On the weekend, we visited the ‘Walking through the songline‘ exhibit at Kiran Nadar Museum. We found the museum and the exhibit 3-4 weeks back but did not have enough time for the emersive experience so decided to come back later. Unlike the quiet space with interested patrons, staff enthusiastically helping, chitchatting about the exhibit, we found crushing crowds, staff busy keeping people in single line, pushing through exhibits, somewhat like the 1 second darshan at Tirupati Balaji.

This kind of interactive and emersive installation cannot provide a good experience with heavy, crushing crowds. But in a crowded country like India, what is the alternative if you want a museum to be freely accesible for everyboady?

It was extremely noisy to the point where we could not hear the audio paired with the installations. Some of the screens had a pair of wired headphones which helped. It was perplexing though that hardly anybody was interested in the headphones or fighting over them.

I wondered if the noise was due to the sheer number of people or because the objective of the visitors were different and contradictory to each other and the space. Most thought of the installations as background decoration creating an ambience through which they could walk in packs, chitchatting about things unrelated to the subject of the museum. A lot of duckface and selfies even in front of the videos. People just walked in and out of the rooms playing 10 minute videos. Was it because 10 minutes was much longer than they were used to, in comparison to the social media reels? The cinematography was so beautiful. Even if you did not understand the language or were not interested in the content, the visuals of the landscape were mesmerizing. It still did not seem to keep viewers in place for 10 minutes. Not out of interest, nor courtesy to others watching intently.

We reminisced later about the crowded Metropolitan museum or other more emersive experiences in NYC, rest of the US, Canada, and Sweden that we have experienced. It did not feel the same way even on crowded days. Although, may be the space to people ratio yesterday was nothing like I have ever seen before. Last time we were at the Metropolitan, I remember seeing long queues outside the museum as they tried to maintain certain number of people inside.

We also talked about culture of going to the museums. Our friends from NYC talked about going to the museum as a kid. Growing up for us, this was unheard of. We started visiting the museums as adults. I remeber Parag getting bored in the Guggenheim. He has developed the interest and patience after a variety of such experiences.

Parag thought they should not allow very young children, which I think is counterproductive and not fair. If they do not experience it as a child, how can they appreciate it as an adult. The problem I think was the adults not actively interested, engaged in guiding their children through the exhibit. When a child looking at an aboriginal woman commented, ‘look at her fat lips’, instead of using it as a teaching moment, the adult with them turned their back at the screen and took a selfie of the spectacle. The aboriginal woman was narrating the place of the seven sister songline for her people. That was completely lost.

As I thought all this, I wondered, who am I to decide how an interactive, emmersive exhibit should be experienced. When I feel people need to be educated about experiencing an exhibit like this, am I being elitist? Does the team that designed it have a say?