Moving Beyond the Virtual Museum : Engaging Visitors Emotionally

In this paper, we firstly critique the state of the art on Virtual Museums (VM) in an effort to expose the many opportunities available to enroll these spaces into transformative and engaging cultural experiences. We then outline our attempts to stretch beyond the usual VM in order to connect it to visitors in a measurably emotional, participatory, interactive and social fashion. We discuss the foundations for a conceptual framework for the creation of VMs, grounded in a user-centered design methodology and related design and evaluation guidelines. We then introduce two main cultural heritage sites, which are used as case studies at the core of our efforts, and conclude by describing the many challenges they bring for pushing the boundaries on the human-felt impact of the virtual museum

Engaging visitors of archaeological sites through ‘emotive’ storytelling experiences: a pilot at the Ancient Agora of Athens

The use of interactive storytelling by museums and heritage sites lends to the creation of experiences that support visitors in engaging emotionally with the objects on display. Finding ways to connect to the cultural content is even more important for visitors of archaeological sites due to the often fragmentary nature of the exhibits, which can leave them wondering what was once there and how it relates to them. In this paper, we describe the creation of a prototype mobile storytelling experience that attempts to explore a more emotive kind of storytelling in cultural contexts. The prototype was evaluated in a preliminary study that took place at the archaeological site of the Ancient Agora of Athens. The observations provide insights for the design of future iterations of such emotive storytelling experiences

Beyond virtual cultural tourism: history-living experiences with cinematic virtual reality

Virtual reality offers unprecedented opportunities for creating cultural tourism experiences that tell visitors emotionally engaging stories about the past.  This paper focuses onthe latest frontier of immersive storytelling rivalling feature films, cinematic virtual reality, which can immerse users into 360-degree films making them feel like living the story. Through a qualitative analysis of five projects, this paper explores how this new media form has been applied for cultural heritage storytelling and analyses the reactions of users to the historyliving experiences with an emphasis on their emotional responses. Based on the findings of the analysis, implications are discussed for the design of VR experiences in cultural tourism

D1.3 List of available solutions

This report has been submitted by Tempesta Media SL as deliverable D1.3 within the framework of H2020 project "SO-CLOSE: Enhancing Social Cohesion through Sharing the Cultural Heritage of Forced Migrations" Grant No. 870939.This report aims to conduct research on the specific topics and needs of the SO-CLOSE project, addressing the available solutions through a state-of-the-art digital tools analysis, applied in the cultural heritage and migration fields. More specifically the report's scope is:To define proper tools and proceedings for the interview needs -performing, recording, transcription, translation. To analyse potential content gathering tools for the co-creation workshops. To conduct a state-of-the-art sharing tools analysis, applied in the cultural heritage and migration fields, and propose a critically adjusted and innovative digital approach

Experiencing the Ancient Agora of Athens through Emotionally-led Interactive Stories with Tangibles

Οι χώροι πολιτιστικής κληρονομιάς είναι δημοφιλή τουριστικά αξιοθέατα, αλλά αποτελεί σύνηθες φαινόμενο για τους επισκέπτες να φεύγουν από τους χώρους αυτούς με ένα αίσθημα απεμπλοκής λόγω του μεγάλου όγκου των πληροφοριών που παρέχονται και μη συνδεδεμένοι συναισθηματικά με την κληρονομία. Οι επιμελητές των μουσείων καταβάλλουν σημαντικές προσπάθειες για να ικανοποιήσουν τις ανάγκες των επισκεπτών τους εξερευνώντας τους τρόπους εξυπηρέτησης της εκπαιδευτικής αποστολής των θεσμικών οργάνων τους. Τα τελευταία χρόνια η ανάπτυξη έργων ψηφιακής τεχνολογίας στοχεύει στην άμβλυνση τέτοιων προβλημάτων, καθιστώντας την επίσκεψη του μουσείου πιο ελκυστική. Παρόλα αυτά, οι ψηφιακές εφαρμογές σε πολλές περιπτώσεις υποστηρίζουν προηγούμενες διδακτικές προσεγγίσεις και υπολείπονται από τον επαναπροσδιορισμό του τρόπου με τον οποίο οι επισκέπτες γνωρίζουν την πολιτιστική κληρονομιά. Αυτή η πτυχιακή εξετάζει πώς η συσχέτιση της ενσωματωμένης και απτής αλληλεπίδρασης με την αφήγηση που προκαλείται από συναισθήματα μπορεί να επηρεάσει τον τρόπο με τον οποίο οι άνθρωποι βιώνουν τους χώρους πολιτιστικής κληρονομιάς και τα μουσεία. Οι ψηφιακές εμπειρίες με βάση την αφήγηση σχεδιάστηκαν και υλοποιήθηκαν τόσο για τον υπαίθριο αρχαιολογικό χώρο της Αρχαίας Αγοράς της Αθήνας όσο και για το εσωτερικό μουσείο. Η υπαίθρια εμπειρία στόχευε στη διερεύνηση της χρήσης μιας ενιαίας ιστορίας που εκτείνεται σε ένα μεγάλο ανοικτό χώρο και αξιολογήθηκε επί τόπου από μια μικρή αλλά διεπιστημονική ομάδα χρηστών. Η εσωτερική εμπειρία χρησιμοποιεί ένα απτό αντικείμενο και μια εφαρμογή που λαμβάνει γνώση της θέσης για να καθοδηγήσει την αλληλεπίδραση μέσω σύντομων ιστοριών βασισμένων στο συναίσθημα και αξιολογήθηκε από 12 χρήστες. Τα αποτελέσματα της έρευνας μας δίνουν πληροφορίες για τα στοιχεία των εμπειριών που τις καθιστούν αποτελεσματικές ή όχι στο πλούσιο πλαίσιο ενός πολιτιστικού περιβάλλοντος.Cultural heritage sites are popular tourist attractions, yet it is common for visitors to leave feeling disengaged by the large amount of information provided, and emotionally detached. Curators are making considerable efforts to cater to their visitors’ needs while exploring ways to serve their institutions’ educational mission. Nowadays, the development of digital technology projects aims to alleviate such problems, making the museum visit more engaging. However, even so, digital applications in many cases sustain earlier didactic approaches and fall short from significantly redefining the way that visitors experience cultural heritage. This thesis examines how the association of embodied and tangible interaction with emotion-driven storytelling can affect the way people experience cultural heritage sites and museums. Digital storytelling experiences were designed and implemented for both the outdoor archeological site of the Ancient Agora of Athens and its indoor museum. The outdoor experience aimed at exploring the use of a single story spanning across a large open space and was evaluated on site by a small but multidisciplinary user group. The indoor experience makes use of a custom tangible object and of a location-aware application to guide interaction through short emotionally-led stories, and was evaluated by 12 users. Our findings provide insights on those elements of the experiences that make them effective or not in the rich context of a cultural setting

Novel Ways of Discovering, Capturing and Experiencing Cultural Heritage: A Review of Current State-of-the-Art, Challenges and Future Directions

The present chapter investigates the emerging paradigm of cultural heritage experience, as shaped by the continuous advances in information technologies. Recent years have seen the growing digitisation of cultural heritage, leveraged by innovative information technologies (imaging technologies, multimedia, virtual reality etc.). Advanced digitisation, and digital preservation and accessibility have been instrumental in transforming conservation and scientific research methods in the field of cultural heritage, as well as people’s experience of cultural heritage assets, relics, and monuments. Digitisation and immersion technologies are already in use in the context of cultural tourism in museums and on location. At the same time, a manifold of new applications and services can be generated from the adoption and adaptation of relevant technologies already applied in other sectors (e.g. 2D/3D digital scanning technologies applied in the construction industry). The present chapter will provide a thorough review of relevant digital technologies and existing work in the field, highlighting important research efforts and achievements; and will discuss the current challenges and promising avenues for future work. Following a literature review methodology, our research will provide a critical appraisal of carefully selected work from recent scientific literature and contribute to the systematisation of the current knowledge in the field towards the identification of key challenges and the extraction of new insights in terms of potential for practical applications and future research directions in the area

The Scottish Heritage Partnership Immersive Experiences: Policy Report

No abstract available

Shared Digital Experiences Supporting Collaborative Meaning-Making at Heritage Sites

A growing body of research testifies to the capacity for archaeological and other cultural heritage sites to generate wonder, attachment, personal transformation and restoration, family bonding and community building amongst their visitors. Using evaluation data from two related European Commission‐funded research projects, CHESS and EMOTIVE, we discuss here our work in developing mobile-based emotionally‐engaging digital stories for visitors to diverse cultural heritage sites. The sites range from world-renowned museums, such as the Acropolis Museum in Athens (Greece), to UNESCO World Heritage sites, such as the Çatalhöyük Neolithic archeological site (in Turkey). The evaluation studies feature detailed observations of visitors on‐site as well as post‐experience questionnaires and interviews, providing us with rich data on several axes; e.g. in relation to interactive story plot and narration, staging and wayfinding in the physical space, personalisation and social interaction. In this chapter, we specifically focus on shared experience and the impact that digital technology can have in promoting the cultural site as a social space. On the one hand, our findings testify that digital empathic stories can evoke narrative transportation, and even, in some cases, personal attachment and critical (self‐)reflection, which leads us to consider how their enchanting capacities might be pushed even further into the building of broader, collective social conscience. At the same time, the findings reveal the challenges, both conceptual and practical, of designing a shared digital experience in which visitors engage with the site and each other in meaningful ways

The Scottish Heritage Partnership Immersive Experiences: Policy Report

No abstract available