A study of multi-sensory senses in museum virtual-visits

Abstract

In the forced situation of living virtual during the recent pandemic, also human spatial perception needs to develop through experience and senses during virtual activities. People can go to new places using virtual media such as pictures, 360 panoramas, movies, Google Street View, and virtual tours while being physically separated and socially isolated. This also applies to museum visits when visitors can simply observe. This article offers data from a mixed-methods empirical study that examines how three Indonesian museums, Museum Pendidikan Surabaya, Museum Tsunami Aceh and Museum Bank Indonesia Jakarta, altered their perceptions in establishing a feeling of virtual space. The study has undertaken an identification of place descriptors related to senses multi-sensory systems. The respondents are young people in their twenties who have no prior museum experience. It demonstrates that in a virtual spatial experience, the respondents' perceptions are mostly influenced by the sensory system, which gets diverse information from the media, rather than social signals, which are frequently cited as the most important aspects in perceiving locations in real life. The component of familiarity (recalling memory) is also essential in detecting and identifying the sensory descriptors in this study. In a virtual spatial experience, all sensory systems perform differently; in this study, the visual and auditory sensory systems are the two strongest, while the chemical sensory system is the weakest. Virtual visits, although on a lesser scale than physical visits, can benefit from the multi-sensory system, which is crucial in museums.