Designing with the experiential in digitally augmented exhibitions

The ways in which audiences interact and make meaning of digitally augmented exhibitions is an important design determinant. In such an interdisciplinary project, the design, the museum and new media encounter the problem of the experiential. It is argued that a creative experimental analysis of audience experience employing aesthetic visualisation semiotics drawn from the principles of information design, computational aesthetics and human centred design would be a relevant adjunct to an exhibition, providing fresh perspectives and new knowledge to interdisciplinary stakeholders. Interactive, experimental artefacts, known as field and body, provide a conceptual map of the exhibition experience relying on the creativity of audience participants in making visible, legible and tangible their personal reception of a work. The data yielded reflect abstract notions of audience experience engendering a discussion about the phenomenological, curatorial and cognitive effects of the digitally augmented exhibition.