Architecture of the Twice-Performed: Traces of Serious Play in Intangible Space

'Selfie factories' have begun to evolve as a new architectural typology. They are spaces which are officially branded as 'museums' but are in reality a hybrid of exhibition spaces and theatres-of-the-self. Museums themselves are struggling to make sense of these Instagram inspired playgrounds which seem to encourage the visitor to take on the role of curator, artist and performer, capturing their own images while mimicking those who have experienced them before.

Physically, these spaces are temporary, but even as physical space is reconfigured or dismantled, digital place remains geo-tagged to the location, forming an indelible yet intangible physical-virtual hybrid. These combinations of the tangible and the intangible are often criticised as symptomatic of superficiality and indulgence, with suggestions that the attempt to capture images of our own experience actually threatens the quality of our experience as such.

The purpose of this study is to establish how these new, self-curated and self-constructed physical-digital spaces might contribute to the contemporary understanding of the sense of seld and how museums might best respond to these new opportunities to think, reflect and inhabit the public realm collectively through acts of 'serious play'