Digital culture gives exploratory journey a new meaning

In my visit to Athens in Europe I wanted an exploratory journey out of the ordinary. I wanted to avoid the ordinary pre planned tourist guiding. Viewing Athens from a bus did not appeal to me. Neither did the cheap like tourist guiding with a very large number of tourists and a guide with a very large and colourful umbrella. This was quite far from the exploratory journey that I wanted. This type of standard organised guiding where every step was planned ahead was certainly not appealing to me. My journey as a tourist in ancient Athens was going to be of the exploratory sort where I was the master in chief of my own very special exploratory journey.

I wanted to be a digital tourist and take advantage of available information technology that could facilitate an exciting exploratory journey of the ancient and historical city of Athens. Visiting old ruins might be interesting in it self but I also wanted to explore the digital culture in my quest for an extraordinary exploratory journey. Many museums have digitised their collections something that facilitates dissemination in digital form using new media and network channels. After searching the Internet for museums in Athens I decided to start my exploratory journey with a physical visit to one of them.

Museums and digital culture

Links to museums that might facilitate an exploratory journey are listed below:

Benaki Museum
Museum of cycladic art

These two museums have appealing web-pages. The history of the museum is told and many nice photos with explanations were found. Search facilities were, however, missing. Thus, I found an exploratory journey to be rather difficult. The Benaki museum was the only museum that had a computer available for the public. The computer was placed in the entrance area and it did not feel particularly natural to sit down next to the entrance door with all the people constantly passing. In my quest for an exploratory journey I nevertheless decided to pursue my quest. I was quickly disappointed when I discovered that the virtual exhibition of the museum was accompanied with Greek explanations and sound.

The virtual museum - Parthenon (the temple for all goods)

There is a web-page for the temple of Parthenon, built between 447- 432 BC. A virtual representation of Parthenon and the Parthenon marbles, once part of the decoration of the temple. The respective museum having the sculptures in their possession is illustrated with colour codes. The makers of the web-site have started a project to return these sculptures once stolen.

virtual tourist
Figure 1 Virtual representation of Pantheon – The blue (pediment), read (Metopes) and yellow field (Frieze).

virtual tourist
Figure 2 Figure of the pediment

Perhaps the busy guide with the umbrella could have told met his story too. The ancient sculptures now spread at various places. Finding this out for my self my searching on the Internet is however a more satisfactorily exploratory journey. All the information available on the Internet makes it my very own exploratory journey. Therein lies all the fun. It must also be added that the experience of physically standing on the top of the clip viewing the panorama of the city of Athens with Acropolis on the side cannot be made digital. Making the ascent is definitely a physical experience. It is the combination of physical and virtual experiences that makes my visit to Athens a special exploratory journey.

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