15 October 2017
ICOM, Newsletter of the International Council of Museum
vol. 57
2004> no.4
Available as digital copy on ICOM website or from Goldsmiths library Q069.5MUS
O Young Lee, Former Minister of Culture, government of Korea, Honorary Professor, Ewha Womans University, Rep. of Korea
This specific issue talked about intangible culture and how human has only started to raise awareness about protecting it a decade ago. Lots of information has been lost and forgotten. Museum only holds physical objects and it was compared to the process of painting a piece of artwork and the final finished piece. Museums may have a hold of some of the completed masterpieces, but often the process of making them, the notion, was lost.
O Young Lee mentioned in his article about Kyopan, a japanese printing company which "replicated cultural assets in digital form but not through a 3D camera." (Page 6) and the result was realistic but still different from the real thing. Note this publication was printed 13 years ago, so technology must have evolved and advanced since then. I had a browse through the internet but have been unable to locate this company and what exactly it has produced in the past as mentioned by O Young Lee. I'm keen on looking further into this project and finding what are the existing technology available for intangible cultural preservation.
The closest result I found about Kyopan, but no evidence showing correlation between the two: http://www.kyopan3.com/contact/
Some quotes from Lee's writing:
“In Africa they say that when an old man dies, a museum disappears with him. The elders are living museums. However...we do not consider them to be cultural assets.
People are now so used to the exhibitions put on by museums that they are more interested in the objects contained in the display cabinets than in the minds of the people who created the objects.
The museum now functions as an oxygen mask for local cultures which are slowly suffocating to death. ”
Some facts from the article:
- 1970s UNESCO started to list historical monuments and sites around the world and preserve them
- 1990s UNESCO started to take an interest in intangible cultural assets, initial in the form of a recommendation
- 1993 at the 142nd Executive Board of UNESCO, the Living Human Treasures systems of Korea attracted attention and member countries were recommended to adopt a similar system
- 1998 at the 155th Executive Board of UNESCO, the first "Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity" were adopted.
- October 2002 in Shanghai, ICOMASPAC (Asia Pacific) discussed intangible heritage and globalisation. The "Shanghai Charter", a guideline for museums, extended ways of preserving intangible cultural assets.
Museums act as a vessel to preserve and exhibit. However, when tangible objects and cultural properties were added to the collection, they were taken out of its "historical contacts" and "original birthplace", which puts an end to their "further evolution". This diminished the possibility and opportunities for them to interact with living people.
Maybe there's a way to update the existing museum standards, what if visitors get to interact with ALL of the objects being exhibited behind the glass? What if each of them holds a story behind? Can museums become libraries but instead of books, visitors can borrow physical objects and interact with them in a Dimensional way? Learning from touching, smelling, responding instead of pure reading?