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Team:

Jiawen Chen

Abdi Ambari

Nile Tan

Omar Mohammad

The Embodied Museum project focuses on the diverse culture and visitor experience within today’s museums, developed in dialogue with the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco. Museums often present carefully curated narratives, offering visitors a guided journey shaped by static maps, labels, and pre-scripted tours. These tools attempt to mediate the relationship between artifact and audience, yet they often reinforce a one-directional flow of information, where authority rests primarily with curators and institutions.

Artifacts in museum collections carry complex histories: some are celebrated works of art, others are sacred or everyday items, and some were looted or acquired without consent. In such environments, how can artifacts speak for themselves? How can they continue to grow, adapt, and respond to the people who engage with them?

We envision a new framework of the museum - a space where histories, cultures, and stories collide, from passive observation to active participation and co-creation. Museums are not owners of culture, but stewards—preserving and sharing culture that evolves over time. Artifacts, too, should not remain static; they can evolve through the reflections, emotions, and stories of the people who engage with them.

The Embodied Adornment is a portable device that invites visitors to contribute their voices and stories to the museum experience. Inspired by inrō, the traditional Japanese containers which we encountered during our visit to the Asian Art Museum, the device draws from a broader pan-Asian tradition of personal adornment worn close to the body. These intricate, string-bound or layered objects once held personal items, prayers, medicines, and heirlooms. They embodied identity, spirituality, and community, often passed down through generations.

Similarly, our device acts as a contemporary cultural container, gathering spoken reflections in response to artworks. Whether a memory, an emotion, or a moment of critique, these otherwise hidden or ephemeral responses are captured and processed using AI to generate novel historical, cultural, and story-based museum experiences. The resulting narratives are dynamic and shared with other visitors, allowing every voice to become part of the museum’s living dialogue. The Embodied Adornment guides each wearer through a museum journey that is co-curated and shaped by their own spoken words, informed by the collective stories of artists, scholars, curators, and—most importantly—the dynamic voices of the community. In this way, the device becomes an extension of the spirit of Asian adornments, holding not physical artifacts, but memories, cultures, and perspectives that reflect the diverse voices of today.

Through this project, we celebrate San Francisco’s cultural richness while proposing a new, participatory future for museums and beyond. We invite everyone to speak, be heard, and shape the stories we tell and the culture we create together.