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Goffman in the gallery: interactive art and visitor shyness

journal contribution
posted on 2023-06-08, 15:55 authored by Susie ScottSusie Scott, Tamsin Hinton-SmithTamsin Hinton-Smith, Vuokko Harma, Karl Broome
In an effort to facilitate public engagement, contemporary art galleries and museums house interactive exhibits incorporating digital media. Despite removing traditional barriers of cultural capital, however, these exhibitions now presume a level of technological and performative competence, which can feel equally intimidating to visitors. Reporting on an UK-based ethnographic study and using dramaturgical theory, we show how interactive exhibitions can evoke situational shyness in visitors, through the combination of a demand for active, performative engagement and the deliberate restriction of instructional and explanatory information. In this ambiguous setting, visitors search for a social script to guide their action, the absence or opaqueness of which creates self-conscious inhibition. Actors adapt to this resourcefully by looking toward others to provide a replacement script; these may be companion visitors, strangers, or imaginary audiences. Some visitors, meanwhile, demonstrate resistance by refusing to engage with the interactive art agenda altogether, preferring to assume a role of detached spectatorship.

History

Publication status

  • Published

File Version

  • Published version

Journal

Symbolic Interaction

ISSN

0195-6086

Publisher

Wiley-Blackwell

Issue

4

Volume

36

Page range

417-438

Department affiliated with

  • Sociology and Criminology Publications

Full text available

  • No

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2013-10-01

First Compliant Deposit (FCD) Date

2013-10-01

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