Egmont makes media history
During the last 100 years the progress of the media has advanced further than in any other previous period. Egmont has been involved throughout these years and, with a grant from the Egmont Foundation to Denmark’s Media Museum, it is now the task of the museum to research the development from ithographs to blogs.
The collection at the media museum in Odense still has the atmosphere of an earlier graphics museum with typesetting machines and an assortment of other graphic equipment. There is even a video showing how ”Hjemmet” was produced in 1916. Now the scene is set for new adventures at the media museum in H.C. Andersen’s birthplace.
In a large industrial warehouse is a grand old rotation press from 1914 placed, telling the story of a strong media industry over the last century. The press is there because weighing in at 23 tons it is not easily moved. The floor needs special support and moving the machinery carries a considerable risk that it could crash down 3 floors and down into the moldy soil of Denmark.
Museum 2.0
The old press will soon be joined by a modern digital laboratory. The Egmont Foundation has contributed about EUR 1 milion (over 7 million DKK) to help the museum to modernize from being a graphic and press museum to a fully fledged media museum for the entire country. The museum director, Ervin Nielsen, will be in charge of bringing the media museum into the digital age.
”We have been a technical museum that focuses on what in fact is produced from machinery, and how that affects us. In the digital world our task is to describe a more fragmented view of the media, which reaches out in all directions,” he explains, while showing us round the museum.
The aim of the center’s different activities is to give visitors to the museum, including children and youngsters, an insight into the technology and tools of the media and therefore its strengths and weaknesses. Ervin explains the impact of the grant from the Egmont Foundation on the media museum:
”Our 300 square meter industrial area will be converted into a living media center with particular focus on electronic media. In addition we are preparing a completely new exhibition covering Danish media and its history”.
In the media center the museum visitors will be presented with problems and dilemmas from reality and allowed to experience the opportunities presented by TV media as well as its limitations. The public will also be invited to participate. For example on the media studio, where one can experience being in the hot seat opposite a virtual news journalist.
All the guests’ own media productions and experiences can be uploaded to their specific online museum profile – since the content will naturally be able to be shared on Facebook afterwards. In effect the expansion of media means that terms such as ”permanent exhibition” are a thing of the past for the media museum. Ervin therefore wants to create an exhibition stage suitable for small, quick, current exhibits. This is the only way in which the museum will be ableto portray today’s fragmented picture of the media.
Media literacy
In the large industrial area there will be room for equipment which will be able to teach new media generations a discipline which researchers call media literacy.
”Media literacy means that users of media are qualified to be critical of the media’s points of view and their documentation. Most of our visitors have grown up with digital solutions, and are not afraid to expose themselves to the new technology. It is therefore up to us to allow them to navigate in a more complex media world, where anyone can be a journalist,” Christian Hviid Mortensen explains.
Christian is the director of the museum andresponsible for the history of electronic and digital media. He has just decided to cancel his TV subscription, because he watches TV on his PC. In many ways he exemplifies the new media world, which the museum needs to relate to and portray. He wishes to choose what he wants to see, rather than subscribe to broadcasts where others decide what and how. He receives radio on a podcast, when he wants to, orhas the time. He is on Facebook, here he shares news stories with his friends. The museum works with e-books, computer games, Facebook and blogs, but fortunately need not consider “what’s hot” and “what’s not” in the new media. They do need, however, to maintain a global view.
”We must follow the long-term tendencies, like for example democratization of the free press. A movement which had an influence over the existence of newspapers, up till now where everyone can have a blog and broadcast their own opinions,” explains Christian.
Egmont at the museum
In the museum’s existing exhibit of the breakthrough of mass media Egmont has a natural place. That is to say, Egmont H. Petersen. The entrepreneur who might seem a little old fashioned in 2009, but who showed foresight and was one of the most visionary business leaders of his time. He truly understood risk-taking and how to use the advantages of the modern media at the end of the 19th century. The demands on Egmont today are the same, and business models are not to be taken for granted today either.
Christian sees three basic periods of time which the exhibition will portray. These three periods have one thing in common – different forms of power prevailed. These could have been authoritative, the power of knowledge or the power of money.
”What is clear is that, from the time Egmont came into the media picture, money became the dominating language in the media world. From the 1890’s advertising revenue has been an important part of the media’s cash flow,” he believes.
Whether Egmont will be in the new exhibition must depend upon whether we can work just as innovatively and with the foresight which we showed in the times when mass media broke through. In a way one could say that history is repeating itself. The media center opens in 2010 and the exhibition in 2012.
In a large industrial warehouse is a grand old rotation press from 1914 placed, telling the story of a strong media industry over the last century. The press is there because weighing in at 23 tons it is not easily moved. The floor needs special support and moving the machinery carries a considerable risk that it could crash down 3 floors and down into the moldy soil of Denmark.
Museum 2.0
The old press will soon be joined by a modern digital laboratory. The Egmont Foundation has contributed about EUR 1 milion (over 7 million DKK) to help the museum to modernize from being a graphic and press museum to a fully fledged media museum for the entire country. The museum director, Ervin Nielsen, will be in charge of bringing the media museum into the digital age.
”We have been a technical museum that focuses on what in fact is produced from machinery, and how that affects us. In the digital world our task is to describe a more fragmented view of the media, which reaches out in all directions,” he explains, while showing us round the museum.
The aim of the center’s different activities is to give visitors to the museum, including children and youngsters, an insight into the technology and tools of the media and therefore its strengths and weaknesses. Ervin explains the impact of the grant from the Egmont Foundation on the media museum:
”Our 300 square meter industrial area will be converted into a living media center with particular focus on electronic media. In addition we are preparing a completely new exhibition covering Danish media and its history”.
In the media center the museum visitors will be presented with problems and dilemmas from reality and allowed to experience the opportunities presented by TV media as well as its limitations. The public will also be invited to participate. For example on the media studio, where one can experience being in the hot seat opposite a virtual news journalist.
All the guests’ own media productions and experiences can be uploaded to their specific online museum profile – since the content will naturally be able to be shared on Facebook afterwards. In effect the expansion of media means that terms such as ”permanent exhibition” are a thing of the past for the media museum. Ervin therefore wants to create an exhibition stage suitable for small, quick, current exhibits. This is the only way in which the museum will be ableto portray today’s fragmented picture of the media.
Media literacy
In the large industrial area there will be room for equipment which will be able to teach new media generations a discipline which researchers call media literacy.
”Media literacy means that users of media are qualified to be critical of the media’s points of view and their documentation. Most of our visitors have grown up with digital solutions, and are not afraid to expose themselves to the new technology. It is therefore up to us to allow them to navigate in a more complex media world, where anyone can be a journalist,” Christian Hviid Mortensen explains.
Christian is the director of the museum andresponsible for the history of electronic and digital media. He has just decided to cancel his TV subscription, because he watches TV on his PC. In many ways he exemplifies the new media world, which the museum needs to relate to and portray. He wishes to choose what he wants to see, rather than subscribe to broadcasts where others decide what and how. He receives radio on a podcast, when he wants to, orhas the time. He is on Facebook, here he shares news stories with his friends. The museum works with e-books, computer games, Facebook and blogs, but fortunately need not consider “what’s hot” and “what’s not” in the new media. They do need, however, to maintain a global view.
”We must follow the long-term tendencies, like for example democratization of the free press. A movement which had an influence over the existence of newspapers, up till now where everyone can have a blog and broadcast their own opinions,” explains Christian.
Egmont at the museum
In the museum’s existing exhibit of the breakthrough of mass media Egmont has a natural place. That is to say, Egmont H. Petersen. The entrepreneur who might seem a little old fashioned in 2009, but who showed foresight and was one of the most visionary business leaders of his time. He truly understood risk-taking and how to use the advantages of the modern media at the end of the 19th century. The demands on Egmont today are the same, and business models are not to be taken for granted today either.
Christian sees three basic periods of time which the exhibition will portray. These three periods have one thing in common – different forms of power prevailed. These could have been authoritative, the power of knowledge or the power of money.
”What is clear is that, from the time Egmont came into the media picture, money became the dominating language in the media world. From the 1890’s advertising revenue has been an important part of the media’s cash flow,” he believes.
Whether Egmont will be in the new exhibition must depend upon whether we can work just as innovatively and with the foresight which we showed in the times when mass media broke through. In a way one could say that history is repeating itself. The media center opens in 2010 and the exhibition in 2012.
January 2010
Gallery
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"In the digital world our task is to describe a more fragmented view of the media, which reaches out in all directions," says Ervin Nielsen, museum director.
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In 1902 Egmont Harald Petersen bought ”Damernes Blad”, which 2 years later changed its profile and layout and became the family weekly ”Hjemmet”. Egmont still publishes "Hjemmet" every week.
