Human-Centric Chronographics:Making Historical Time Memorable

A series of experiments is described, evaluating user recall of visualisations of historical chronology. Such visualisations are widely created but have not hitherto been evaluated. Users were tested on their ability to learn a sequence of historical events presented in a virtual environment (VE) fly-through visualisation, compared with the learning of equivalent material in other formats that are sequential but lack the 3D spatial aspect. Memorability is a particularly important function of visualisation in education. The measures used during evaluation are enumerated and discussed. The majority of the experiments reported compared three conditions, one using a virtual environment visualisation with a significant spatial element, one using a serial on-screen presentation in PowerPoint, and one using serial presentation on paper. Some aspects were trialled with groups having contrasting prior experience of computers, in the UK and Ukraine. Evidence suggests that a more complex environment including animations and sounds or music, intended to engage users and reinforce memorability, were in fact distracting. Findings are reported in relation to the age of the participants, suggesting that children at 11–14 years benefit less from, or are even disadvantaged by, VE visualisations when compared with 7–9 year olds or undergraduates. Finally, results suggest that VE visualisations offering a ‘landscape’ of information are more memorable than those based on a linear model. Keywords: timeline, chronographics

Intimate Ecologies: An exploration of the languages of contemporary exhibitions and making in museums and related cultural spaces in the UK

Intimate Ecologies considers the practice of exhibition-making over the past decade in formal museum and gallery spaces and its relationship to creating a concept of craft in contemporary Britain. Different forms of expression found in traditions of still life painting, film and moving image, poetic text and performance are examined to highlight the complex layers of language at play in exhibitions and within a concept of craft. The thesis presents arguments for understanding the value of embodied material knowledge to aesthetic experience in exhibitions, across a spectrum of human expression. These are supported by reference to exhibition case studies, critical and theoretical works from fields including social anthropology, architecture, art and design history and literary criticism and a range of individual, original works of art. Intimate Ecologies concludes that the museum exhibition, as a creative medium for understanding objects, becomes enriched by close study of material practice, and embodied knowledge that draws on a concept of craft. In turn a concept of craft is refreshed by the makers’ participation in shifting patterns of exhibition-making in cultural spaces that allow the layers of language embedded in complex objects to be experienced from different perspectives. Both art-making and the experience of objects are intimate, and infinitely varied: a vibrant ecology of exhibition-making gives space to this diversity.