Virtual Museum: The Impact of The Pandemic

One of the most significant impacts on our daily life is ‘moving online’ that we go ‘virtual’. This is clearly illustrated in the entertainment industry for instance, the Phantom of the Opera published its 25th anniversary option online and the British Museum virtualised its collections in a larger scale for the public to access during the lockdown. Although, the idea of virtual museums already existed decades ago. It was probably the first wave of combining information and interactions with technology and media. For better explanation, we will explore a virtual museum in London, Museum of Soho (MoSoho) in this article with discussion of ideas behind virtualisations.

From its name, we can probably tell that MoSoho is situated in the Soho area. It was established in 1991. Like many other museums who aim to record local history, MoSoho also aims to create a ‘safe haven for any artefacts, documents, and etc relating to Soho’. Because it is a virtual museum, if one wants to find it in Soho, there will only be an interactive screen located on Sherwood street. Its nature of being a virtual museum means that they present their exhibition in forms of archives, podcasts, online exhibition, and so on.

MoSoho was not the unique virtual museum of the time, in 1991 there was an interest in the application of the interactivity and multimedia in the community and was stated in the International Conferences on Hypermedia and Interactivity in Museums. MoSoho is quite fashionable. And from 1997 onwards, there is the annual conference of Museums and the Web. The paradigm shift started in the 1980s when the importance of information and interactions with visitors became more significant. A sociological study carried by Treinen suggests that behaviours of visiting museums and using mass media have similarities. . He calls it the phenomenon of “active dozing”, a purposeless, planless activity that looks for gaining and maintaining permanent stimulation slash diversion. Most museum visitors do not get the full value out of their visit and that museums could be more attractive to visitors if they would provide more information and entertainment or a combination of both - edutainment. And which the principles of virtual museums match with this idea of consumer orientation.

MoSoho does tell visitors about the historical past of the Soho area. from the chasing and hunting open field in the 16th century to what we are familiar with nowadays. Yet, Outlining Soho’s past is only part of MoSoho’s mission and in recent projects of MoSoho, it means much more.The reason why MoSoho chose to be a virtual museum probably was that by this form, there would be more interactions between the museum and the local community. The idea of Soho as a community and interactions between the community and personal memories matter. Not only the distant past, but the past in people’s hearts. For instance, as you can tell from the variety of restaurants in Soho in present days, Soho’s history is linked with immigrants. Earlier ones are the Greeks and the Italians, and in the 20th century there was an increase in Chinese immigrants and we see Chinatown today. MoSoho has their own radio station which updates new episodes monthly with guests from diverse backgrounds. In one of their episodes, they focus on immigrants in Soho and introduce their project of investigating Chinatown’s past. Everyone knows about Chinatown, but this project in 2019 is the first project ever to explore Chinatown’s history and development. It evolves investigating historical documents but also interacts with its people.

Therefore, the audience of MoSoho is rather limited compared to the audience of other museums. It closely focused on the local memory. Because it is virtual, it may only come up when people search for Soho’s history and there is a tiny sand on the beach of museums. In comparison, when more well-known museums went virtual during the pandemic, their reputation was efficient enough to attract potential audiences. Rather than popping up when people search it up, it would be more like virtualised, advertised and audience entered. Primarily there was the difference between the audience. Furthermore, the pandemic actually influenced the paradigm that because there was limited access for entertaining, this virtual visit opportunity seemed to have more credit. Yet, it seems like being virtual was beneficial both cases that a well-known museum found another way to present its collections during the pandemic whereas MoSoho received less impact as it was a virtual museum from the start.