Museomix to take over the ArtLab building

Getting the Montreux Jazz Festival archives grooving, connecting with nature on Place Cosandey and surfing the data waves – these are some of the missions set for Museomix 2017, which will take place from 10 to 12 November in the ArtLab building at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL). Participants will use new technologies to cook up original forms of cultural mediation in a truly creative marathon. At the end of the three days, the general public will be invited to try out the prototypes.

Applications welcome from all and sundry

Six 6-person teams will endeavor to create a unique and truly interactive visitor experience. Each team, headed by a coach, will consist of a mediator, designer, maker, coder, content expert and communicator.

Applications to participate in this creative marathon of cultural mediation have just opened at www.museomix.ch/en/epfl-artlab/. The event will take place from 10 to 12 November on EPFL's campus.

Experts from ArtLab, facilitators and technical teams from FabLabs and Hackerspace will be on hand to help the teams build their prototypes. Museomix CH is still in need of volunteers – particularly technical, IT, graphic design, social media and coaching experts – to help ensure the event runs smoothly. And there are still some spots open on the organizing team too.

Remixing four adjacent spaces

At ArtLab, the museum mixers will train their focus on four adjacent spaces: the Montreux Jazz Café, where visitors can watch and listen to all of the festival's concerts, the Art and Sciences Pavilion, which explores innovative techniques for art installations, DataSquare, where EPFL research on big data is presented, and Place Cosandey in front of the building.

For Museomix, which usually works with one or two museums, this will be a new challenge, since ArtLab brings together science and the arts for the general public in one extended space. For EPFL, hosting this year's Museomix means connecting this space with outside communities even more, strengthening the spirit of sharing and interaction with visitors, and developing prototypes in a very tight timeframe.

Venice, machines and connecting with nature

The museum mixers will be given a mission for each of ArtLab's three pavilions. For the Montreux Jazz Café, their task will be to make the equipment for listening, browsing and viewing the festival's archives more interactive and dynamic. In the Art and Sciences Pavilion, which will house an exhibition on interactions between humans and machines, the question of who is really in control will be explored. And in DataSquare, which holds the archives of the city of Venice and a project on modeling the brain, the participants will consider whether the truth is to be found elsewhere.

The mixers will also take over Place Cosandey, the outdoor space between the ArtLab building and the Rolex Learning Center. They will be given the challenge of making the square more vibrant and connecting people with nature. Finally, a unifying theme – data waves – will link the four spaces.

Check out Museomix CH’s YouTube channel for more details.

Museomix – an international community

This will be the fourth Museomix event in Switzerland. At the same time, mixers will meet in France, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Austria and Mexico to transform museums there into giant laboratories and come up with new ways of viewing their collections. Museomix, which was created in France in 2011, is now an international movement. In an increasingly digital world, it aims to tap into our collective intelligence in order to develop new ways of approaching and interpreting museums, placing the visitor at the center of the museum experience. Its motto: People make museums!