Urban Interface

Abstract

The term interface is commonly known as a device or program enabling man to use machine, and mainly associated with relationship between users and computer. Generally it means a point where two systems, subjects, organization, etc. meet and interact. A good interface would effectively raise efficiency and improve experience of the users. In concepts it also helps to interpret museum as interface, related with question: what an art experience should be in the future? Firstly, museum should interface spectators with arts. We need to think from spectators, that they are varied from different cultural and educational contexts considering the international immigrant background of South Rotterdam. Art is abstract and sophisticated for non-professionals, who would be the major group among visitors. Thus, museum should take responsibility to interface people with different levels of knowledge in order to improve their experience when encountering art. Why is their experience so important here? Here I would refer to Rosalind Krauss’s “Late Capitalist Museum” theory. Better art experience is the demand in this consumer society, take example as MoMA. In terms of spectators’ experience, Nanette Snoep’s curating theory also helps to support my position. To improve experience, the method is to create an immersive environment, which means let spectators participate into artwork during visit. The suitable art collections here would focus on interactive art, performative art, installation art, process art and folk art. Secondly, museum should interface physical space with virtual space. It is a bilateral relationship. On one hand, the aura of contemporary artworks is descending, while their interrelation with space is enhancing. Virtuality is the basis of Minimalism’s hyperspace theory, or “the fourth dimension”, also the new demand of museum space in the digital future. What museum should do in the future is to interface spectators with this “fourth dimension” space. On the other hand, people’s life is virtualizing by new technique. Majority of communication and social interaction are happening on the Internet through smart phone and PC. Although it frees human from restriction of physical condition, it also locks human in his or her own limited space. The COVID-19 pandemic is exacerbating this problem. Disconnection of social bonds would impair mental health, causing loneliness, anxiety, inferiority, alienation and so on (Mendelsohn, 2020). In this sense, museum should turn from a cultural institution into a social infrastructure, dragging people from virtual world into physical interaction, like Gaillard’s installation work the recovery of Discovery.