Ambient Aesthetics: Altered Subjectivities in the New Museum

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) as a case study for the emergence of hybrid subjectivities within the new museum. Fueled by an optimistic idealism about how technology might transform everyday life, ACMI was conceived as a catalyst for new forms of cultural consciousness. The chapter casts ACMI's initial willingness to experiment with innovative representational technology as a strategic attempt to position itself as a pioneering new media institution, and to engage in alternative forms of cultural citizenship. Its early public exhibitions, for example, often eschewed chronological histories of the moving image in favor of phenomenological displays o..