Multiplying Munch: New Digital Practices at the Munch Museum, 2019

The following project aims to uncover, describe and analyze museum practice of visual copying in art museums. The thesis's overall research question is: what kind of ontology does digital copies of museum objects have? What is the motive behind digital copies, and how are these created? Looking at digitization as a copying practice is a new point of view in relation to today's approaches to digitizing the museum's collections. The thesis therefore demonstrates that digital age is not just about the distribution of images in museums, but also about the spread of different types of actors involved in image creation. The examination of copies using ethnographic analysis tools illustrates a practice that has hitherto been little represented in research of digital imaging (reproductions of oil paintings, see article 1), documents (letter facsimile, see articles 3 and 4) and historical objects (souvenirs based on Edvard Munch's bedspread, see article 2) in a leading European museum: The Munch Museum in Oslo, Norway. The use of material semiotics and actor network theory has made it possible to flatten the landscape and analyze different actors involved in the production of copies in a symmetrical manner. This prevented a "black boxing" of technology, which is often taken for granted and tends to be invisible. The images have been shown to be actors capable of acting, as part of the incorporated "assamblages" of human and non-human actor networks, which circulate between different levels of museum work. Pictures of works of art, documents and objects are constantly being processed, updated, multiplied and moved around. As the articles in the dissertation show, an art museum can be read as an ever-growing player network of relationships where authentic objects and copies are embedded. Producing a copy in a museum is a collective process, and several human and non-human actors act simultaneously in this process. Reproductions of paintings, letter facsimiles or patterns printed on souvenirs are a result of clashes and tensions between various actors involved in this dynamic and impossible-to-schematic process.

For further information about ”Multiplying Munch: New Digital Practices at the Munch Museum, 2019”, please contact the principal investigator.