Paper short abstract:

This paper aims to show which spatial, auditory, tactile, olfactory, visual and memory-based strategies can be used in a art/exhibition in order to engender a completely different and critical awareness and understanding of space.

Paper long abstract:

Experiments carried out by science museums over the last twenty years have made it possible to immerse visitors in specific environments with the aim of helping them better understand phenomena and scientific mechanisms and have thus paved the way to the development of "situation scenario" techniques. Installations of this kind, have accustomed the wider public to performance and to heightened interactivity. New strategies, informed by a growing theoretical framework, came forward. Immersion, however, complicates the work of exhibition designers as it does not in any way provide simple solutions to the dissemination of increasingly intangible content, as designing exhibits of this kind is very similar to designing art installations. Academics (Crary 2003, Fiers 2003, Oliveira, 2007) agree that the notion of sensory experience developed along parallel lines in both the worlds of science and of art - each world feeding the creativity of the other. Our hyper-objective world is also responsible: studies on polysensory experience (Synott 1993, Varela 1994, Fiers 2003, Howes 2006) have shown, the search for the multisemous and polysemous dimensions of our environment has only spurred that process. An excellent illustration of sensory mechanism was displayed in Diller Scofidio + Renfro's Blur Building. This paper aims to show which spatial, auditory, tactile, olfactory, visual and memory-based strategies were used in this art/exhibition production in order to engender a completely different and critical awareness and understanding of space and its challenges.