Category Archives: Publications

[new publication] Sensing context: Reflexive design principles for intersensory museum interactions

‘Sensing context: Reflexive design principles for intersensory museum interactions’ is a new publication from myself and my colleagues at Ryerson’s Synaesthetic Media (Synlab) and Responsive Ecologies Labs (RE/Lab ) reflects on our development of an interactive exhibit prototype and includes principles and practices for intersensory and multimodal learning, making and design that are drawn from my own doctoral research:

“Artifacts in cultural history museums are typically enclosed in glass displays, decontextualized from their social and cultural origins, resulting in a “look, but don’t touch” encounter. With reference to perspectives and counter-perspectives of the “multisensory museum” (Levent & Pascual-Leone, 2014), this paper describes our development of experimental interactive prototypes based on early sixteenth-century boxwood prayer-nuts. Our work aims to engage the historical, social, and cultural contexts through sensory interactions involving smell, touch, and sound, with visual and aural feedback. Given the neglect of smell from many museum encounters, we draw special attention to our conceptualization, design, and implementation of a novel smell interaction. Building on these experiences, we offer an “intersensory” intervention of the multisensory paradigm through our considerations for meaningful, contextual, and inclusive design with the senses.”