ABSTRACT
“Without context there is no communication” is one of the basic principles of the Bateson's cybernetics; one needs to contextualise information for interpreting all the relations and processes of an environment (real or virtual). Hence, without the creation of contexts through rules of difference, there cannot be an informative exchange. The rules of difference manage the activities of interaction and learning between us and the environment, real or virtual; the more we create difference between us and the ecosystem, the more we learn. In addition, the “map is not the territory” (Bateson, 1972) it means that a code is required for perceiving and elaborating information. According to Bateson the map is “a sort of effect which sums up the differences, which organises the information about the territory's differences”. So, in cybernetic sense, is the museum, and the dynamics of exhibition, a map or a territory? It can be a not-coded territory because it removes objects, artefacts, and signs from the original context, but it is also a map because it re-contextualises information/items according to new alphabets, relations, and hierarchical contents. This map represents the codes of the exhibition in terms of topology, semiotics, relations, and connections of information. This cyber-network is the museum's mind. The museum's mind is the result of a design project, of cultural communication systems, and of the autopoietic (in ecological sense) values/relations of the artefacts. This cybernetic mind is the mean through which the visitors learn to perceive and to interpret exhibits, to storytell their experience, to interact with the artefacts, and to create a self-sense of place. In the next future, we would like to create a virtual reality system dedicated to the reconstruction of the museum mind's: a simulation environment of artificial life for investigating all the cybernetic relations produced by cultural exhibits. This simulation could be the first step for studying shapes, geometries, and ways of the cultural transmission and communication.
