Towards virtual Museum of Design (2002)

Abstract

All artefacts are but memory institutions in terms of the values they carry along. If an artifact can by itself be the proof of an institution, it needs a space where it may live and be set within the context of its own time as a reconstitution and, by these means, giving rise to another institution where that set of artefacts would be displayed: the museum. The Museum of Design aims at safeguarding that memory in order to enable the understanding of new ways of life and thinking according to another perspective. Technology renders imperative the museum mutation so that it may be consonant with a new reading, new actions and perspectives made possible in the cyber-society that is now being built. Thus, the virtual museum of design is the new way of viewing, thinking and organizing the values and ideas assembled in the items produced. With various examples, the virtual museum brings into existence and develops the display of new riches. In this paper we describe our efforts and strategies to create a virtual museum of design, based on a new kind of interaction driven by design theory.