The Exhibits Interactive Tabletop Exhibits in Museums and Galleries

6 September/October 2006 Published by the IEEE Computer Society 0272-1716/06/$20.00 © 2006 IEEE J ust as online shopping is a bellwether of advanced online technologies, so do museums and galleries showcase the best in computer display and interface technology. In the first case, commerce demands that speed and reliability get priority; in the latter, technological invisibility is foremost. The museum experience is an unusually tactile, sensual one, and the standard keyboard-mouse-and-screen setup might seem out of place. Further, while “museums tend to draw educated visitors,” not all “educated” people are computer literate. For these reasons, museums and galleries have actively sought out creative interface systems to encourage interaction with computer-mediated displays, while keeping the technology in the background. This trend toward sensual involvement is particularly noticeable in tabletop displays, as they appeal to two aspects of familiar daily life: the horizontal surface as a workspace, and hand gestures (or common objects) as tools for manipulating information. Of the nine exhibits I surveyed for this article, only one used anything resembling a mouse, and the two others that used physical objects for mouse-like functions did so in a disguised fashion. Another exhibit used radio frequency identifier (RFID)-tagged paper as a physical token, and flashlights as surrogates for shovels. Overall, the systems seem to consciously strive to return the desktop metaphor back to its roots in the physical, corporeal world.