SPEED limits is a mixed reality exhibition project concerned with themes of speed and slowness in modern culture that will: a) pioneer a participatory approach to museum-based informal learning, targeted at youth, with the aim of transforming infrequent museum-goers into active content producers and curators; and b) contribute to the implementation and launch of a new virtual world platform. It represents a partnership between SHL, the Canadian Center for Architecture (lead venue for the physical exhibition), the Wolfsonian-FIU (partner), with the Bornholms Kunstmuseum (Bornholms, Denmark) as a major collaborator.

In an inversion of standard museological practice, the virtual-3d-world version of the show will serve as the original (and include ten galleries that have no physical counterpart) and the real-world show as the support.

Virtual visitors will be provided with a “press kit” that comprises all objects in the exhibition; simple but powerful in-world modeling, rendering, and editing tools; and support for production of show-related machinima. Outreach to schools and universities in the vicinity of host cities (Montreal, Miami, throughout Denmark) and worldwide, will be combined with public design competitions in order to develop the contents of five “public” virtual galleries to which will be added another five professionally curated ones. Contents from the visitor-generated galleries will, in turn, be folded back into the physical installation.

The technology platform for SPEED limits is no less innovative than its approach to museum-based learning. The show will serve as an inaugural application of a secure, scalable, high quality (but bandwidth-flexible) virtual world designed to permit both the easy importation and exportation of objects and the logging and archiving of virtual world events and interactions for purposes of subsequent study by educators, social scientists, and historians.

SHL and the Bornholms Kunstmuseum received a major grant from the Danish Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation in the fall of 2008 in support of SPEED limits.

Project principal investigator and guest curator: Jeffrey T. Schnapp

Project manager: Henrik Bennetsen