The Roles of Digital Exhibition in Enhancing Immersive Experience and Purchase Intention

Museums in modern society serve to a broader public than their early predecessors. In response to such transition, many art museums now open digital exhibitions to provide immersive experience and maximize user interaction. This paper focuses on two such features – animated image and storytelling description – and their effect on museum visitors’ immersive experience, which in turn influences willingness-to-pay price premium (WTP). Our results indicate that animated images and storytelling description have both individual and interaction effects on immersive experience as well as WTP. This paper contributes to both the IS literature and practice by providing a systematic understanding of how digital exhibition features enhance museum visitors’ immersive experience and purchase intention

The Experiential Museum: Immersive Installation Art in the Age of Social Media

From the 1960s to today, immersive installation art has transformed along with new technological development. Artists at the forefront of this movement, such as Yayoi Kusama and James Turrell, paved the way for Instagrammable pop-ups such as the Museum of Ice Cream through their experiential qualities. I have chosen these two artists in particular because of their continuous fit online. Both artists have been titled “The most Instagrammable Artist” as their immersive art installations spread throughout social media. As the pop-up museum trend continues to grow, similarities between the immersive pop-up playgrounds and the multi-sensory environments of these two artists become undeniable. This project analyzes these recurrent similarities through the commodification of experiences and desire for spectacle worthy art

Connections Through Contrast The Built Environment Embracing Art Exhibition

An emotionally immersive experience within a museum setting can foster feelings of belonging, engagement, exploration, understanding and connection. Providing an environment where empathetic immersion can be achieved through physical, psychological, and social enablers lead to transformative experiences for the visitor. To promote physical, psychological, and social enablers within the museum setting to promote empathetic immersion within its visitors, this museum will consider the following strategies: Physical Enablers: The museum space will address physical enablers by including environmental features such as diverse opportunities for seating, immersive lighting techniques, and curated finish selections for individual exhibit spaces as well as interactive displays that encourage visitors to engage with and explore the artwork on a deeper level. Physical: Engage & Explore Psychological Enablers: The museum space will address the psychological enablers in the museum space by including educational and interpretive materials that help visitors understand and connect with the artwork. This will include clear wayfinding strategies, digestible museum labels, along with educational workshop spaces. This museum will also create designated opportunities for reflection and contemplation with the inclusion of “reflection rooms” within the floor plan. Psychological: Understand & Connect Social Enablers: The museum space will address the social enablers by encouraging visitors to engage with others and the artwork in their chosen method and setting. This will include the incorporation of “share” spaces such as workshops, event spaces, and cafes. As well as museum displays that invite questions and discourse. This will encourage visitors to absorb others and share their own experiences and thoughts on the artwork through written and spoken dialogue fostering feelings of belonging within the community. Social: Foster Feelings of Belonging By implementing physical, psychological, and social enablers within contrasting hope and sorrow galleries, this museum will foster an emotional connection within its visitors and promote empathetic immersion. By encouraging visitors within the museum space to engage with the artwork on a physical, psychological, and social level they will gain a deeper understanding and appreciation for the artwork displayed and experience a transformative and immersive experience within the museum

'Immersive' heritage encounters

This article introduces and analyzes the immersive turn within museum and heritage contexts. Three immersive heritage encounters from the UK are introduced, which demonstrate practice being promoted and sold through the rhetoric of “immersion” and “experience;” Traces (2017), I Swear to Tell the Truth (2018), and The Lost Palace (2016). These case studies are used to test a definition of immersive heritage as story-led, audience and participation centered, multimodal, multisensory, and attuned to its environment. Although immersive heritage often interweaves digital and physical resources, its digitality, I argue, should not itself be understood as a defining feature. The article concludes by summarizing challenges for research and practice in the nascent field of immersive heritage going forward

Art museums and the incorporation of virtual reality: Examining the impact of VR on spatial and social norms

Art museums implicate established spatial and social norms. The norms that shape these behaviours are not fixed, but rather subject to change as the sociality and physicality of these spaces continues to develop. In recent years, the re-emergence of virtual reality (VR) has led to this technology being incorporated into art museums in the form of VR-based exhibits. While a growing body of research now explores the various applications, uses and effects of VR, there is a notable dearth of studies examining the impact VR might be having on the spatial and social experience of art museums. This article, therefore, reports on an original research project designed to address these concerns. The project was conducted at Anise Gallery in London, United Kingdom, between June and July 2018 and focused on the multisensory, and VR-based, exhibition, Scents of Shad Thames. The research involved 19 semi-structured interviews with participants who had just experienced this exhibition. Drawing on scholarly literature that surrounds the spatial and social norms pertaining to art museums, this study advances along three lines. First, the research explores whether the inclusion of VR might alter the practice of people watching, which is endemic of this setting. Second, the research explores whether established ways of navigating the physical setting of art museums might influence how users approach the digital space of VR. Third, the research examines whether the incorporation of VR might produce a qualitatively different experience of the art museum as a shared social space

Designing New Worlds::Design, evaluation and specification of user experiences within immersive environments

his is a research project in collaboration with the Ulster Museum in Belfast (NMNI) and Ulster University. This project will design an immersive VR experience for NMNI’s most popular key exhibit, the Twenty-fifth dynasty Egyptian mummy Takabuti. It will provide the possibility to virtually make Takabuti and the world she knew digitally live again in a VR experience.The aims of this project are: (i) to explore the power of rich storytelling – ‘story living’ as a key spatial design tool to improve immersive User Experience (UX), (ii) to investigate the UX of immersive reality platforms and design and evaluate a narrative driven case study (Takabuti) where the technology has been adopted,(iii) to subsequently identify and evaluate a series of guidelines for designing immersive technology and improving user experiences, informed by expert and lay user groups.Recreating in VR a museum map room, part of Karnak temple, an upper-class Egyptian home and an Egyptian afterlife environment based on the beliefs of the time. Documenting and exploring (through Reflective Practise) the fully immersive techniques/tools used to create and develop a ‘story living’ immersive experience with a positive User Experience (UX). Developing a new form of narrative based design which some term ‘Story living’ is crucial to VR UX design. Unique to all other visual/interactive mediums, VR places participants at the very centre of an experience, as both audience and director of all that happens within that experience. The participant moves through a story, VR is after all a spatial medium and not frames based like film. A current lack of understanding of how to design for VR results in poor UX. Never more so than when the VR experience is museum sector based and has the added roles of historical authenticity, usability, and storyteller educationally to a wide range of participants

Updating the art history curriculum: incorporating virtual and augmented reality technologies to improve interactivity and engagement

Master's Project (M.Ed.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2017This project investigates how the art history curricula in higher education can borrow from and incorporate emerging technologies currently being used in art museums. Many art museums are using augmented reality and virtual reality technologies to transform their visitors' experiences into experiences that are interactive and engaging. Art museums have historically offered static visitor experiences, which have been mirrored in the study of art. This project explores the current state of the art history classroom in higher education, which is historically a teacher-centered learning environment and the learning effects of that environment. The project then looks at how art museums are creating visitor-centered learning environments; specifically looking at how they are using reality technologies (virtual and augmented) to transition into digitally interactive learning environments that support various learning theories. Lastly, the project examines the learning benefits of such tools to see what could (and should) be implemented into the art history curricula at the higher education level and provides a sample section of a curriculum demonstrating what that implementation could look like. Art and art history are a crucial part of our culture and being able to successfully engage with it and learn from it enables the spread of our culture through digital means and of digital culture

Traditional museums, virtual museums. Dissemination role of ICTs.

Molti spazi della cultura, che si configurano come musei di sé stessi, presentano al loro interno pochi reperti esposti. È il caso di musei in edifici o aree archeologiche di seconda fascia, dai quali la maggior parte dei reperti è stata spostata in musei di importanza superiore o dove i reperti sono stati rimossi per diverse esigenze organizzative/espositive. In queste situazioni le ICT permettono di sviluppare un efficace sistema di comunicazione e disseminazione, coinvolgendo i visitatori e gli studiosi mediante l’utilizzo di procedure collegate all’Edutainment, all’interactive ed immersive experience, ai serious games e alla gamification. Come caso studio sono presi il Museo delle Mura, come museo in un edificio, e la Villa di Massenzio, come area archeologica, entrambi collocati sulla Via Appia Antica a Roma. Le esigenze della Sovrintendenza sono di valorizzare e divulgare: - la presenza del Museo, collocato in una delle numerose porte romane ancora ben conservate e site nel giro delle Mura Aureliane; - la storia della porta e del breve tratto di mura ad essa connesse; - la storia e l’articolazione delle mura di Roma. Per la Villa di Massenzio l’obiettivo principale è far comprendere la storia e la funzione delle due strutture (il circo ed il Mausoleo di Romolo), oggi visibili e visitabili, garantendo una maggiore comprensione di un’area di circa 4 ettari, in cui i visitatori oggi possono beneficiare solo di alcuni pannelli informativi.Many cultural spaces, which have been transformed into museums contain very few exhibits. In particular, museums in buildings or second-tier archaeological areas, where most of the finds have been moved to museums of major importance or exhibits that have been removed for different organizational/exhibition needs. In these situations, the use of ICT affords the possibility to incorporate effective communication and dissemination systems. As a result, it involves visitors and scholars within the exhibit using procedures related to edutainment, interactive and immersive experiences, serious games and gamification. As a case study are taken the Museum of the Walls, as a museum in building, and the archaeological area of the Maxentius archaeological complex, as an open-air museum, both located on the Ancient Appia road. In the Museum of the Walls Superintendent's requirements are to enhance and disseminate: - the presence of the Museum, located in one of the many well-preserved Roman city gates located in the Aurelian Walls; - the history of the city gate and of the short section of walls connected to it; - the history and articulation of the walls of Rome. In the Maxentius archaeological the main goal is to make understand the history and the function of the two main structures (the circus and a Mausoleum of Romulus), which are visible and open to visitors, ensuring a greater understanding of an area with the size of about 4 hectares, where visitors today can only benefit information from some panels