Internet of Props: New Media Ontology for Cultural Artifact

Internet of Things (IoT) claims to connect every object to the Internet, and it is emerging as a new sort of media. IoT paradigm challenges many fields and disciplines including cultural heritage. The new ontology of object implied by IoT paradigm offers a new vision for cultural artefacts being simultaneously pervasive, like social media and Internet, and promoting a kind of interaction both physical and digital, away from usual screen based model. This can reflect on a new ontological nature for museum or cultural heritage artefacts: their documentary representation and the way the audience experience and interact with them.

Set in the relatively new and fast developing field of IoT, the talk proposes a new vision and design framework for it. The new entanglement of the Internet of People and the Internet of Things as a new dimension is here defined as the Internet of Props. IoP provides an ontological performative theory and framework to broaden a poorly articulated field that can influence the museum and cultural heritage experiences. The talk will introduce the IoT and the IoP framework with a practical example of implementation to support the development of cultural spaces such as smart museum or smart cultural heritage.