메타버스를 통한 어린이박물관 미래 전시 고찰

Abstract

The concept and expansion of new spaces and times are further accelerating along with the rapid development of 5G technologies. In addition, as COVID-19 pandemics resulted in settling down the contactless and online systems in people’s lives, metaverse is approaching and emerging at an unexpected rate. In fact, Ministry of culture, Sports and Tourism and Korea Creative Content Agency selected metaverse as one of the keywords that trended in 2020 contents industry and one of the 8 prospective keywords for 2021. In response, museums and exhibition designs that are actively combining the technology and culture together cannot ignore such trend. For such reasons, it is predictable that the metaverse will be an important prerequisite in thinking about the roles of museums and finding the directions of exhibitions in the future. Especially, children’s museums are the only museums that target on specific group and the main targets are the digital generations who are more sensitive to new trends and media compared to the older generations. Under such background, the discussion on how the exhibitions at children's museum should exist in the era of metaverse and how to apply metaverse on the exhibition must not be avoided or ignored at this point where the online contactless education and activities are rapidly rising and settling down in people’s lives due to COVID-19 pandemics. In response, this study examined the concepts and relevant contents of metaverse which is rapidly emerging in the society at large and tried to come up with the direction of the children’s museums and children exhibitions with the metaverse. A metaverse is a virtual world while the children’s museum is based on the hands-on experience. Although it may seem difficult for them to co-exist together, the two worlds share the worlds that resemble each other. The world of metaverse produces and reproduces the contents independently while children’s museum encourages children to design their own experiences and show their creativity. The worlds of metaverse and children’s museum are also a living ecosystem based on the reality. The two worlds are expected to lead the era of the fourth industrial revolution and they will bring a huge synergy effect. What’s the most important in the future education is about how to connect together, form a relationship, and complete own drawing. The children’s museum and children exhibition need to play the roles as the venue of experience that helps such activities.