OCAD University Open Research Repository

Mario Santamaria’s Trolling Google Art Project: Critical Explorations in Google’s Museum Views

Milne, Victoria (2021) Mario Santamaria’s Trolling Google Art Project: Critical Explorations in Google’s Museum Views. [MRP]

Item Type: MRP
Creators: Milne, Victoria
Abstract:

Closures and the demands of physical distancing following from the Covid-19 pandemic resulted in a wave of promotion positioning virtual tours (360-degree virtual environments navigated using first-person user interfaces) as potent substitutes for local, physical interactions with museums, objects, and collections. While there is an existing body of writing (most often aligned with ‘institutional critique’) engaging with practices of museums and galleries, little scholarship yet exists on virtual tours or Google’s significant role in their purveyance. This MRP explores the sociopolitical and affective implications of museum spectatorship as reconfigured within Google Museum Views’ virtual tours. Through an exploration of Mario Santamaria’s Trolling Google Art Project (2013-ongoing), Google Museum Views is analyzed from three angles: 1) the platform’s relationship to physical architectures, 2) the platform’s configuration of user subjectivities, and 3) the platform’s challenges to the public role of the museum. Founded in critical theory and museum studies and drawing on a multidisciplinary array of texts, this MRP argues the importance of critical engagement with the ways that Google’s virtual museum environments perpetuate capitalist ideologies already recognized as troubling their physical counterparts.

Date: 5 May 2021
Uncontrolled Keywords: Google Museum Views, Virtual Exhibition, Virtual Museums, Online Museums, Museums, Privatization, Mario Santamaria, Virtual Environments, Virtual Institutions, Google Art
Divisions: Graduate Studies > Contemporary Art, Design and New Media Art Histories
Date Deposited: 06 May 2021 18:33
Last Modified: 20 Dec 2021 20:45
URI: https://openresearch.ocadu.ca/id/eprint/3362

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