Actually, at the one where I work, you can pay to stay overnight and work in the buildings in costume (getting some training from the staff there, of course).DigitalQuirk wrote:That's the term I'm looking for. It's like I can immerse myself entirely into a different era.Richard James wrote:I believe the correct term here is "historical recreation" or "historical re-enactment".
We usually see it in people re-enacting certain battles or wars:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_reenactment
Personally, I always enjoyed going to various Pioneer Villages; that, too, is like taking a step back in time. However, these are often "Living Museums" where I am simply an observer.
Well, I work at one of these, so I suppose I'm for it in a way. I often think that in the year 2300 they will probably have "20th century villages" where there will be people dressed in clothes from our time, with houses you can visit set up exactly as they were in that time, and even staff trained to use the authentic VIC-20 set up in the corner. On the other hand, they will probably have some sort of Virtual Reality or holodeck type simulation so they won't actually have to build the physical site.
I work at a 19th century village, and we often get old timers coming in who grew up on farms in the 1930s, etc. where some of the technology we show was still in use (horses, hand tools, etc.). They always get excited and want to talk about how they know how to use that stuff, or how you might not be using the tool exactly right etc.
I can just see us in the year 2060, if we are still alive, chastising some 17 year old museum summer student because the VIC-20 in the "early computing" exhibit is set up wrong, or they have some detail incorrect. It's already happening with our critiques of the retro-gaming exhibits!