In view of the ever-increasing use of interactive and emerging technologies in museum spaces, Museums and Technologies of Presence rethinks the role of such technologies as potential facilitators of presence, and as vehicles for offering new, immersive, and embodied visitor experiences. This edited collection presents theoretical approaches and case studies that explore how presence can be experienced in museum spaces and what role technology can play in visitor experiences. It considers the theoretical underpinnings of the concept ‘presence’ for museum spaces, offering a critical examination of how immersive and other emerging technologies can affect, diminish or enhance our sense of presence and embodiment. Through an international range of case studies and innovative projects, this volume considers emerging technologies – including virtual reality, augmented reality, interactive (multisensory) installations and AI – alongside different aspects of presence, including immersion, embodiment, empathy, emotion, engagement and affect. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, Museums and Technologies of Presence will be beneficial to those researching or studying in the fields of Museum Studies, Digital Humanities, Computer Science, Information Science, and Digital Media. It will also be useful to museologists, curators and artists who are interested in developing immersive experiences, experimental new media and immersive aesthetics.

How can emerging technologies display, reveal and negotiate difficult, dissonant, negative or undesirable heritage? Emerging technologies in museums have the potential to reveal unheard or silenced stories, challenge preconceptions, encourage emotional responses, introduce the unexpected, and overall provide alternative experiences. By examining varied theoretical approaches and case studies, authors demonstrate how "awkward", contested, and rarely discussed subjects and stories are treated - or can be potentially treated - in a museum setting with the use of the latest technology.

This engaging volume reveals how politics permeates all facets of museum practice, particularly in regions of political conflict. In these settings, museums can be extraordinarily influential for shaping identity and collective memory and for peace building. Using key Cypriote archaeological, historical, ethnographic, and art museums as examples, this book: provides a multifaceted and deeper understanding of how politics, conflict, national agendas, and individual initiatives can shape museums and their narratives; discusses how these forces contribute to the creation of, and conflict over, national, community and personal identities; examines how museums use inclusion and exclusion in their collections, exhibitions, objects and interpretive material as a way of selectively constructing collective memories. This book will be an important resource for museum professionals, as well as scholars interested in the effects of politics on museums and interpretations of the past.

Formerly a British colony, the island of Cyprus is now a divided country, where histories of political and cultural conflicts, as well as competing identities, are still contested. Cyprus provides the ideal case study for this innovative exploration, extensively illustrated, of how the practice of photography in relation to its political, cultural and economic contexts both contributes and responds to the formation of identity. Contributors from Cyprus, Greece, the UK and the USA, representing diverse disciplines, draw from photography theory, art history, anthropology and sociology to explore how the island and its people have been represented photographically. They reveal how the different gazes- colonial, political, gendered, and within art photography- contribute to the creation of individual and national identities and, by extension, to the creation and re-creation of imagery of Cyprus as place. While Photography and Cyprus focuses on one geographical and cultural territory, the questions this book asks and the themes and arguments it follows apply also to other places characterized by their colonial heritage. The intriguing example of Cyprus thus serves as a fitting test-ground for current debates relating to photography, place and identity.

Museums and Photography combines a strong theoretical approach with international case studies to investigate the display of death in various types of museums-history, anthropology, art, ethnographic, and science museums - and to understand the changing role of photography in museums. Contributors explore the politics and poetics of displaying death, and more specifically, the role of photography in representing and interpreting this difficult topic. Working with nearly 20 researchers from different cultural backgrounds and disciplines, the editors critically engage the recent debate on the changing role of museums, exhibition meaning-making, and the nature of photography. They offer new ways for understanding representational practices in relation to contemporary visual culture. This book will appeal to researchers and museum professionals, inspiring new thinking about death and the role of photography in making sense of it.

This engaging volume reveals how politics permeates all facets of museum practice, particularly in regions of political conflict. In these settings, museums can be extraordinarily influential for shaping identity and collective memory and for peace building. Using key Cypriote archaeological, historical, ethnographic, and art museums as examples, this book: provides a multifaceted and deeper understanding of how politics, conflict, national agendas, and individual initiatives can shape museums and their narratives; discusses how these forces contribute to the creation of, and conflict over, national, community and personal identities; examines how museums use inclusion and exclusion in their collections, exhibitions, objects and interpretive material as a way of selectively constructing collective memories. This book will be an important resource for museum professionals, as well as scholars interested in the effects of politics on museums and interpretations of the past.

While the archaeological legacies of Greece and Cyprus are often considered to represent some of the highest values of Western civilization—democracy, progress, aesthetic harmony, and rationalism—this much adored and heavily touristed heritage can quickly become the stage for clashes over identity and memory. In Contested Antiquity, Esther Solomon curates explorations of how those who safeguard cultural heritage are confronted with the best ways to represent this heritage responsibly. How should visitors be introduced to an ancient Byzantine fortification that still holds the grim reminders of the cruel prison it was used as until the 1980s? How can foreign archaeological institutes engage with another nation's heritage in a meaningful way? What role do locals have in determining what is sacred, and can this sense of the sacred extend beyond buildings to the surrounding land? Together, the essays featured in Contested Antiquity offer fresh insights into the ways ancient heritage is negotiated for modern times.

This book constitutes the post-conference proceedings of the First International Conference on Emerging Technologies and the Digital Transformation of Museums and Heritage Sites, RISE IMET 2020, held in Nicosia, Cyprus, in June 2021*.The 23 revised full papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 38 submissions. The papers are organized in the following topical sections: digital curation and visitor engagement in museums and heritage sites; VR, AR, MR, mobile applications and gamification in museums and heritage sites; digital storytelling and embodied characters for the interpretation of cultural heritage; emerging technologies, difficult heritage and affective practices; participatory approaches, crowdsourcing and new technologies; digitization, documentation and digital representation of cultural heritage. * The conference was held virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Formerly a British colony, the island of Cyprus is now a divided country, where histories of political and cultural conflicts, as well as competing identities, are still contested. Cyprus provides the ideal case study for this innovative exploration, extensively illustrated, of how the practice of photography in relation to its political, cultural and economic contexts both contributes and responds to the formation of identity. Contributors from Cyprus, Greece, the UK and the USA, representing diverse disciplines, draw from photography theory, art history, anthropology and sociology to explore how the island and its people have been represented photographically. They reveal how the different gazes- colonial, political, gendered, and within art photography- contribute to the creation of individual and national identities and, by extension, to the creation and re-creation of imagery of Cyprus as place. While Photography and Cyprus focuses on one geographical and cultural territory, the questions this book asks and the themes and arguments it follows apply also to other places characterized by their colonial heritage. The intriguing example of Cyprus thus serves as a fitting test-ground for current debates relating to photography, place and identity.

While the archaeological legacies of Greece and Cyprus are often considered to represent some of the highest values of Western civilization—democracy, progress, aesthetic harmony, and rationalism—this much adored and heavily touristed heritage can quickly become the stage for clashes over identity and memory. In Contested Antiquity, Esther Solomon curates explorations of how those who safeguard cultural heritage are confronted with the best ways to represent this heritage responsibly. How should visitors be introduced to an ancient Byzantine fortification that still holds the grim reminders of the cruel prison it was used as until the 1980s? How can foreign archaeological institutes engage with another nation's heritage in a meaningful way? What role do locals have in determining what is sacred, and can this sense of the sacred extend beyond buildings to the surrounding land? Together, the essays featured in Contested Antiquity offer fresh insights into the ways ancient heritage is negotiated for modern times.

A"Tourists Who ShootA" (2009-2012) is a contemporary, nuanced look at how tourists use their cameras while on holiday. Influenced by the seminal work of photographer Martin Parr, A"Tourists Who ShootA" offers a playful glimpse at the sometimes bizarre world of the modern tourist striving to get the perfect shot. It includes an essay by renowned photography scholar Liz Wells and color photographs by Theopisti Stylianou-Lambert. Before the invention of the portable camera people behaved, moved and interacted differently. Tourist choreographies have evolved, and are still evolving, alongside changes in camera availability and technology. Photographer and photography theorist Theopisti Stylianou-Lambert explores tourist landscapes from New York to Cairo as performance spaces where the use of the camera has forced specific choreographies and behaviors upon tourists. With Stylianou-Lambert's deadpan sense of humor and her unerring eye for the critical detail that brings a photograph to life, A"Tourists Who ShootA" is a sometimes humorous, sometimes poignant reassessment of what it means to be a tourist.