Paper first presented at "Culture, Technology, Interpretation: the Challenge of Multimedia" Conference, Trinity College, Dublin, 25/26 March 1993. First published in: E.Barrett & M.Redmond (eds.) Culture, Technology, Interpretation: the Challenge of Multimedia, MIT Press, Camb, Mass. 1995.
Introduction
Multimedia and interactive displays are fast becoming a vital part of the educational environment in the `progressive' museum (Hoffos, 1992). To date most developments have attempted to enhance exhibitions or to make information more accessible within the traditional concept of a museum, with high investment and advanced technology being essential to the application (Hoptman, 1992). There are, however, alternative ways of interpreting the role of the museum which can also take advantage of the potential of multimedia technology. The possibilities of reproduction means that the museum need no longer be centred around the experience of unique objects but can exist as a distributed system. We argue that if we discard its need for unique objects and, in addition, re-order its internal power relations, the museum can begin to function as a powerful metaphor for the organisation of knowledges.
This paper builds on work carried out on a project that aims to provide educational software for design history.[1] The project operates within a particular educational context and explores the potential of interactive multimedia computing to develop an active, rather than passive role for the student. This means providing a creative role which stresses the power the student can have as an author rather than as an operator who simply retrieves information or selects between predetermined routes. We take seriously Sherry Turkle's criticism that,
"Educators emphasize the computer's nature as a teaching machine or an analytical engine, but give insufficient attention to and even deny the computer's `second nature' as an evocative subject, an expressive medium that people use for self-projection and self-reflection." (Turkle, 1990, p.145)
The concern of the design historian is to understand the historical significance and meaning of mass-produced consumer goods and associated one-off prototypes which come within the category of craft or the decorative arts. It involves researching and interpreting the social context within which these artefacts have been designed, produced and consumed. Historiographically it has been informed by interdisciplinary work drawing upon discussions of both the arts and technology. Debates within cultural theory, feminism and material culture have also influenced its development, challenging the process of design history as well as broadening its potential subject matter. Of particular note are the methods for reading objects and representations that have emerged from structuralism, semiotics and post-structuralism, and the necessity, as an historian, to understand one's location with respect to dominating organisational structures. As Elspeth Probyn states
"Location describes epistemological manoeuvres whereby categories of knowledge are established and fixed into sequences. It is also a process which determines what we experience as knowledge and what we know as experience. In its hierarchical movement, location insists on a taxonomy of experience. One doesn't have to scratch the surface very deeply to find that class, race, and gender have a lot to do with whose experiences are on top." (Probyn, 1990, p.184)These issues are also part of feminist accounts which place stress upon technology's social construction. Technology is not seen as a set of neutral artefacts, so the effects of society on technology as well as the effects of technology on society need examination (Wajcman, 1991, p.ix).
By its nature the subject matter of design history is both visual and textual and it is about both objects and representations. Multimedia technology can enable students to confront issues surrounding the relationship between object, text and image in new ways. Because of its immediacy, the separation of form and content within a multimedia presentation is by no means clear. In producing and reviewing an electronic publication the subject content and the computer interface design can become indivisible.
The project explores the `sophisticated' use of available technology, which means assessing its use not in providing the complete answer to one isolated problem but in providing assistance to students in their achievement of more complex and socially defined tasks. From this perspective the primary role of the technology is as a means of communication; it also has potential as a means of empowerment for both individual exploration and collaborative group work.
The project was established as a collaborative venture principally involving a design historian and a computer specialist. From the outset the project adopted the traditions of work-oriented design to be found in Scandinavia (Ehn, 1988; Kyng, 1991). This decision implied the adoption of a number of viewpoints: seeing the computer primarily as a communications medium rather than as a processor of data (Andersen, 1990); aiming to enhance the tacit knowledge of those working with technology rather than to replace it by formal knowledge (Rosenbrock,1989); studying closely the professional language that people use in the course of their work and building computer systems that in essence speak the same language (Nygaard, 1984).
The most fundamental implication of this initial decision was, however, the need to confront the issue of power. Both participants were forced to consider the often unnoticed assumptions of their own discipline, and to see how subject-based structures of knowledge serve to control the distribution of resources and the outcome of events. This applies not just to the specialisms of design history and systems design, but also to wider disciplines such as history, education and computing and more material institutions such as museums, universities and the computing profession.
Nor was this the only dimension of power to be confronted. Collaboration within education should involve not only technologists and teachers but also those who learn. As an integral part of the research, course units were developed and offered to undergraduate students. Issues that were raised by these units included: the dangers of early alienation; the value of a broad experience of possible applications; the advantages of students setting their own agenda; and the need for authors to develop a critical viewpoint on both their own work and that of others.
When assembling the range of multimedia that we would like students to experience we became acutely aware of the lack of any significant authoring role in any of the products. Users were routinely allowed to select which information they could access next and were occasionally given the opportunity to copy sections for their personal collection, however the maximum participation allowed by most products could be achieved sitting in an armchair using a TV remote control.[2] The fruitful development of multimedia systems within our objectives relies upon empowering the users in ways not generally realised in today's products.
Current Multimedia Systems
In the wider context, design historians have to negotiate with museums as institutions: they are consumers of its output and can, in many instances, contribute to its development. An examination of museum-related multimedia systems in Britain reveals three types of activity. In the first, the computer is seen as an efficient administrator of the (unquestioned) function of the museum. The anticipated advantages are greater integration and efficiency and direct cost benefits. The data it contains is seen as neutral and independent of the use to which it may be put. This view is epitomised in a recent U.K. report on multimedia in museums and its recommendations to
"Integrate the cataloguing and interpretation of all materials... Integrate curatorial, educational and collection management roles." (Arts Council, 1992, p.3)Access to this monolithic system should not be open to everyone. The museum curator is seen as a key specialist who has responsibility to control access to the data.
"The need for editorial control remains a priority." (Arts Council, 1992, p.9/10)
In the second type of multimedia system, a museum or gallery attempts to provide an attractive and informative catalogue or guide to their collection that is accessible by any visitor. One of the earliest of these in the U.K. was located in the Design Museum (London) and one of the more recent is the MicroGallery at the National Gallery (London). Acting principally as a guide to the objects in the museum, these systems may also introduce extra contextual material. In the distributed video system in the Imperial War Museum (London) this becomes the principal function of the system.
The third type of system is where a museum is "electronically published" and made available for distribution to colleges, libraries and homes. This type of system may take various forms, for example one set of products attempt to recreate the experience of a particular museum (e.g. the Smithsonian) or an imaginary museum (e.g. Apple's Virtual Museum). Other products attempt to create new museums by representing and linking "the knowledge" within a particular domain. For example, there is a project run by ICOGRADA (the International Council of Graphic Design Associations) to create a set of photo-CD products about significant designers each to a standard format. Finally, we find the most global approach to the electronic distribution of knowledge in a HyperCard stack entitled "Culture", the attempted scope of which is truly breathtaking.
All the systems we examined seemed to be influenced by the dominant concept of the market. On the one hand we have museum directors trying to make their institution more efficient and competitive, while on the other we see the necessity for packageable and easy-to-use commodities. Whichever direction we look in we seem to find design decisions being taken that are aimed more towards the market than towards the integrity of the system[3] . To meet our project objectives we had to stand outside these current traditions of multimedia development and the institutional process of system design and to do that we first had to clarify our theoretical position.
Multimedia system paradigms
We identify three paradigms of system architecture which we call the database paradigm, the hypertext paradigm and the communications paradigm. Each paradigm involves a different set of values, a different epistemology, a different methodology and results in a very different product.
The database paradigm adopts the view that the world consists of objects and events which can be perfectly described by a set of special phrases called `facts'. These facts can be collected and stored and theoretically anyone can gain access to them. The view is summarised by the belief in "All information in all places at all times" (Godfrey & Parkhill, 1980). From such a positivist viewpoint different facts about the world are produced by different disciplines. Each such discipline enjoys a uniquely privileged position with respect to knowledge within its specialist area and each has its own concepts and methods of measurement (Laufer, 1991).
Within this paradigm the role of information technology is primarily to facilitate the accumulation and retrieval of facts. This requires that we legitimise the integration of facts from different sources into a single system of knowledge and this was achieved by refining the distinction between "data" and "information". On the one hand facts are universal because they are all in the same format (as data), while on the other they are meaningful only within their specific discipline (as information). This dualism is, however, bought at a price. While a database can be accessed by universal operations, an information base will, by definition, be ordered with some purpose in mind and can only be accessed through a classification system that embodies that order.
To many people public collections of information (such as libraries and museums) are organised in the most practical way to allow users access and it is considered esoteric to suggest that such a collection is biassed. However, not every profession is so confident of its facts. The legal profession is probably the first to recognise the principle that data is only meaningful in the context of its collection and that it is illegitimate to use it for any undeclared purpose. A basic principle of computer privacy legislation is that subjects should be told how data is to be used before it is collected from them and that, once collected, data should only be used for that purpose[4]. The realisation that two professions disagree over the status of facts raises serious questions about the database paradigm.
Mark Poster makes it clear that the hypertext paradigm denies the positivist's belief that the world can be described by a set of facts.
"No set of phrases about the world contains the truth of the world and, to make matters more complex, the world itself contains, among other things, texts." (Poster, 1990, p.81).Laufer argues that around 1950 positivist epistemology was replaced by the "science of systems" (Laufer, 1991), a new epistemology based upon networks, i.e. nodes and links represented by circles and arrows.
The role of information technology within the systems paradigm is embodied in the concept of hypertext. George Landow traces the intellectual origins of hypertext to Of Grammatology (Derrida, 1967) which he describes as "the art and science of linking" (Landow, 1992, p.30). In contrast to positivism (which has meta-narratives and progress), hypertext lacks any sense of direction because there is no fixed starting point and no end.
"One of the fundamental characteristics of hypertext is that it is composed of bodies of linked texts that have no primary axis or organisation." (Landow, 1992, p.11/12)
From the hypertext viewpoint knowledge is infinite: we can never know the whole extent of it but only have a perspective on it. To implement pure hypertext is impossible because we would have to do two things: decide what is the unit we make into a node, and represent the infinity of links that connect this node to all other nodes. This is impossible: life is in real-time and we are forced to be selective, we decide that this much constitutes one node and only these links are worth representing. In this sense the concept of hypertext obscures the real decisions that are taken and which are, by default, resolved in favour of those with the power and resources to act effectively. As Poster comments
"The fact that it is technically possible for information to be available to everyone at little cost in no way ensures that it will be." (Poster, 1990, p.72).
The need to consciously allocate resources within the infinity of the hypertext paradigm has implications for computer-mediated discourses. Michel Foucault describes the process of selection among discourses and its relationship to the exercise of power:
"There can be no possible exercise of power without a certain economy of discourses of truth. ... We are subjected to the production of truth through power and we cannot exercise power except through the production of truth." (Foucault, 1980, p.93)The weakness of the hypertext paradigm is that it is too general and does not address the reality of knowledge production and dissemination and its relationship to systems of power in society.
Within the communication paradigm the computer is seen not as a depository or processor of knowledge but as a medium by means of which humans communicate knowledges. The computer should not impose a structure of knowledge upon users but should enable humans to exchange knowledges in ways that are natural to them. Based on the "language games" of Ludwig Wittgenstein (1953), communication is typically seen within this paradigm as concerned with some practical task. The design method requires a study of the professional language of the users and its adoption, as far as possible, as the language of the system (Andersen, 1990). We situate ourselves broadly within this tradition, but see a need to review the concept of task within the specific context we find ourselves: that of design history and education.
Power, Subjectivity and Institutions
Our ultimate aim in this project is to improve the critical abilities of students with respect to their subject (design history) within an educational programme that has this as its objective. As such it is important that we locate the project with respect to an analysis of power and, particularly, institutional power. For students to be active and to be empowered, their historical investigations must have meaning in the present. Through a sense of the past, groups and individuals create social meanings for themselves. These issues have relevance both from the point of view of the author, and within a collective responsibility.
Michel Foucault is an important influence. His writings on the nature and historical specificity of the role of authorship opened a debate that has been extended within feminist theory to recognise the political role of subjectivity and authorship and the importance of being the makers of history. Relationships between creativity, subjectivity and identity are crucial. Feminists, speaking from the margins, seek to escape the marginalising effects of universal theory. As Nancy Harstock writes,
"Rather than getting rid of subjectivity or notions of the subject, as Foucault does and substituting his notion of the individual as an effect of power relations, we need to engage in the historical, political, and theoretical process of constituting ourselves as subjects as well as objects of history. We need to recognise that we can be the makers of history as well as the objects of those who have made history." (Harstock, 1990, p.170-71)
Instead of being spoken-for, it is vital to constitute ourselves as subjects to question universal claims. On one level the task is a deconstructive one - of noting the fissures, shifts of meaning, the endless referring to the other. The task is also to create by denying neutrality and emphasising the power dimensions of difference. As Christine Battersby writes, the feminist critic
"examines what is involved in writing as a woman : as a person confronting the paradigms of male individuality and female otherness, defining herself in terms of those paradigms ... and resisting them." (Battersby, 1989, p.148)
Linda Nicholson also focuses on discourse, not as structures susceptible to abstract formalisation but as human interaction -
"a discourse that recognizes itself as historically situated, as motivated by values and, thus, political interests, and as a human practice without transcendent justification." (Nicholson, 1992, p.65)As we move towards a position that includes a significant component of subjectivity, are we in danger of lapsing into relativism?
"[I]f one conceptualises discourse not as a structure but as a process of interaction, the issue of relativism must take on a different meaning. ... [T]o think about discourse as a communicative process is not to endorse or reject relativism but to reconceptualize relativism as communicative breakdown, a real-life possibility whose outcome can never be stipulated in advance." (Nicholson, 1992, p.68)
Within this quotation there is a shift from the terminology of Foucault to that of Habermas and this is significant. Habermas introduced a terminology of historical and social practice based upon three terms: praxis, politik and technik which we translate as lifeworld, institution and system (Habermas, 1984). These concepts refer to three essential modes of interaction with the world and we find them useful in talking about the role of subjectivity and authorship, the role of institutions and power, and the belief in universal knowledge[5] .
The world of systems is the world of objects that is "out there" and, we assume, behaves in a consistent manner. We interact with this world through technical knowledges which allow us to describe regular patterns of behaviour and to predict the future outcome of events. The technical world can successfully be acted upon through rule-governed technical action.
Lifeworlds are the worlds of the subject rather than the object. They are essentially phenomenological in that they embody a viewpoint upon the world from which subjective reality is actively created. Other people are not objects to be acted upon, but rather subjects to be interacted with through language. Within our lifeworlds we are involved in practical action aimed in part at communication and agreement.
Institutions can be of many kinds: marriage, museums, education, historical societies, standards for human-computer interfaces. The world of institutions is the world in which resources are redisposed. Resources in this sense may be objective (e.g. material objects, computer terminals, formal knowledges) or subjective (e.g. understandings, languages, emotional energy). Institutional action involves shifting resources around and through institutional action the possibilities for action by other subjects can be constrained or expanded. Recognition of institutions provides us with a richer language in which we can avoid universality without resorting to relativism.
Within this framework, we can see that the use of information technology has traditionally been interpreted as a form of technical action; hence the contents of computer systems are often seen as containing knowledge about objects. We argue that this is not their major mode and that the use of information technology is primarily a form of institutional action, i.e. it is really about the allocation of resources. We find this view is shared, for example, by those who recognise the "social shaping" role of new technology.
"New information systems embody partial choices, inclusions and exclusions: they enable the generation and dissemination of information which - to a greater or lesser extent - constitutes a picture of what organisational reality is taken to be." (Owen, Bloomfield & Coombs, 1993)It is also found in Nicholson's conclusion that,
"Finally, our best safeguard may ultimately lie not with the kinds of discourse we rule acceptable or not but with the more practical issue of who is able to take part in discourse - that is, with the question of access `to the means of communication'." (Nicholson, 1992, p.67)
From this perspective it is impossible to separate out the role of technology from the institutional roles of museums and the discipline of design history, each of which establishes a discourse and instinctively uses technology instrumentally to control resources. If students are going to develop an ability to critically view their subject, then any technology developed from an established institutional viewpoint will limit the resources that they can bring to bear and will limit their access to the `means of communication'.
The Virtual Curator: exercising control in the virtual museum
The practical task we set ourselves was to devise a piece of computer software that enables the user to be as free as possible from the preconceptions of traditional institutions. The author should be in control of all aspects of the collection of information and its arrangement and be able to make statements in the form of exhibitions or other displays. The starting point is the idea of the museum. The central processes are those of collection, selection, order and arrangement which in themselves give meaning, but the appearance of their product as universal total knowledge is questioned. As Eilean Hooper-Greenhill has stated, it is a "mistake to assume that there is only one form of reality for museums"(Hooper-Greenhill, 1992).
By embracing information technology the aura of the object is destroyed but, more importantly, if this is placed alongside the aim of recreating the museum as an institution, a more radical position becomes possible. This is achieved by reorganising the power structure between the curator and visitor, by opening up the store room. The strength of the museum metaphor lies in seeing the museum as the mediating institution between design historians and their audience. The museum is the archive and it is also the means of communication and presentation. The design historian needs to control, rather than be controlled by the museum.
The first challenge of the project was to set up the formal procedures needed to make this process possible but there was the additional challenge of considering what might be the basis of a special aesthetic for interactive media. As Peter Bøgh Andersen states, interactive media needs a suitable aesthetic which will sever its links with other traditions and make it into a medium in its own right (Andersen, 1992). A consideration of the museum develops this because it deals in the organisation of images, objects, texts and sequential media. Additionally the museum offers an opportunity for non-linear readings. The relationships the viewer has with the museum not only combines various media but is creative in another sense. Ludmilla Jordanova writes
"In order to gain knowledge from museums, viewers, whether they are aware of it or not, both reify the objects they examine, treating them as decontextualised commodities, and identify with them, allowing them to generate memories, associations, fantasies." (Jordanova, 1989, p.25)The museum display can promote `facts' and `values' simultaneously. The way that a viewer acquires knowledge within the museum context acknowledges these contradictory facets.
Working from these premises, a prototype system called the "virtual curator" was developed. The name was chosen to deliberately contrast with the "virtual museum" which aims to provide access to a museum in as naturalistic a manner as the technology makes possible (Garvey & Wallace, 1992). The differences between the two systems are marked. The virtual curator does not attempt to excel in technological sophistication for its main aim is to develop certain ideas concerning what systems should be built, how they should be built and how they should be used. The underlying metaphor is not that of a pre-classified exhibition in which the user can passively select one of a limited number of paths: such approaches seem to encourage what Groot (1992) has called a "tourist" approach. Rather we aim to encourage Groot's "travellers" by opening up the institution of the museum and allowing users to construct an exhibition or display from a store room of objects. We also allow them to add objects to the store room if they so wish. As a challenge to the power structure found in traditional museums, the organisational structure of separating curator from visitor is broken down.
A description of the Virtual Curator
We start our explanation of the system with the store which is a darkened space containing a number of objects. We want to simulate a sense of exploration and discovery and feel that this is not easy within the rectangular borders of the monitor. We adopt an approach developed by Andersen (1992) which involves simulating a torch beam that follows the cursor, illuminating objects as it goes (Figure 1). The penumbra allows some features of nearby objects to be revealed. The user goes in search of objects and nothing is revealed unless actively sought.
The first and most fundamental principle of the store room is that it contains all objects known to the system and they are all first-class objects. Technically this means that any object can be manipulated by the various operators we shall describe later. Philosophically it means that we do not follow the division of sources of information between primary (the object itself), secondary (facts about the object) and tertiary (interpretations of the object) that is normal upheld within the culture of museums. The system does not deal in physical objects and deliberately does not try to simulate the experience of confronting a physical object. The virtual curator deals only with images and it makes a virtue of this: every image has the same status as every other image.
The store contains a "collection" of images which may be of objects, documents and pattern books as well as notice boards, posters, display cabinets, plinths, etc. Objects are placed randomly in the store, which is conceived as a two-dimensional grid. It is only possible to refer to another object indirectly by means of its grid location. The document in Figure 2 is an object in the store which has been selected for closer inspection. Though it is a document it has exactly the same status as the object in Figure 1.
A second essential feature of the virtual curator is that there is no pre-classification of objects. There is, for example, no preexisting link between the image of the kettle in Figure 1 (which is located at grid position T22) and the document which appears to refer to that kettle (which is to be found at grid position V19). If a user wishes to make a personal link between these two objects she or he may do so. In constructing an exhibition it is important to be able to record the results of research, and this involves making links between objects. It is also important from an educational point of view for students to show the process whereby their visual statements are constructed and for their tutor to be able to interrogate these constructions and discuss them with the student. Figure 3 shows a user-link between these two objects.
The user is set the task of making a visual statement or exhibition and the generic name for the place where exhibitions are created is the stage. The stage can take many forms and all objects in the store can be copied and displayed as many times as required on the stage. One form of statement is the two-dimensional graphic poster. To create one of these a blank poster is first selected from the store, objects are then copied from the store and pasted onto the poster along with any user-supplied text that is required. Figure 4 shows a poster that incorporates the kettle image from Figure 1. The completed poster is copied back into the store room and then behaves just like any other object.
Another way of displaying objects is in a display cabinet. Display cabinets also appear in the store and can be selected and then filled with objects from the store. In constructing a cabinet there may be a need for labels and these too are selected from the store room and constructed. A cabinet display is shown in Figure 5 and it too, when completed, can be copied back into the store room.
It is also possible for the stage to simulate a three-dimensional space such as a room. A background is presented which can be read as three walls of a bare room seen from the central point of the fourth wall. Objects can be placed into this "room" and, if required, they will behave similar to real objects in three-dimensional space. For example, objects can be made to appear to scale, or only appropriate locations are permitted for objects that expect to be fixed to the walls or ceiling (e.g. light fittings).
Another kind of object that is found in the store is a book of fabric samples and this behaves very much like its real world counterpart (Figure 6). The pages can be turned, a copy of the current page can become an object, or a particular fabric can be chosen and subsequently used to cover certain objects such as a chair, carpet or wall (Figure 7).
Of particular note is the fact that other visual statements, such as a completed notice board or cabinet, are already objects in the store and can now be copied and placed in the room (Figure 8). In theory this process can be repeated recursively, so that we could get an object in a cabinet which appears on a poster that is in another cabinet within a room!
We need to distinguish two types of user of this system: authors who make statements and readers who read them. There are three basic sets of operations that an author can carry out within the system:
a) within the store, objects can be added, examined and copied and personalised
links can be made between them;
b) objects can be copied between the store and the stage; and
c) within the stage, objects can be rearranged and resized.
For the person reading a statement, both the store and the stage may be
explored and any object may be interrogated (i.e. seen enlarged) and any links
to other objects within the store may be viewed.
Using the Virtual Curator
The virtual curator is, in essence, the architecture of an authoring system for design historians who wish to make largely visual statements. It is envisaged that it be used in the context of design history education and that students be set projects using it. It is not supposed to be a fully self-supporting module. It is an environment that relates to the activities of design historians but takes advantage of the computer's functionality when appropriate to do so. What has been described here is a bare skeleton upon which other facilities can be built. For example: a user may wish to develop sequences of statements, as in the case of an animation or a series of tableaux; or a user may wish to add sound or film material to the store.
Current developments within information technology and multimedia are important for design history students in that they will affect the means by which they receive information and also offer possibilities for creating their own statements; their education must equip them with the critical ability to assess and use these possibilities. The Virtual Curator is therefore offered both as a text to be analysed and as a creative tool for the production of statements. Its innovative role lies in both these areas, but the primary aim is to offer a way of exploring the process of design history. It is self-reflective and emphasises the historical specificity of the student's own means of ordering knowledges as well as the ordering structures they inherit from the discipline itself.
The Virtual Curator is designed to be introduced as part of a group discussion at the beginning of a course. A seminar based course with approximately ten students is ideal. A `collection' introduced in the store varies according to the interests and subject expertise of either tutor or students. This highlights the desirability of being able to replace objects in the store room.
The unclassified store room de-naturalises classification and makes users explain their expectations of classification. Any move in customising the store room raises issues about the relationship of the `content' of the course to the thematic aims and what kinds of representations are most suitable. For example, the aim of object analysis, decoding images and exploring their internal characteristics becomes feasible with certain representations but a de-centred approach looking at cultural determinants creates the need for other kinds of material.
The way the Virtual Curator uses the technology tests the potential of information technology within the discipline. The use of multimedia raises questions about how different media are interpreted and what happens when they are brought into close contact. The presentation of the museum an an abstract concept allows students to discuss the concepts of classification and access, form and content, acquisition and display, fact and interpretation, and relative media values, that could be re-applied to their experiences within the wider, traditional museum world.
An understanding of the shared or personal experience of these issues should become apparent. This recognises the way artefacts have a complex presence that is subject to multiple interpretations and is a recognition of the role of the reader in interpretation.[6]
The Virtual Curator is also offered as a creative medium, whereby students and tutors can use any of the presentation formats to provide an interpretation of their historical material, for group discussion or for final presentation. The course at Brighton already recognises alternative presentations, including video, exhibitions and tape/slide presentations, as organisational methods to complement the traditional essay. Assessment criteria already exist which have been built upon to take into account the demands of non-linear work.
Working with the Virtual Curator as a creative medium highlights the relative skills necessary for presenting representations of objects and other kinds of information, particularly in using predominantly visual as opposed to a text based `language'. Noting the way that visual statements can remain open and can be re-interpreted, the presentation is not final and leads to further discussion, thus emphasising its role as a means of communication and its place in the `social' world. Exploration of the various ways of presenting information enable the user to confront issues about the kind of control they, as author, can have over the resultant meaning and how far it is possible to represent the place they speak from. The integrity of the final statement also needs examination in terms of the way that its total meaning has been constructed out of previously discrete representations.
Conclusions
Collaborative design has created a context within which it has been possible to start questioning propositions about both technology and design history. It requires the abandonment of formal procedures for the design of systems and sees technology as supporting processes rather than resulting in products.
If education is partly about challenging existing institutions then the traditional museum should not remain as the sole model for educational software within historical research. This view of education learns much from feminism, particularly the ability to both read and resist. It is also informed by an understanding of institutional action in terms of the allocation of resources. The Virtual Curator provides an active way into the subject of design history that is not constrained by existing institutional priorities.
By asserting the creative potential opened up by the software, the use of the Virtual Curator in an educational context becomes an open means of communication. Such a viewpoint is counter to the universalising tendencies of the database or hypertext paradigms.
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[2] To remedy this situation we wrote a piece of software that questioned and explored the relationship between authors and users. This took an object the students were familiar with (their course prospectus plus a collection of quotations and graphics that related to the text) and enabled them to both explore and add comments. The significance of the technically simple software was that material entered by students appeared in the same format as any of the `autho0that were initially included.
[3] Grudin (1991) argues that it is particularly difficult to involve end users in the design process within a system of product-based development.
[4] This principle is embodied, for example, in the U.K. Data Protection Act and the US Privacy Act of 1974.
[5] The concepts as we have developed them are loosely based on Habermas' work. No claims are made that these are accurate interpretations of that work.
[6] Arts Council (1992, p.23) reported that visitors and students asked: Why is it here? How was it made? and Why was it made? while Curators asked When was it made? What size and Medium? Who owned it before us?