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Modified: 2014-01-15 19:11:12
The "Light is History" project in Helsinki involved a participatory public museum installation that served as a research object in an urban square where community members anonymously displayed information of their personal artifacts and shared their energy use information for the common wellbeing. The weeklong Installation inspired efforts of energy saving, affected the introspection of owning electrical artifacts and generated physical on-site interaction among visitors and participants. Here, the acts of saving, sharing and display of the community’s objects were facilitated by a composite installation made of recycled materials, microprocessors, and assisted by digital media and social networks. The Project tried to establish that a co-curated and participatory framework built around daily practices could be effective in bringing together local community and has outcomes for sustainability, learning and wellbeing. Through this project, the paper examines lessons learnt that could have implications for museum exhibitions and investigates how methodologies of participation and installation can serve as an example for museums in the future to build sustainable practices around artifacts in their own collections.
Samir Bhowmik
SAMIR BHOWMIK is a practicing Architect based in Helsinki and a Researcher at the Media Lab (Systems of Representation) of the Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture. A Finnish Citizen, he was born in India, has lived and worked in Washington DC and New York after receiving his M. Arch at the University of Maryland in 2003. His architecture and design research is focused on contemporary museums, installations and their future evolution in a post-oil world through community participation and the application of emerging digital technologies. Samir is interested in art, sculpture and interactive installations related to inter-cultural conflict, intangible cultural heritage, and a world without political boundaries. Samir works with Museums, User Communities and emerging Technology dealing with sustainable museum design, exhibitions and installation design, MIM (Museum Information Modeling), spatial programming, digital collections archiving, social media strategies and community participatory methods.