15 October 2023 by Mondo2.0

New Professions: Metaverse Curator

Think back, return in your mind to the largest museum you have ever visited, or would like to visit. Victoria & Albert Museum, Hermitage, MET, Vatican Museums, Louvre, … places characterized by immense spaces, extremely rich collections, spaces that require days and days to be visited and appreciated at their best.

Now let us imagine a new museum, ten, one hundred, one thousand times larger than the Louvre, rich in alternatives, possibilities, paths that adapt to our interests, our skills and our personal cultural curiosities.

Our virtual “meta-museum”, in the Metaverse.

Who will manage and design these virtual spaces? A curator with digital skills is clearly necessary, capable of recontextualizing collections, works and figures in 3D environments, in the Metaverse.

The Metaverse Curator.

If, as all industry experts assume, immersive experiences in virtual spaces spread everywhere, a professional with skills in the field of digital humanities, such as the “Metaverse Curator”, will be in extremely high demand. Not only that, I would add that this type of professional profile, cross-disciplinary, skilled, original and creative, will be difficult to replace with A.I. algorithms.

A new profession, with excellent prospects, not easily replaceable by A.I. What more could you want?

What does the “Metaverse Curator” do?

He or she imagines and designs digital spaces, an activity that is anything but simple because, on the one hand, it is not subject to physical constraints and has enormous margins for creativity and action, while on the other hand it must carefully follow the usage methods, navigation and design that characterize virtual spaces, and must interact and mediate with IT technicians.

He or she must guarantee an excellent user experience through a headset (or VR glasses), a web browser on a desktop PC, tablet, smartphone, …

He or she must pay attention to and contextualize numerous details in the metaverse; I mention a few as examples:

  • Audio must activate at the right moment and last for the right amount of time.
  • Works and captions must be well positioned, clearly visible, of the right size and, as in the real world, in the right sequence, characterized by the right lighting.
  • Statues and digitized 3D objects must express the same intensity and depth; this is possible if they are correctly positioned and if there is the right contrast with walls and backgrounds.
  • Ceilings, floors and furnishing elements must encourage navigation.

But the Metaverse Curator does not stop at the design and beta-testing of virtual exhibitions:

  • Designs alternative paths, non-linear paths that, based on user behavior, propose content of one kind or something completely different.
  • Designs Events inside the Museum, just as in “real” museums. Meetings, conventions, aperitifs in which our avatars can participate, socialize, meet others, invite.
  • Analyzes user behavior through the use of A.I. and, together with A.I. algorithms, defines new exhibition strategies and new alternatives for use.
    In practice, he or she rethinks the Museum based on users’ actual interests (or rather on target “personas”, types of users appropriately identified and observed).
  • Designs educational or recreational experiences (and why not both as one) to be carried out during the visit: videos, interactive games, quizzes, …
  • Identifies access points and opportunities for deeper exploration in relation to what is on display.
  • Adds references to external databases, adds windows (or doors, or other virtual rooms) that allow the most attentive visitors and industry experts to go into detail on historical, narrative, biographical and bibliographical aspects, adds PDFs, adds brochures, …

The curator of virtual spaces is a creative person, trained in the humanities, a figure capable of anticipating the impact that the digital spaces he or she designs may have on visitors.

At the same time, he or she has cultural expertise, knows collections, assets and figures in detail, knows how to communicate with other areas of the sector, knows how to create hyperconnections between digital content and, above all, is able to rethink those same spaces based on their actual use by users and on feedback received from A.I. tools. He or she knows how to question their own choices.

The Metaverse Curator, a professional profile that is already establishing itself in immersive environments, is another evident step, another move, toward what I call our “World 2.0”.

Mondoduepuntozero