I found time to visit Brede Værk which is a new ambitious Danish exhibition about the industrilisation in Denmark. In many ways its a relly strong concept, but when visiting it is still missing something, and have some of the problems that are often aimed at including digital technology in museums. Interestingly, it has two very distint ways of using digital technology which each have their own challenges.
The exhibition is built with an interactive ticket system so when you start up you select a character you will follow through the exhibition. When you come to a new area in the exhibition you put in your card, and get the selected character’s perspective on the situation. The story and exhibition beyond that is pretty linear but it actually works quite well, and show that there is a potential for pushing the exhibition through a narrative and make it more meaningful and easy to relate to.
The biggest problem is that you end up looking more on the video screens that the actual exhibition artefacts, which is of course one of the big criticism often levelled us digitale technology. In reality you could really have seen the video anywhere and got an almost similar experience. Although you have some artefacts in the background – they become little more than distant background as they are not closely integrated into the videos and the narrative.
The other part of the exhibition that really use digital technology is a machine factory where you are sitting at the assembly line and must put together items in competition with other, and with world events influencing this. The concept is really strong, the visitors engaged and very hands-on experience. I am sure all visitors will remember this experience afterwards The challenge with this game is that is requires a lot of visitors to really work and that the game is a bit too complex. Furthermore, even if the museum experience is embedded in this experience it still becomes somewhat external. The assembly line feels more like Vietnam today than Denmark 200 years ago. So here the artifacts are not background but they become too much like the present. On the other hand the experience of being at an assembly line is conveyed extremely well.
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