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Mobile technologies are transforming the ways in which we experience arts and heritage sites, and galleries and museums are facing increased pressure to provide stimulating, alternative technology-based solutions for enriching visitor experiences. Focusing on the opportunities afforded by augmented reality (AR), this paper critiques the role this technology plays in providing visitors the opportunity to experience art and exhibitions through a series of dynamic, small-scale micro-mobilities. We propose that AR creates curated spaces of mobility in galleries and museums and in doing so, visitors become empowered through spaces of agency, autonomy and dwelling as they negotiate these spaces and encounter art through technology-mediated forms of wayfinding, interpretation and personal curation. Through negotiated agencies of human and non-human, visitors become emancipated, active agents in a process of co-production. Such positioning is further critiqued as the paper investigates the opportunities afforded by augmented reality to create alternative spaces of connection and interpretation through conceptualisations of dwelling and we suggest technology holds the potential to facilitate an enriched, deeper and more personal connection to that experienced in art gallery and exhibition spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the idea of the exhibition as a living laboratory in the making and curating of interactive art. It suggests that museums can act as living laboratories where curators, artists and audiences collaborate in real-world settings. Such laboratories are shown to be essential for the study of the audience experience of interactive art, a key part of understanding interactivity as a medium. The paper describes Beta_space: an experimental public exhibition venue and research environment for interactive art. It places this initiative within a historical continuum of transversal cultural display and the use of the museum as laboratory. It identifies an emerging phenomenon of hybrid research, production and exhibition spaces, and argues that such initiatives work to overcome the continued distinctions, within traditional cultural institutions, between art, science and technology, object and experience, creation and consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]