Sean Winterbottom
TouchBase Design
Sean Winterbottom envisions a world unencumbered by the biases of the visual. Which is to say, his drive for change is motivated by resisting the dominance of knowledge transition through the medium of language, when so many other senses and mediums could function in the same way text does—as he’d probably argue, maybe even in a superior way. Ironically, Winterbottom’s background is very academic. Beginning his studies in zoology and anthropology, it was around this time he was in a motorcycle accident, sustaining injuries which would impact his life in an ongoing way. Up to that point writing had been central to his academic pursuits, and these new physical restrictions presented a problem. He eventually followed his passion of history to museum work, but not before pivoting in his studies to graphic design and visual languages as an innovative approach to his new access needs. It’s this instinct for problem-solving a prohibitive status quo which brings Winterbottom to his current passion project, Touch Base.
SHIFT TO POSSIBILITY
As a curator of museum collections and artefacts Winterbottom participates in an archival sector which is obligated with making history publicly accessible. As anyone who has ever been to a museum before will already know, these can range from aspects of the natural world to the founding of breakthrough technologies, to the frequently bloody histories of state-building. Outside of the selection process for what will be shown, and when—a process as culturally relative as anything else—the delivery of specific information alongside collections has to date been less multimedia than current technology could platform.
Now with Touch Base, Winterbottom is attempting to redefine what data transmission in a museum setting has always looked like. To date collections have been sub tended by the proverbial text-box, creating a dissonance between the inherent tactility of most exhibitions and enforced standards of viewing them. As a long-time museum worker Winterbottom understands that people’s initial impulse to literally touch items is a strong one, citing the developmental stages of human cognition itself in which touch is a massive factor. In early childhood especially tactile-learning is crucial in internalising a map of the world, and even in adulthood where our world-pictures have all but crystallised touch extends it’s power to sway cognitive biases and help us assimilate new information. Walking round a museum space you’ll see statues and objects guarded by rope or glass with printed prohibitions—and yet there’ll always be a smooth spot where patrons have managed to evade the censor and touch them anyway. Clearly this tactile imperative remains, in spite of your standard museum policy’s best efforts.
WINTERBOTTOM AND THE GCOP
With the GCOP’s help Winterbottom wants to implement 3D printing towards replacing the proverbial text box with replicated components of collections that patrons can touch, hold, feel. It is his belief that this will create an intimacy with archives previously undreamt, opening up levels of engagement which standards of exhibit-preservation have mostly blocked. How might a public process the importance of a fossil or an ancient vase fragment when they’re actually allowed to feel out it’s grooves and textures, when they’re afforded a touch-based exploration of a perfect 3D-printed replica? How indeed. Winterbottom has actually been longtime friends with GCOP helms-woman Minnie Baragwanath, who urged him to apply for the leadership programme. Therein lay the centre’s first lesson. Initially Winterbottom had a more basic idea of auditing the physical accessibility of museums. But Baragwanath persuaded him to pitch his longstanding idea for Touch Base which Winterbottom has been gestating for some time. Because if the centre is an advocate for anything, it’s for changing the conceptual parameters of what is possible, for acting as if all the resources were already there when going about actioning for an ideal world. As Winterbottom now knows, waiting around for the right climate where your idea might be best received can waste precious time—for best results the climate has to be created. To operate in this mode is, in essence, leadership.