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There is a tradition in some art museums of presenting art without  
interpretation on the theory that visitors can and should engage on  
their own terms.  So here's the question:  does that qualify as  
transactive?  Certainly it is open-ended and allows the visitor to  
bring whatever multiple intelligences they wish to explore the art in  
whatever way they find satisfying?

Before you say that this has nothing to do with science centers, I  
have heard more than one visitor to the Exploratorium complain that  
they are ill-equipped to deal with the real intellectual challenges  
the place presents (just as some of us are intimidated by art  
museums), and that they find the experience inaccessible as a result,  
while others such as myself love the place and find it both engaging  
and stimulating.

James Bradburne, whom I have not had the pleasure to meet, argued in  
a 2002 article that interactivity is a property of people, not  
exhibits, and that an artifact-based display can support very real  
and meaningful interactions—or not.  Same with push-button  
electromechanicals in a science center—some promote interactive in a  
real sense, and others don't.  Depends on what the visitor does with  
them, and the experience they have.   Bradburne has been director of  
a science center (newMetropolis) and an art museum (Museum für  
Angewandte Kunst) so he is speaking from personal experience here.

Bradburne didn't discuss transactive experiences because his article  
was written six years ago and the term wasn't yet much in use in the  
museum context, but I imagine he would make the same point:   
transactive experiences act at the level of the individual visitor  
(it is the visitor doing the transacting, not the exhibit), and such  
experiences may or may not include any sort of physical interaction.   
And more:  some visitors will require help, and maybe lots of it, to  
get to the point where they can have meaningful open-ended  
experiences, while others with different backgrounds are ready to  
jump right in.   So what we really need to be talking about are  
exhibits that can be used in multiple ways by multiple users  
depending on where they are in their individual learning curves, no?

Chuck Howarth
Gyroscope
283 4th Street
Oakland, CA  94607

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