運用時空因素發展科學工藝博物館之展示策略－以法國科學博物館為例

Foreword ”Time” is a concept with many different meanings where museums are concerned. The world ”museum” itself originally signified ”a place to store a lot of old stuff” for a long time. These days the word museum is often preceded by terms like ”science” and ”technology” with all their implications of progress and modernity, and it begins to take on a whole new set of meanings. Should a ”National Science and Technology Museum” focus solely on presenting the current state of science and technology in the local culture? Should it function as a three-dimensional textbook to augment and reinforce what students learn in their science classes? Or again, serve as a window through which the local public can view the latest developments in science and technology from around the world? This is a question which has yet to be fully answered. Moreover, the many different roles of the museum can be examined through different uses of ”time” in a museum and its displays. The first two functions above are largely educational in nature, in contrast to the more ”intellectual” cast of the third function. The first two fold ”science” and ”technology” into the broader body of ”knowledge”, which is generally more important to the people involved. 'Time' can also signify the longer suspensions frozen in the displays in a museum. When time and expense go into the design and production of a display and it can be kept on exhibition a long period of time without losing it freshness or seeming to run counter to the overall message that the museum is trying to communicate, we call this a permanent exhibit. Short-term or temporary exhibits are not defined solely on the basis of how long they are on display. Moreover, temporary exhibits are not necessarily cheaper to put together than permanent exhibits. Establishing a clearly-defined deadline is not as crucial as determining how much visitors will pick up in viewing a display. A display that manages to attract a person each time he visits the museum is a permanent display while one the visitor tends to skip after seeing once should be regarded as temporary display. But museum displays have more facets to them than just time. Space is also a primary consideration in laying out and planning permanent and temporary exhibits. If we take a museum to be a three-dimensional book that opens up before us, the different display areas are chapters dealing with various subjects. And the lines of the story are drawn out along pre-set visitors” paths to determine how the overall ”book” is set up and arranged. Planning Strategies for Permanent and Temporary Exhibitions We start here with the theme rooms for ”Biotech” and ”Measures and Technology”, applying the concepts of ”diachronic” and ”synchronic” to explain the differences in the two ways of planning. The ”Biotech” room uses the ”synchronous” approach which discusses a topic from the angle of historical development, how the technology developed and what problems were encountered along the way. The historical position does not necessarily pore over every important step along the way in a detailed chronology of development; rather, it selectively picks out a number of historical segments. The main display may take one step in a technological breakthrough and the basic technical terms associated with it as a starting point, with the additional information spread throughout a number of smaller independent displays. This type of display tries to capture the speed and changes inherent in technology, covering time spans of a decade or so. It shows how terminology and developments in related areas grow through ”cell division” that will eventually date the current display after a while. Thus we say that the exhibit features largely synchronistic contents. Similarly, the ”Measurements and Technology” exhibit uses time and human scientific and technical development as its narrative line, and the contents in the theme room are a list of quantitative changes that have driven and created science and technology. This type of exhibit has many separate individual display units, and each unit contains comparisons with the scientific environment of the time. The overall time scheme is arranged in chronological order so that any time new data is available after the exhibit is already arranged they can be worked into the displays fairly easily without disrupting the original display. Developing a Temporary Exhibition Months or even years may pass between the planning of an exhibition and the time it actually appears before visitors. Even a temporary display can involve a good deal of time before all the arrangements are complete. But changes in science and technology are taking place virtually every second around the world, and science and technology museums are often looked to as a source of information on the latest developments. This in addition to functioning traditionally through its display functions the science and technology museum should seek the most effective media and communications methods to keep visitors abreast of the latest in science and technology. Real-time information is an instant response to events or news. This type of information is readily available in the media-in sources like the Discovery Channel on TV for example, and other programs that focus on the latest developments in technology. The internet can also serve as a medium presenting the newest ideas from laboratories and academic institutions everywhere. Can these and other media satisfy our need for real-time information? How should a museum function to make sure that it is presenting all the information that it should? One basic communications tenet is that much of the information in the print media of newspapers and magazines is relayed from non-professional media or news services, sometimes in translation or rewriting, all of which means losses in content and accuracy. Reporting on science and technology in TV programs is also subject to influence by the viewpoints and intellectual sets of the people behind its creation. As a result, viewers may sometimes have difficulty in picking out the knowledge contained in them or may even misunderstand what they are trying to say. One recent example of this is the news surrounding the cloning of the sheep Dolly, which gave rise to a flurry of controversy and speculation about the cloning of humans. The internet also tends to serve as a textual format for debate and popular ideas, attracting a wide spectrum of speculation and concepts in the guise of self-education. All of these media are largely one-way processes which fall far short of the museum and its ability to interact with the visitor and establish a form of two-way communication. Moreover, the information provided by the museum as part of this dialogue can come from the scientific information it offers, from its displays and from the books and periodicals and other materials available in the museum. Museum Exhibits and the Local Population Museums do not exist in a vacuum. On the contrary they are very much a part of the flow of life and time around them. For example, when you think of the Palace Museum in Taipei you also think of its background and the thousands of years of history that it represents. In the case of the National Science and Technology Museum, the special nature of Kaohsiung's industrial development was a key factor in choosing the southern city as the site for the museum. But regardless of what time or place a museum is first built in, it will develop naturally in accordance with the events and history going on around it after it opens.

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