Day One

By Gaby Bruna.

The first day of this week-long seminar kicked off with Ortoleva’s keynote speech where the new disciplines in this exploding industry of museums were presented. But the real discussion on Peppino’s table was: is the Museum a medium or an environment?

A tough and complex conversation which only an intellectual the rate of Ortoleva can attempt to explain.

A big emphasis was made on the nature of expository communication in this new era, among them three-dimensional aspects, freedom and boredom and visitors’ rhythms.

But if museums and exhibits are created from a universe of content, what does it mean to organize it? Peppino’s relaxed, cohesive and conversational rhythm paved the way to comprehend new forms of content creation in upcoming movements.

From the upcoming generation’s “montage” way of expressing knowledge to the rhythm, a specific content can have.

Usual to his style, big questions to big ideas were mixed seamlessly with concrete examples from British science museums to Colombian art exhibits. From McLuhan to J.J. Gibson, from Nietzsche to Marilyn Monroe, if there is ever a ‘Walking Media Museum’, Peppino’s mind and voice is the golden ticket.

He points to plurisensoriality as an undeniable tendency while content creators figure out how to make raw material a true “sensual” experience.

And while this conversation will extend all week…it seemed like the bigger picture aims to assemble museums and exhibitions as part of a larger environment, even if they themselves create a perfect internal one.

To be clear, two of the reasons this seminar is taking place is due to the undeniable explosion of new professions in this field and the Los Andes Design Master’s interest in preparing its students on this vast creative field.

Global cities, today on a cultural race to attract visitors ranging also form part of a bigger conversation, the idea of the city as an experience and how that concept is evolving.

Framing all of that into three tendencies identified by Ortoleva as “cooling” of content, “sensualisation” of experiences and interactivity, the entire keynote brought upon a heavy reflection on the definition of museums and exhibitions itself.

This, according to Peppino feeds into the growing role of museums and exhibits as cultural transmitters of out time and more poignantly the intermediary role of them in today’s world.

So, even though we still call them museums and exhibitions, the rise of self-education and the disintegration of borders for knowledge are massively changing the art, science, industr, and future of this discipline.