When mobile technology enters the temple of art: Incorporating museum audio guides into the consumption of Art

As mobile technologies are applied to perform the fluid mobility of the social, museum audio guides facilitate the complex interaction among material culture, mobility, and society. Based on actor-network theory, this study considered the user of audio guides to be both a human and a nonhuman hybrid assembly. I examined the process of how an audio guide combines narrated text with a temporal rhythm to transform the museum as a spatial 'exhibitionary complex'. Thus, audio guides introduce a new speed politics in museum visiting. Finally, I analyzed the cultural, economic, and social capital of users employing audio guides as a mobile technology. This research was based on the observation and in-depth interviews of visitors to the "Splendour of the Baroque and Beyond" exhibition at the National Palace Museum in Taipei between October 2007 and February 2008.