15 January 2023

Highlights of the Belvedere Research Center's fifth edition of the annual online conference 'The Art Museum in the Digital Age' with focus on NFTs, metaverse, linked data, and user behavior in digital museum spaces

Today, Fashion.at tried to generate via ChatGPT a summary of the abstracts of the online conference 'The Art Museum in the Digital Age' (16 - 20 January, Zoom) - unfortunately the text was too long. There was nothing left but to read the around 35 pages of the program and abstracts, which were prepared by researchers from the fields of art history, design, media, intellectual property, copyright, data science, etc., and filter 'by hand' the long information for a short overview with tips for one, maximal two lectures per day.

The upcoming conference is the fifth organized by the Belvedere Research Center of the Belvedere Museum in Vienna. At belvedere.at/en/digitalmuseum2023 alongside the program, abstracts and registration form (attendance is free), materials concerning the former years back to 2019 can be accessed. In 2023, the conference is focused on NFTs, the metaverse, linked data, and user behavior in digital museum spaces.

The conference starts with topics that are fundamental for the existence of museums such as the definition of the general duty of museums or the monetization of the inventory with views on the status quo of copyright and public domain management in regard to NFTs. Highlight on Monday the 16th January is Frances Lidell's (University of Manchester) lecture 'NFTs as a Social Practice' scheduled at 18:10. Frances Lidell will provide an outlook to the future of NFTs that goes beyond fundraising.

Highlights on Tuesday, which is dedicated to the experiences made in the last years with metaverse spaces as well as VR/AR in and as extensions of a museum, are the lectures by Natalia Grincheva (University of the Arts Singapore; University of Melbourne) at 17:00 exploring topics like the design of metaverse spaces for academic research, as an educational playground and experimental art creation environment, and the talk by Markus Reindl from the Upper Austrian culture institution and museum network OÖ Landes-Kultur GmbH, Linz at 17:50 who will speak about the experiences he made with the institution's metaverse museum 'DFC Francisco Carolinum'. Since its inception in May 2021, the digital museum has presented fifteen exhibitions and counted until yet around 60.000 visits.

In the last weeks, ChatGPT was in conversation with people around the world and some might have learned that the AI is great but it doesn't know everything. For the ones who are interested in where approved knowledge can come from, Wednesday is the best day to attend the conference. Highlight of the 'Linked Open-Data' panel on Wednesday is the talk 'Digital Strategies for Cultural Heritage Institutions. Generating Visibility and Engagement' by Béatrice Gauvain (University of Basel) at 17:00 who shows low-effort digital strategies that can be applied by institutions of any size.

User behavior and mediation of art are the main topics on Thursday, the 19th January. Highlight on that day is the lecture 'The Museum as a Video Game. The Phenomenology of the Virtual Audience' by Melanie Wilmink (Yonsei University, Seoul) at 17:25 with focus on the users and how they interact socially.

On Friday, the last day of the conference, participants will meet 'in persona' at the workshops and panel discussion at the Belvedere 21 in Vienna. The panel discussion can be streamed via Zoom.

(Program and abstracts fast checked today at belvedere.at/en/digitalmuseum2023.)

Image: Belvedere 21, exterior view. Photo: Sabine Klimpt, © Belvedere, Vienna.