NODEM 2014 Proceedings

Confabulated Architecture
Interacting and exchanging cultural information in the complex and recursive network causes multiple representations
and makes a form of visible connectivity, whereas ever-invisible data are hidden in the Internet
infrastructure. Despite these limitations from digitised processes to inform the real museum experience, most
museums use social media as a means of communication with visitors and potential visitors.
Sir John Soane’s Museum’s digital activity, as with other museums, has centred around its main website and
also social media – now with more than 5,000 followers on Twitter and more than 6,000 ‘likes’ on Facebook. The
museum shares the latest research, discoveries and event information. It has found that its website and social
media usage have become increasingly important channels for communicating with its audience, according
to the museum’s Annual Review (2013).
As pre-visit experience of the museum, all this data presumably shapes visitors’ imaginations about it. To inform
my ‘Confabulated Architecture’ research, I decided to use reviews of visits to the museum, which were
solely text based. After comparing data from Twitter, Facebook and Google, I determined that Google reviews
appeared to be pure impressions written by museum visitors, not promotional content from the museum.
Examples are shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1. Sir John Soane’s Museum on Google Review (screen captured on 02.09.2014)
A total of 23 reviews were used to analyse visitors’ experience, and why they recommended the museum.
Written language on the web connects place, people, things and knowledge digitally, influencing a culturally
complex perspective and specifically, pre-visit experiences. According to Shelden:
From a computational perspective, these diverse phenomena and the connections between them can be viewed – and,
more importantly, tractably traversed – as manifestations of essentially the same technical and theoretical structure of
networked space(s): geometric, parametric, knowledge domains, and the digital and physical realms (Shelden, 2013: 37).
Personal Meaning Mapping
Throughout the research process, I wanted to get an image based on multiple sensory stimuli, and evoke
memories of the participants to create a bridge between virtual and physical museum space, drawing ‘confabulated
architecture’ images from online information. Adapting Falk’s (2003) method of Personal Meaning
NODEM 2014 Conference & Expo
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