I was privileged to go to an exhibition on the history of the Notre Dame Cathedral last month.
Normally, you would expect to admire photos and gaze at bits of information on easy-to-read plaques.
Instead, we were given something like an iPad, and the process went something like this.
You held the screen over different pictures, and information appeared on your screen, including little movies and pictures. Within each station, there was a wealth of information, and there was even a bit of a treasure hunt and puzzle to solve if you were that way inclined.
A lot of work went into the production of all this, it was beautifully presented and there were some definite plusses.
For me, who is short of stature, it meant that I wasn’t stuck behind someone of larger stature bobbing around, trying to catch a glimpse of something gorgeous. I could take my time just gazing and tapping at the screen in front of me.
But there were some things that were missing. For one thing, there was no interaction with the other patrons. There were probably about 40 of us, just staring longingly, deeply into a screen. Each of us was seeing the same thing, but not talking about what we were seeing. The soft caress of conversation you normally get in a gallery was replaced with stony silence. We were together, in the one place, seeing the one thing, but we were not connected in any way. While I get the economics of it and the razzle-dazzle of the screen is addictive, I missed the connectivity that comes with an ‘old-fashioned’ exhibition.
We have caught the screen ... and the screen has caught us, and it will not let us go.