The Imaginary Museum

This online catalog is a digital version of the multi-venue exhibition The Imaginary Museum seen in 2003-04 at the Adam Art Gallery, The Govett-Brewster Art Gallery and Christchurch Art Gallery. Working with a variety of materials including photographs, sound recordings and published transcripts, David Clegg re-mixed this same archive for each different venue.

Collection Principles
Clegg's online catalog presents a set of audio recordings in which a group of European gallery directors and curators describe the architectural features of the art institutions that they represent. Clegg provides a series of audio fragments coupled with specific images that are meant to create a dialogue asking the audience to consider the relationship between representational spaces and the audiences responding to these. The choice of audio and visual fragments that have been digitized and presented by Clegg is intended to form an argument that visitors to art venues produce meaning according to the ways they look at and move through exhibition spaces.

Object Characteristics
The project is presented in the form of thumbnail images of twenty-one European art museums and galleries. When you click on a thumbnail image, a pop-up window opens containing two larger images associated with the audio track. The audio track, originally captured with a Sony Mini Disc, is available in low quality (mono) and high quality (stereo) audio stream. To experience the binaural stereo effects the site recommends using headphones when listening to the stereo streams. If using a dialup modem connection the user will likely experience buffering when listening to the stereo streams.

Under documentation, there are 18 thumbnail images organized between the three physical venues. Clicking on each thumbnail opens a pop-up window with a larger image. These images document the original exhibition. Because of the extensive use of Flash to produce the site navigation between images and different audio streams is clunky.

Metadata
Although the site appears to be organized in a clear fashion replicating the taxonomy of seemingly commonplace responses to art gallery architecture which Clegg presented in the original multi-venue exhibition, the lack of metadata makes locating specific resources difficult. For example, the the 21 thumbnail images under project associated with the audio and image files is limited. It consists of the following: the name, city, and country of the art venue in question; a link to the art venue's website; and the name and have no associated labeling. In order to locate audio and image files associated with a specific European art gallery or museum, the user must click on multiple thumbnails until the desired files are found. The metadatatitle of the individual interviewed in the audio fragment. The use of Flash to produce the website seems to have prevented the ability for users to search the website in any efficient manner.

Audience
The site is quite interesting. It is an interesting project presenting a different view of how the walls, seats, entrances, cafes, and windows of an art venue determine the experience of visitors to the art venue. The site is not particularly easy to navigate or to discover from web searches. For the site to be of use, the user must be willing to spend a good amount of time browsing through the site. The difficulties associate with downloading any of the audio or image fragments also makes it somewhat impractical for researchers. Other than creating a virtual catalog of the original multi-venue exhibition, the site does not seem to have a specific purposiveness for users.