Search Paths and Solutions for new Forms of Museum Exhibition Lighting

Abstract

The changed design status of exhibition environment electrical lighting has become the driver of innovative transformations and development of museum exhibitions. Light has become a real form-making and space-modelling tool. Formation of specific museum experience of lighting remains an interdisciplinary problem unifying technical aspects measured by quantitative indicators and qualitative criteria including aesthetical, psychological, and physiological aspects, forming the atmosphere of each exhibit. Museum exhibition lighting is designed using the conceptual design method, which includes conventional design tools and innovative digital technology. The conceptual design method expresses itself in interdisciplinary, synthetic and synaesthesia forms. Educational and art projects of the Stroganov Academy have accumulated a significant experience in solving different problems of museum environment light design on associative conceptual basis. A lighting system becomes: – An object of traditional art design; – A light design exhibit; – An interactive light-and-colour environment of a museum; – A synthetic environment of a park museum; – A basis of new art styles like light art and science art, media installations and 3D mapping; – Creator of a new image of a digital museum, etc. As a result, light becomes a link connecting the entire humanitarian system of a museum: its scientific, historical, educational, aesthetical and engineering components. Interdisciplinary forms of light functioning (from conventional light design to digital media and interactive projects) are limitless and will grow providing the museum environment with more new forms of information presentation and perception constantly balancing between easel and applied versions.