The Sound of Paintings: Using Citizen Curation to Explore the Cross-Modal Personalization of Museum Experiences

Abstract

This paper describes the use of Citizen Curation to explore ways in which cross-modal experiences can be used and created by museum visitors. Citizen Curation can be defined as individuals and groups from outside the museum profession engaging in curatorial activities to communicate their own ideas and stories. Previous work has explored how Citizen Curation can be used to broaden the range of voices reflected in the museum, thereby widening its appeal and relevance to new audiences. Recent research suggests that cross-modal experiences, combining visual art with music, can enhance the cultural experience as the visitor simultaneously draws on both what they see and hear. Citizen Curation provides a potential method through which visitors can create and share cross-modal experiences for each other, combining visual art and music. In this paper, we introduce the Deep Viewpoints web application that has previously been used for the Citizen Curation of looking at visual art. We then describe how the application was extended to support two further contexts (i) a musicologist curating experiences that link music to visual art in a museum collection, and (ii) visitors to a museum exhibition experiencing and creating cross-modal experiences. Finally, we reflect on different ways in which technology could be used to support cross-modal museum experiences.