Virpi Kaukio

Virpi Kaukio is a researcher in environmental aesthetics, who in her PhD thesis (UEF 2013) examined the complex relationship between the environmental experiences offered by art and fiction and the environments experienced physically on site. More recently, Kaukio has been studying intangible cultural heritage and the changes in the use of mires and the cultural relationship with nature (Mire Trend research project, UEF, Kone Foundation, 2020-2023). Kaukio became interested in museums as a platform for experiential publishing during her work experience (Riihisaari – Savonlinna Museum 2019) and while studying museology (Jyväskylä Open University 2023), when she drafted sketches on the possibilities of a multisensory museum.

This project of museum as a platform for experiential publishing of research explores ways to make visible information or research processes that are challenging or impossible to publish through traditional scientific publishing channels. The study examines experiential or so-called tacit knowledge, which is difficult to verbalize and conceptualize, from the perspective of aesthetics and sensory research.

The central idea behind publishing differently is to make information more equally accessible and pluralistic. For the museum, new ways provide a means to contribute to the social debate. For researchers, the museum can offer new channels for publishing research. Because a museum operates spatially and three-dimensionally, activating all the senses, its means of presentation are more responsive to individual and community experience and live cultural heritage as a process.

The project is carried out by Virpi Kaukio at the University of Eastern Finland and funded by the Kone Foundation 2024-2025. The research will be conducted through observation and interviews with researchers, artists, museum professionals and other people involved in experimental activities in museums. The materials will be analyzed using environmental aesthetics, ethnographic and neo-materialist research methods, and art and cultural studies perspectives. In addition to scientific articles, the project will produce practical guidelines for those planning to publish experimental research in a museum.