| Events & News - 21.10.2008 18:05 |
The Virtual Touriseum – somewhere between marketing and cultural communication |
Friday, October 10 saw over 50 museum employees from all over South Tyrol gather at Trauttmansdorff Castle to discuss the use of modern media by museums. Drawing on the example of the new virtual tour available at www.touriseum.it, the debate highlighted the potential conflict between marketing and cultural communication. |
Touriseum Director Paul Rösch began the discussion unequivocally: “My job is to communicate culture, i.e. to bring the content on display here in the museum to as many people as possible. So it is in fact a matter of secondary importance as to whether a visitor actually comes into the museum, or whether I can show him or her the contents via the Internet.”
Together with the 3D-Pixel company, the South Tyrol Tourism Museum has created a computer tour of the museum, which has been online since Friday, October 10 at www.touriseum.it. The majority of the exhibition rooms plus the South Tyrol game can be viewed from 360 degrees, from all sorts of perspectives, and the special effects at the various stations can also be played. There are some already virtual museum tours, but normally only a very small part of the museum can be seen or the objects in the museum are not suitable for multimedia presentation. As the Touriseum is such a well-known museum experience, surprising visitors with its numerous possibilities for interaction and special effects, the whole range of multimedia technologies can be also be exploited on the Internet.
Two points of view soon crystallised in the discussion among the museum staff present: those who regarded the virtual tour as an interesting but relatively expensive marketing measure – one among many – and those who consider the Internet as the ideal medium to make new target groups aware of the content I can offer, thus representing an important form of cultural communication work.
“We cannot judge the success of the virtual tour in terms of a large increase in visitor numbers: on the contrary, the optimum use of the Internet by a cultural amenity like the Touriseum is a must if we are to communicate our content”, says Paul Rösch.
(Autore: ohn)
|
