Considering digital art museums in the era of mass extinction: exploring digital zoos and aquariums through posthuman thinking

ABSTRACT This paper discusses the possibility of digital art museums, which have recently been gaining popularity, examining how they function as new educational facilities for enlightenment in the age of mass extinction. It then considers two digital amusement facilities of teamLab. These digital installations change the traditional asymmetrical relationship humans have with animals and plants, for example, by forming a pseudo-parent–child dynamic, thus creating an interactive and cross-species connection based on equality. Moreover, compared to conventional zoos and botanical gardens, which exhibit animals and plants in pursuit of realism, digital museums create virtual natural environments based on a nonrealistic orientation and can become models for sustainable museums. Moreover, they can be places for the inheritance of lost memories by reconstructing extinct animals and plants and transmitting their digital data to the next generation. One problem with these digital amusement facilities; however, is the aesthetic and romantic modeling of digital creatures, which reflects anthropocentric consciousness as well as the maintenance of a panoramic and divine perspective. It is difficult to create a digital museum that deconstructs this much-desired divine perspective. Concerning these problems, a new model for an ecologically sustainable digital museum as an educational facility is discussed.