This document summarizes Sara Barbieri's final dissertation in Sociology of Work, Organization and Information Systems. It examines the organization of a new 3D virtual reality museum exhibition called AVATAR that was launched in 2009. Barbieri followed the curator and other staff for seven months as they designed, built, and tested the virtual worlds and interactive stations that made up the exhibition. Her research analyzed how the various elements, from technology to exhibits to staff, came together through collaborative problem-solving to transform the initial project idea into a functioning museum exhibition. She used ethnographic and actor-network theory approaches to document the daily activities and solutions that bridged heterogeneous components into a cohesive new expositional format.

1. Sara Barbieri Final dissertation in Sociology of Work, Organization and Information Systems. “Virtual Environment, Materiality and Translation: The AVATAR Exhibition”

2. The Project My final dissertation concerns the ethnographical analysis of the organization of an innovative and completely new 3D museum exhibition, called AVATAR, performed in 2009 at the Trento Museum of Natural Science. I followed the curator of the exhibition during his working days for seven months before the inauguration of the exhibition, analyzing the everyday problems, activities and testing. I had the chance to follow the curator but also the architect, the 3D software programmers, the graphic designers and all the people involved in the design process, from the electricians to the museum director. Thanks to this experience, I learned how difficult the creation of a brand new technology could be and how important the collaborative problem-solving activity is for the success of the whole project.

4. The rooms Me. The mirrors . The Others. The square Imaginary museum The throne room The lab The marketplace The court The desert Home

5. The eco-work-stations An entire museum’s floor was dedicated to the exhibition. Computers were “hidden” inside work – stations made of paper. Tools: PC display Mouse Joystick Headphones

6. My research Question Research: how is it possible to build a completely new exhibit format in a museum? How do different elements come together in order to make the exhibition happen? How does an innovative museum’s exhibition idea come up? How to introduce and make acceptable a project that involve the construction and the use of a completely new technology, never tested before?

7. Research techniques In order to answer my question research, I followed the curator of the exhibition for seven months BEFORE the inauguration, providing a detailed documentation of daily activities, problems and solutions. All the data gathered was then used to analyze the whole organizational process following the theory framework of ANT (Actor Network Theory). Ethnographic tradition Actor Network Theory Participatory Observation Translation Attant Socio-technogram HeterogeneousEngineering In-scription Shadowing Field notes Non-structured interviews Analysis of the documents Studying the process that transforms AVATAR from “project idea” to “museum exhibition”  studying how heterogeneous elements are juxtaposed into a network where the negotiations transform all the elements into a new expositional format.

8. The concept

9. The concept

10. In-the-making

11. sarah.barbieri@gmail.com