Five Senses: A Multisensorial Museum Exhibition System

- inclusive design, multisensorial design, editorial design, packaging design - laser cut, digital, print Museums are important educational environments that offer considerable learning potential for all kinds of learners. In most museum experiences nowadays, sight is the dominant sense people use to engage with not only art, but also other kinds of display, which limits their engagement in the museum. If visitors could use multiple senses while visiting a museum, they could enhance learning patterns by interpreting artworks with different senses because different parts of the brain are activated. Therefore, museums need to consider the combined and complex interactions between visual, auditory, olfactory, spatial and other aspects of the visitors’ experience. This thesis starts with introducing the concept and definition, historical background, and educational function of museums, then discusses the issues in museums in the 21st century, and is followed by a case study on the art piece Relief Structure (Oblique Series) by Ronald Kostyniuk which investigates the efficiency of a multisensorial museum exhibition system in people’s museum visiting experience. Both qualitative and quantitative research are applied to this thesis such as interviews, observational studies, questionnaires, empirical research, etc…Two questionnaires regarding people’s museum-visiting sensorial preferences, habits, expectations, and feedback are conducted at the beginning and the end of the case study.

CASE STUDY PIECE: RELIEF STRUCTURE (OBLIQUE SERIES) BY RONALD KOSTYNIUK:

THE MULTISENSORIAL MUSEUM EXHIBITION SYSTEM:

The multisensorial museum exhibition system contains the in-person visiting experience and the “Feel the Art at Home” gift kit. This system is time efficient and gives visitors the flexibility to choose the senses they want to experience or a combination of a few to experience simultaneously. It allows two visitors to experience it at once.

For the in-person visiting experience, there are two podiums about two meters away from the artwork. On the podiums, a few sensorial elements are there for people to interact with, which include: rectangular pieces in a tray, each piece has a dent in order for visitors to create different compositions by putting pieces together. Next, visitors could choose either to taste some food samples (food in a particular shape and colour) or to listen to an instrumental soundtrack while they are eating or interacting with the rectangular shapes. There are two sample bottles with different scents for visitors to spray on a test strip during the experience.