The paper discusses the relationship between physical and digital spaces in museums, mobilising research material on the current transformations of the conservation ecosystem in French natural history collections, in particular at the Museum of Natural History in Paris. The European landscape offers many examples of digitisation of naturalistic collections, and it is important to ask how biodiversity emerges in changing museum contexts, between the «inventory of the living and the intensity of data» (Bowker, 2000). From the perspective of the materialisation of knowledge, databases constitute social sites for collections. They are conceived as infrastructures of a knowledge that is processed within social and material devices that are transformed according to the reorganisation of collections (reclassification, displacement, digitisation). The specimen is an aggregate of matter in motion and a repository for inscriptions and know-how that thicken, sometimes breaking away, along the history of its preservation, where science and heritage converge. One may wonder about the forms of technical and material adjustments that take place during the digitisation of collections: what kind of aggregate is the digital avatar of the specimen? This contribution invites the historical and anthropological study of the digital infrastructure in order to historicise the data and the artefacts continuously produced in the scientific and heritage metamorphoses of naturalistic collections and the worlds they shape.
Spazi digitali e collezioni museali in Francia. Materiali per la storia delle scienze
Tiziana Beltrame
2023
Abstract
The paper discusses the relationship between physical and digital spaces in museums, mobilising research material on the current transformations of the conservation ecosystem in French natural history collections, in particular at the Museum of Natural History in Paris. The European landscape offers many examples of digitisation of naturalistic collections, and it is important to ask how biodiversity emerges in changing museum contexts, between the «inventory of the living and the intensity of data» (Bowker, 2000). From the perspective of the materialisation of knowledge, databases constitute social sites for collections. They are conceived as infrastructures of a knowledge that is processed within social and material devices that are transformed according to the reorganisation of collections (reclassification, displacement, digitisation). The specimen is an aggregate of matter in motion and a repository for inscriptions and know-how that thicken, sometimes breaking away, along the history of its preservation, where science and heritage converge. One may wonder about the forms of technical and material adjustments that take place during the digitisation of collections: what kind of aggregate is the digital avatar of the specimen? This contribution invites the historical and anthropological study of the digital infrastructure in order to historicise the data and the artefacts continuously produced in the scientific and heritage metamorphoses of naturalistic collections and the worlds they shape.
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