On Display

The Strategy of ‘Flattening’ in the Selfie Museum and its Relevance for Architecture

Authors

  • Nitzan Zilberman MIT Media Lab

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7480/footprint.13.2.3406

Abstract

The focal point of this essay is the turn from the display of objects to the display of environments, a change that blurs the line between the body and the display, and arguably absorbs the subject into the object. This turn is enabled by the digital age, as well as ‘the experience economy’, and is manifested in the rise of immersive display systems. The Selfie Museum epitomizes this cultural shift. In the Selfie Museum, subject and object aren’t the sole dichotomies that are conflated; physical space combines with the virtual image; the still moment merges in the temporal experience; and two-dimensional projections are overlaid onto three-dimensional structures. As a result, architects become ‘experience designers’, virtual reality is a mode of design practice, and an ‘instagrammable’ moment is a project deliverable. In this essay I simultaneously acknowledge these changes and critique them. At the same time, I offer the combination of apparent oppositions as a potential new set of tools that can help rethink aspects of the architecture discipline and profession. By studying the Selfie Museum as both an architectural typology and a socio-political entity, I challenge the traditional museum as an institution, classic body image perceptions, and the common concept of a tourist destination.

Author Biography

Nitzan Zilberman, MIT Media Lab

Nitzan Zilberman is an architect from Tel Aviv, currently based in New York. She has recently been awarded her Master of Science in Architecture Studies from the MIT School of Architecture and Planning where she has been researching different types of display systems, including the Selfie Museum. Apart from working in architecture offices such as Studio PEZ and HQ Architects, she has helped to curate, design and produce for various international exhibitions including the Brazilian Pavilion in the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale and Countryside by Rem Koolhaas/AMO at the Guggenheim Museum. She is presently working on exhibitions for the designer Neri Oxman and the Mediated Matter Group at MIT Media Lab.

References

Adams, Susan. ‘The 25-Year-Old Behind The Museum Of Ice Cream’, Forbes Magazine, 19 May 2017, https://forbes.com.

Bennett, Tony. The Birth of the Museum: History, Theory, Politics. London: Routledge, 2009.

Bruno, Giuliana. Surface: Matters of Aesthetics, Materiality, and Media. Chicago: University of Chicago

Press, 2016.

Foucault, Michel (trans. Alan Sheridan). Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. London: Penguin Books, 1977 [1975].

Pine, Joseph B. and James H. Gilmore. The Experience Economy. Cambridge, MA, Harvard Business Press, 2011.

Schivelbusch, Wolfgang (trans. Angela Davies). Disenchanted Night: the Industrialization of Light in the Nineteenth Century. Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 1998 [1988].

Additional Files

Published

2019-12-12

Issue

Vol. 13 No. 2 (2019): Issue # 25 | Autumn/ Winter 2019 | The Human, Conditioned

Section

Visual Essay

License

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