Interpreting Pittsburgh through Technology

This curation is organized as a museum exhibit and it invites the audience from
the year 2074 to look at the technologies that have been developed and adopted
throughout Pittsburgh’s history to get an understanding of its unique social and
cultural history and practices. The intention of this experience is to invite the
audience to begin to rethink the meaning of the word “technology.”

In our current society, the term “technology” often acts as an antonym to the term “history.” This curation challenges this belief of what technology embodies by highlighting the impact and value that all technological devices have on the social landscape.

The patron of the museum is meant to begin with the catalog book. After gaining
an understanding of how this curation defines its terms they will be able to thumb through the rest of the booklet and see the eras of time in which each technology was produced, understand the social conditions at the time that resulted in the technology and the intentions behind the people using the technology.

The patron then will flip to the final page of the booklet which is the back
cover that introduces the cabinet. The booklet guides the viewer to understand the non-chronological organization of the cabinet that juxtaposes artifacts across cultures and times in Pittsburgh’s history to allow the viewer to begin to draw relationships based on the knowledge and context they have been provided in the book.

We aim for the future patron to finish the experience leaving with a deeper
appreciation and consideration for the devices that surround them as well as a new
mindset for identifying forms of technology and the meanings behind them.