The Phygital Museum Ecosystem: Pushing Comfort Zone Boundaries in the Visitor Museum Experience
摘要
The hybridisation of how we inhabit the world around us, divided between the real and the digital, is pushing towards a reintegration of the two spheres. This trend, known as ‘phygital’, goes beyond marketing by applying the benefits of our digital and physical worlds to cultural heritage and museums. The ecosystemic dimension created by digital, multichannel, and multi-device configurations impinges on the communicative and experiential aspects of museum exhibits, allowing a fluid connection between what happens inside the museum and the world beyond its walls. In the context of museum experience design, phygital technology enriches the synaesthetic experience by simultaneously exploiting the narrative and interactive capabilities of technology alongside the material and emotional value of the space and artworks on display. This chapter explores how different levels of integration between story-based digital technology, physical space and visitor engagement can be categorised through a taxonomy of phygital museum experiences. This taxonomy will thereafter be used to examine how these experiences can lead visitors to expand their perception and interpret the museum space as a multi-layered experience open to different connections. The taxonomy will be contextualised in relation to a corpus of relevant research and relevant examples and will be compared with recent past and ongoing exhibitions in Dutch museums. Phygital experiences invite visitors to museums to participate actively, transforming their view of the museum from a static, informative place to a dynamic space for exploration and discovery, where culture is reinterpreted and collective meaning is created.