ABSTRACT
A summer day of 2001 in Glasgow, and two friends were wandering around the Mackintosh Interpretation Centre looking at objects and displays and talking about the famous Scottish architect and designer, Charles Rennie Mackintosh. One of them was inside the gallery; the other was a few metres down the street, in an office space but ‘visiting’ with her friend through her desktop computer. Her computer displayed a three-dimensional model of the gallery with textual information about the artefacts and supported real time audio communication. Building on this experience, this chapter explores some of the issues involved in technology-mediated museum visits, with a focus on group visits. It discusses the sociality of museum visiting and how social conduct among members of a group is organised during a visit. It particularly focuses on how technological applications may enhance the museum visit for local and remote visitors by supporting and encouraging sociality.
