What does the digital tomorrow look like in the Humboldt Forum? How are new media promote the diversity of cultures and the intermediation of different living environments? What will be "state of the art" tomorrow?

These questions will be discussed by scholars, representatives of economy and media at the conference 'perspektiven15' in the Humboldt Forum in Berlin on December 3-5.

Valentin Spiess will talk about 'The Reanimation of Things in the Barrier-free Dialogue' in the context of the panel 4 titled 'Will Digital and Analogue Formats Interact Differently in Exhibitions in the Future?'. Here's a short abstract of the talk:

How can museums take the cultural diversity and new communicative habits of their public into account? Some museums are already developing exhibition content and concepts in direct exchange with visitors. Social networks are often affixed to the presentation as well. Moreover, in the age of Wikipedia and Watson, it seems unavoidable that the future will see the museum redefined as a platform within a far-reaching network of communication, opening itself to multi-perspective exchange and education through shared authorship. But how can such efforts toward democratising knowledge be implemented, in a serious fashion, within the context of an exhibition? How can visiting an exhibition be made into a participatory event for each individual? The primary challenge is developing new forms of spatial presentation and education that encourage the public to communicate and that elicit a valuable contribution to the exhibition. That is, to develop intelligent systems to accompany visitors individually, in an educational dialogue, through the museum of the future—a system spanning spatial, temporal, and human boundaries.

The panel starts at 6pm in the Audimax of the Humboldt Forum and will be hosted by ZEIT cultural correspondent Dr. Thomas E. Schmidt.