Abstract
Museums increasingly aim to create multisensory, immersive experiences, yet exhibition design still tends to privilege visual-first ideation and communication, risking outcomes that are photogenic rather than atmospherically coherent for visitors. This paper introduces the Atmosphere Jukebox, an interactive soundscape playback device that enables heterogeneous teams of curators, designers, architects, historians, and educators, to listen to, discuss, and negotiate sonic atmospheres in the design process. In doing so, it supports multimodal attention and a shared imagination of the affective affordances that unfold across the visitor journey. The Atmosphere Jukebox is therefore proposed as a boundary object for atmospheric staging. The contribution challenges the field’s overreliance on visual literacy in experience design and shows how a practice-based intervention can also generate new knowledge about the role of sound in shaping exhibition atmospheres. Test situations further indicate its potential in exploratory inquiry and co-design with different user groups.
Keywords
sound design, boundary objects, atmosphere, exhibition design
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2026.2169
Citation
Kirkegaard, J.R. (2026) The Atmospheric Jukebox - A sonic boundary object for multi-sensory exhibition design, in Simeone, L., Gray, C. M., Verhoeven, A., de Götzen, A., Bakırlıoğlu, Y., Zohar, H., Stead, M., and Buwert, P. (eds.), DRS2026: Edinburgh, 8–12 June, Edinburgh, United Kingdom. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2026.2169
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Included in
The Atmospheric Jukebox - A sonic boundary object for multi-sensory exhibition design
Museums increasingly aim to create multisensory, immersive experiences, yet exhibition design still tends to privilege visual-first ideation and communication, risking outcomes that are photogenic rather than atmospherically coherent for visitors. This paper introduces the Atmosphere Jukebox, an interactive soundscape playback device that enables heterogeneous teams of curators, designers, architects, historians, and educators, to listen to, discuss, and negotiate sonic atmospheres in the design process. In doing so, it supports multimodal attention and a shared imagination of the affective affordances that unfold across the visitor journey. The Atmosphere Jukebox is therefore proposed as a boundary object for atmospheric staging. The contribution challenges the field’s overreliance on visual literacy in experience design and shows how a practice-based intervention can also generate new knowledge about the role of sound in shaping exhibition atmospheres. Test situations further indicate its potential in exploratory inquiry and co-design with different user groups.