Designing Cultural Experiences within Technosocial Systems

Museums are permeated with digital technologies that have transformed them into unique cultural spaces by bringing an increasing variety of mediated experiences together in one place. This chapter explores how a subset of immersive technologies - including Virtual Reality, Artificial Intelligence, and remote sensing technologies such as LiDAR and Photogrammetry - affect how presence features in the aesthetic experiences associated with the museum today. The exposition frames the challenge of reinventing presence under postdigital conditions by discussing the work of three practitioner-researchers based at SensiLab (Monash University, Melbourne) who investigate technosocial co-presence through reimagining our relationship with the world in more integrative, bodily, and situated ways. Together, these creative research projects induce greater understanding of embodied experience for museums in relation to digital mediation by presenting novel ways in which cultural content can be materialised and experienced, while also surfacing productive interconnections between emerging technologies, people, and spaces that enrich our affective responses and connect us authentically with cultural experiences.