of Art

Recent advances in wireless network technologies create the potential to significantly enhance the experience of a visit to a museum through all kinds of interpretive devices. Especially inside Art Museums, visitors are getting used to carry wirelessly connected interpretive devices which can be given opportunities not only for explanations and exploration, but as a powerful analytical tools as well, and suggestions for related experiences. When these interpretive devices are part of the network, they also can help extend the museum visit: in advance, through activities that orient visitors; and afterward, through opportunities to reflect and explore related ideas. This paper first criticised both audio and multimedia devices for cognitive process in the perception of art inside museum environment, to discuss that whether audio / multimedia guides are good additions to the group of interpretive devices that museums offer their visitors; and second drew out the cognitive process model which shows that the visitor can continuously access the outcome of an effective evaluation and able to express his/her (dis)like of the artwork at any stage of the process