The Sprawling Exhibition: A Format for Expanding Space Digitally in Museums and Public Space

This master thesis investigates how new technologies used in exhibitions in public space and museums can engage visitors in new ways, with digital forms of immersion, interactivity, navigation, and spatial understanding. The thesis poses questions regarding how the Screen City Biennial 2019, as its case study, engages visitors with artworks, in the form of virtual reality, augmented reality, and audio-visual installations, and how these artworks relate to their surrounding spaces in innovative ways. Theories employed in the thesis are based on literature within digital cultural heritage, frameworks for exhibition analysis within the field of museology and cultural heritage, philosophical theories on space, and Actor-Network Theory. The qualitative research methods applied are participant observation through fieldwork at the biennial and semi-structured interviews with the biennial’s producers and visitors. Three exhibitions are analysed in terms of their spatial exhibition layouts and forms of interaction and immersion. The first exhibition analysed showed the audio-visual installation Tidal Pulse II, the second presented the AR installation Tentacle Tongue, and the third exhibited the VR installation The Bone. The thesis presents how attention to curation and mediation of virtual, hybrid and 'expanded' spaces created by VR, AR, and AV installations, can facilitate tension between installations and their surrounding spaces. These installations can offer immersive experiences that make exhibition spaces engaging in new ways, which encourage visitors’ unique and self-directed experiences. The analyses in this thesis exemplify the range of interactions that become possible in exhibitions with VR, AR, and AV installations