Mixed Reality Museum Visits: Using new technologies to support co-visiting for local and remote visitors

A decade ago, Falk and Dierking (Falk & Dierking, 1992) in their definition of the interactive museum experience described three key elements that influence the way visitors experience museums: the physical context, the personal context and the social context. Social context in the interactive experience model covers the social interaction between the visitor and her/his immediate companions, as well as other visitors and museum staff during the visit. This paper is concerned with the social context of museum visits that span both on-site and off-site audiences as well as a range of both digital and more traditional media. In their subsequent contextual model of learning Falk and Dierking (Falk & Dierking, 2000) substituted social context with sociocultural context in order to more effectively reflect the learning process during a museum visit; the sociocultural context extends to issues of cultural background and culture-related learning which will not be discussed in this paper.