Abstract
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.
Highlights
Tourism and heritage have been profoundly impacted by Virtual Reality (VR) and its potential to facilitate access to cultural sites and resources and to enhance visitors’ experiences in-situ as well as ex-situ (Bekele et al, 2018; Gavalas et al, 2020; Guttentag, 2010)
Given the lack of previous research investigating Cinematic VR (cVR) experiences related to cultural heritage, an exploratory study has been designed to obtain an initial understanding of how cVR is used for storytelling in this context and what reactions these experiences produce in the viewers, with particular attention to their emotional responses
This study provided an explorative analysis of storytellers aims, narratives and storyreceivers reactions in cVR projects created in the specific context of cultural heritage
Summary
Tourism and heritage have been profoundly impacted by Virtual Reality (VR) and its potential to facilitate access to cultural sites and resources and to enhance visitors’ experiences in-situ as well as ex-situ (Bekele et al, 2018; Gavalas et al, 2020; Guttentag, 2010). VR enables people to travel without boundaries using wearable devices (e.g., Oculus Rift, Google Cardboard, Samsung Gear VR, HTC’s Vive), exploring and enjoying attractions and destinations as a prelude or substitute to visitation, an extension of previous experiences, as educational and/or entertainment experiences (Kim et al, 2020). Galleries and Tourism&Heritage Journal / Vol.2 2020 heritage sites worldwide can be explored through Google VR Expeditions that are targeted for students’ educational experiences. The main VR platforms offer a wide range of travel experiences and virtual tours of historical sites and cities by specialized virtual trip companies and filmmakers, such as Escape : The Icons that feature whistlestop virtual tours of iconic destinations. Champion (2019) notes that VR tourism can move beyond realistic recreations of actual sites by bringing the past into the present, for example through experiences that tell stories and contested histories from unexplored perspectives
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