Touching the past: investigating sensory engagement and authenticity in the provision of touch experiences in museums across a range of media

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'Please Touch' is an invitation that visitors appreciate and curators want to offer. However, it is often not possible to provide this experience for objects which are rare, fragile, and thousands of years old. The project aims to show how touch experiences can be provided for even the most challenging ancient artefacts. Most museums' presentations of archaeological artefacts are dominated by displays behind glass; vision dominates the sensory experience. The emotional connections built by more multisensory engagement with artefacts offers a better appreciation of the ancient objects and an enhanced museum visit. In particular, some artefacts call out to be touched, yet, for reasons of preservation, touch cannot be allowed. The project will specifically focus on icons of identity which are too precious to allow handling and items which are too fragile to touch, such as ancient clothing. The modern audience is shifting its expectations from passive viewer to active participant and the project will offer ways of adapting to this change using digital technologies to connect past and present and overcome the emotional and physical distance between ancient objects and their modern audience. The project will develop a range of installations to deliver touch experiences within a museum setting. The approach is multi-disciplinary and will involve installations developed with museum professionals. The solutions and ideas developed will be tried out as part of a development phase and then form part of a final public 'please touch' event housed within the National Museums Scotland who are a project partner. The focus will be specifically on the physical sensation of touching an object rather than touch systems to inerface with a computer. The porject will focus on the ancient objects with the technology in the background because this is what museum curators want. The installations planned by the project participants are innovative and use a combination of old and new technologies with theatre tricks. The key to all of the installations is to provide sensory cues deploying modern technology but to retain the focus on the object in the case. The relationship between the location of the 'touch experience' provided, with the location of the original objects manifested itself in two ways. In both locational arrangements there seemed to be interesting reactions from the public. At their heart lie issues of authenticity and our emotional connection with physical objects across time and space. What makes a touch experience in a museum authentic if the visitor is dealing with physical or digital replicas, and how can the physical divide be bridged. These are the questions that the project will investigate.