Virtual Museum Exhibitions Research Articles

The Influence of Interpretational Background Music on Visitor Experience: An Eye-Tracking Study on a Virtual Art Exhibition

With the advancement of digital technology, virtual museum exhibitions are rapidly growing, in which background music (BGM) is increasingly being used. However, it is not clear whether and how such BGM affects the visitor experience. This study designed a between-subjects factor experiment with three levels (stimulative music [ST], sedative music [SE], and no music [NO]) in a virtual art exhibition. A combination of eye-tracking, questionnaires, and interviews were used to measure the viewing experience of 96 participants. The results showed that the BGM could not only alleviate the visitors’ fatigue by directing their attention to the exhibition itself, but also different BGM could activate different schemas, selectively guiding the viewers’ visual attention to the areas consistent with their schemas, and then enabling them to make the schema-consistent judgments. These exploratory findings are expected to demonstrate the application potential of BGM in future exhibition design.

Building Three-dimensional Virtual Historic Fashion Museum Exhibitions: From the Perspective of Technology Affordances

Museums are currently undertaking the task of digital transformation. Transformational technology generates revitalization of the curatorship, cultural heritage presentation, management model, and traditional roles of museums. The creation of three-dimensional (3D) virtual museum exhibitions is important to fulfill the revolutionary operational requirements and projections of recent museums through digital transformation. The objectives of this project were to (1) create realistic 3D virtual museum exhibitions accessible from the web, focusing on historic fashions, and (2) provide an analysis of the process and resources for creating 3D virtual museum exhibitions featuring object-focused exhibits. As a theoretical background of this project, the theory of technology affordances and the affordance actualization process were applied in the creation of 3D virtual museum exhibitions. The results of this project provide cultural heritage museums and institutions with useful precedents for the development of 3D virtual historic fashion museum exhibitions.

Art and archaeology in an interactive time-traveling online and museum experience. A case study on the Via Appia Antica.

This paper presents an innovative exploration of digital twinning technologies and its integration with artistic perspectives and interactive museum storytelling. It presents a physical and virtual online museum exhibition that was developed to visualize and experience changes of an archaeological landscape. Central to this exhibition was an interactive installation with a virtual 3D environment in which visitors could revisit viewpoints of past image creators like photographers, cinematographers, architects and painters. The exhibition combined digital twin technologies with artistic and archaeological research to form an immersive landscape biography.As a study area, the exhibition focused on mile V and VI of the Via Appia Antica near Rome. For six different funerary monuments, the exact locations of 110 historical images have been revisited and geo-referenced in a virtual 3D environment. Each historical image was artistically morphed into a present-day image using video technology. Additionally, visitors could explore virtual reconstructions and 3D prints of these monuments, accompanied with 3D animations.The paper discusses the motivation behind the design and setup of the museum and virtual exhibition, together with the technological challenges that were encountered. All tooling for this research was developed as Free and Open-Source Software (FOSS), allowing it to be reused. We discuss lessons learned and future application perspectives of the presented concept and installation. The work illustrates the power of blending cutting-edge technologies with art and storytelling to create a dynamic, accessible, and enriching experience of cultural heritage.

Connection: Digitally Representing Australian Aboriginal Art through the Immersive Virtual Museum Exhibition

In 2022, the National Museum of Australia launched an immersive virtual exhibition of Australian Aboriginal art: Connection: Songlines from Australia’s First Peoples, which was created and produced by Grande Experiences, the same team that produced the multisensory experience Van Gogh Alive. The exhibition employs large-scale projections and cutting-edge light and sound technology to offer a mesmerizing glimpse into the intricate network of Australian Aboriginal art, which is an ancient pathway of knowledge that traverses the continent. Serving as the gateway to the Songlines universe, the exhibition invites visitors to delve into the profound spiritual connections with the earth, water, and sky, immersing them in a compellingly rich and thoroughly captivating narrative with a vivid symphony of sound, light, and color. This article examines Connection as a digital storytelling platform by exploring the Grande Experiences company’s approach to the digital replication of Australian Aboriginal art, with a focus on the connection between humans and nature in immersive exhibition spaces.

Photovoice techniques and art therapy approaches with refugee and immigrant adolescents

This paper describes a program informed by art therapy and Photovoice approaches and techniques aimed at helping new immigrant and refugee teens to navigate personal and cultural identities by reflecting on their experiences as new residents in the US. Photovoice is a photography and social action method that encourages participants to photograph aspects of their daily lives, reflect on their meaning and significance and galvanize necessary changes. The program began in February 2020 at the Arab-American National Museum (AANM), but was adapted for an online format and re-framed towards a reflection on the COVID-19 pandemic. Broad questions teens explored included: What is good? What is challenging? What is sustaining during challenging times? What needs to change? and What about your culture and background are you proud of and wish to share with other US residents? Highlights of the sessions demonstrate how art therapy interventions paralleled photography-assigned themes of self, home, and community and encouraged group interaction and mutual support. A virtual museum exhibition culminated the program and reached community leaders. Self-reports from select participants highlight changes in posttraumatic stress, anxiety, and somatic symptoms over the course of programming.

Impact of Correlated Color Temperature on Visitors’ Perception and Preference in Virtual Reality Museum Exhibitions

From the perspective of psychophysiological evaluation, this paper provides a theoretical reference for the lighting settings of museums. In order to study the impact of correlated color temperature (CCT) on visitors' perception and preference in museum exhibitions, an experiment was conducted in the ergonomics laboratory of Nanjing Forestry University. We invited 50 participants to visit the virtual reality museum exhibitions with different CCTs, built by Autodesk 3D's Max 2017. Specific psychophysiology variables-eye movement, electrodermal activity (EDA), and heart rate variability (HRV)-and the perception and preference of participants were collected. The results indicated that the association of CCT with eye movement, HRV, and some perceptual dimensions was significant. Under high illumination conditions with different CCTs, the pupil diameter and warmth decreased with the increase in CCT, but the comfort and pleasure scores increased first and then decreased. The CCT scenes sorted by LF/HF ratio from high to low were 4500 K, 6000 K, and 3000 K, which was consistent with the results of preference ranking. The LF/HF ratio showed significant sex differences and major discrepancies.

Virtual Reality Locomotion in Place for Virtual Museum Exhibitions of Culture Heritage: Comparing Joystick Controller, Point & Teleport and Arm Swinging

Locomotion methods are user interaction approaches that assist users in navigating the virtual environment when using virtual reality display device of HMDs (head-mounted displays). Most previous studies have been focused on the locomotion techniques with joystick and teleport in general and gaming context. However, there are lack study of locomotion techniques in virtual museum for context of culture heritage. In this study, this paper presents a comparative evaluation with sixty participants of the three locomotions: Joystick Controller, Point & Teleport and Arm Swinging to measure sickness, presence and flow state. In order to evaluate, this paper developed the virtual museum of Himmapan animals (https://angkaew.com/Hinmapan_vr/) which consisted of digital paint art, digitization objects, animation and digitization books. The results showed that Point & teleport less sickness of nausea than other techniques and Point & teleport also highest in perceived enjoyment than other techniques. However, we found no significant difference in presence. Finally, this paper suggested implementing Point & Teleport locomotion techniques in the application of virtual museums

Design and optimisation methods for interactive mobile VR visualisation

The article describes the process of creating a VR mobile application for Google VR platform. The application presents a virtual museum exhibition as part of cross-cultural competence and user interface usability research. The process of creating the application requires taking into account the hardware and software limitations and the specificity of mobile devices. In addition, a higher level of optimisation helps build positive user experience, which is essential in VR applications. The process includes, among others: planning activities, preparing assets, implementing VR vision and interaction modules. The paper includes descriptions of individual steps, problems and other non-standard situations that occurred during the creation and testing of the VR application. In addition the results of the initial performance tests and the methods used to optimise and maintain the stability of the application are presented. By taking into account all of the mentioned factors and the fact that many solutions are yet not well described, the description of the process is expected to provide a point of reference and help for future developers of mobile VR applications.

Историко-патриотическое воспитание учащихся школ с помощью создания виртуальных музейных экспозиций

The creation of virtual school museum exhibitions of the Great Patriotic War, as means of the organization of students’ patriotic education, is considered in the article. The experience of the Virtual Museum of Memory “Soldiers of Victory”, created in collaboration with Moscow Department of Education and the K.G. Razumovsky Moscow State University of Technology and Management is described.

Etruscans in 3D - Surveying and 3D modeling for a better access and understanding of heritage -

<p>Archaeological 3D digital documentation of monuments and historical sites should be considered a precious source of information and it can be very useful for preservation, conservation, restoration and reconstruction of Cultural Heritage. This paper reports a work dealing with 3D surveying and modeling of different Etruscan heritage sites, featuring necropolis with underground frescoed tombs dating back to VII-IV century B.C., located in the area corresponding roughly to the actual central Italy. The project “Etruscans in 3D” was born with the aim of digital documentation, study, analyses and preservation of Etruscan heritage monuments and sites, but also to create digital contents for virtual visits, museum exhibitions, virtual and augmented reality, better access and communication of the<br />heritage information.</p>

ENGLISH

The virtual recreation of a physical three dimensional (3D) exhibition or museum allows a visitor to navigate in this virtual scenario in a way closer to reality. This issue is particularly relevant when the museum building is by itself a piece of art, as it is often the case. In this paper, the use of virtual 3D models in the domain of cultural diffusion is analysed, considering the common aspects of its application either for collections of museum’s or for buildings and artifacts deteriorated or destroyed along the time. A wide range of applications are presented to exemplify the different requirements and techniques that can be considered in this domain. Techniques to create 3D models are reviewed as they are the base to generate a virtual environment and special attention is given to applications devoted to the development of 3D virtual museum exhibitions.

3DPublish: solución web para crear museos virtuales 3D dinámicos

<p>Today museums around the world offer their content through two basic methods: a simple view of their artworks through a content viewer, or through a custom designed 2D or 3D virtual exhibition in which the pieces and the scene are static. This article describes a 3DPublish tool which represents an alternative to these<br />two static solutions thereby giving the possibility to dynamically manage a 3D virtual scenario (real or imaginary) and the artwork that composes it. This gives the user a most realistic experience through different exhibitions, using various added value methods like storytelling or virtual tours. 3DPublish will facilitate the museum curator’s daily tasks and will improve the final results for 3D virtual museum exhibitions. This article will also present the case study of the Kubo Gallery in San Sebastian (SPAIN) as an example of 3DPublish use case.</p>

3Dpublish: A Web-Based Solution for Building Dynamic 3D Virtual Museums

Today museums around the world offer their content through two basic methods: a simple view of their artworks through a content viewer, or through a custom designed 2D or 3D virtual exhibition in which the pieces and the scene are static. This paper describes a 3DPublish tool which represents an alternative to these two static solutions thereby giving the possibility to dynamically manage a 3D virtual scenario (real or imaginary) and the artwork that composes it. This gives the user a most realistic experience through different exhibitions, using various added value methods like storytelling or virtual tours. 3DPublish will facilitate the museum curator's daily tasks and will improve the final results for 3D virtual museum exhibitions. This application was created as part of the Tourspheres project, whose challenge is to explore new measurement systems to reach a more valuable tourist behavior comprehension. But after the experience (presented in this paper as a case study) of creating a custom development for an exhibition for the Kubo Gallery in San Sebastian (SPAIN), the work focused on abstracting all processes to package the 3DPublish tool with the aim that it becomes a commercial solution.

The Etruscans in 3D: From Space to Underground

eomatics and Geoinformatics deal with spatial and geographic information, 3D surveying and modeling as well as information science infrastructures. Geomatics and Geoinformatics are thus involved in cartography, mapping, photogrammetry, remote sensing, laser scanning, Geographic Information Systems (GIS), Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS), geo-visualisation, geospatial data analysis and Cultural Heritage documentation. In particular the Cultural Heritage field can largely benefit from different Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) tools to make digital heritage information more informative for documentation and conservation issues, archaeological analyses or virtual museums. This work presents the 3D surveying and modeling of different Etruscan heritage sites with their underground frescoed tombs dating back to VII-IV century B.C.. The recorded and processed 3D data are used, beside digital conservation, preservation, transmission to future generations and studies purposes, to create digital contents for virtual visits, museum exhibitions, better access and communication of the heritage information, etc.

Exploring the relationship between presence and enjoyment in a virtual museum

The Augmented Representation of Cultural Objects (ARCO) system, developed as a part of an EU ICT project, provides museum curators with software and interface tools to develop web-based virtual museum exhibitions by integrating augmented reality (AR) and 3D computer graphics. ARCO technologies could also be deployed in order to implement educational kiosks placed in real-world museums. The main purpose of the system is to offer an entertaining, informative and enjoyable experience to virtual museum visitors. This paper presents a formal usability study that has been undertaken in order to explore participants’ perceived ‘sense of being there’ and enjoyment while exposed to a virtual museum exhibition in relation to real-world visits. The virtual museum implemented was based on an existing gallery in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK. It is of interest to determine whether a high level of presence results in enhanced enjoyment. After exposure to the system, participants completed standardized presence questionnaires related to the perceived realism of cultural artifacts referred to as AR objects’ presence, as well as to participants’ generic perceived presence in the virtual museum referred to as VR presence. The studies conducted indicate that previous experience with ICTs (Information and Communication Technologies) did not correlate with perceived AR objects’ presence or VR presence while exposed to a virtual heritage environment. Enjoyment and both AR objects’ presence and VR presence were found to be positively correlated. Therefore, a high level of perceived presence could be closely associated with satisfaction and gratification which contribute towards an appealing experience while interacting with a museum simulation system.

Virtual museums, a survey and some issues for consideration

Abstract Museums are interested in the digitizing of their collections not only for the sake of preserving the cultural heritage, but to also make the information content accessible to the wider public in a manner that is attractive. Emerging technologies, such as VR, AR and Web3D are widely used to create virtual museum exhibitions both in a museum environment through informative kiosks and on the World Wide Web. This paper surveys the field, and while it explores the various kinds of virtual museums in existence, it discusses the advantages and limitation involved with a presentation of old and new methods and of the tools used for their creation.

The evaluation of ARCO

This article presents the results of the evaluation study of the Augmented Representation of Cultural Objects (ARCO) system which provides software and interface tools to museum curators for the development of virtual museum exhibitions for the World Wide Web or for information kiosks. The aim of the current research is to investigate how a virtual museum system is coping with the demands of museum curators, to examine the needs of virtual museum visitors, and to provide a set of criteria and guidelines for defining effective evaluation of such systems. Evaluation methods such as heuristic evaluation and walkthroughs were employed in the study in order to assess various components and interfaces of the system.

(un)Housing Aboriginal Possessions in the Virtual Museum: Cultural Practices and Decolonization in civilization.ca and Reservation X

This article explores the confluence of various materialities of space and their links to social and representational violence. Specifically, the author examines these forms of violence with reference to two virtual museum exhibitions of indigenous houses and housing practices: the Museum of Civilization's website – civilization.ca – and its permanent exhibit, titled The Grand Hall; and the Reservation X virtual exhibit on the National Museum of the American Indian website. In these museum displays, ideas of ‘house’ and ‘home’ are central to the visual rhetoric on aboriginality.

Virtual Museum Exhibitions

Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) technologies offer an ideal presentation medium for museums and other cultural heritage institutions. Virtual exhibitions enable different audiences, including the disabled and students of all ages, as well as the general public to access and interact with vast numbers of objects scattered among various localities in an engaging and informative way.

Usability Evaluation of a Virtual Museum Interface

The Augmented Representation of Cultural Objects (ARCO) system provides software and interface tools to museum curators to develop virtual museum exhibitions, as well as a virtual environment for museum visitors over the World Wide Web or in informative kiosks. The main purpose of the system is to offer an enhanced educative and entertaining experience to virtual museum visitors. In order to assess the usability of the system, two approaches have been employed: a questionnaire based survey and a Cognitive Walkthrough session. Both approaches employed expert evaluators, such as domain experts and usability experts. The result of this study shows a fair performance of the followed approach, as regards the consumed time, financial and other resources, as a great deal of usability problems has been uncovered and many aspects of the system have been investigated. The knowledge gathered aims at creating a conceptual framework for diagnose usability problems in systems in the area of Virtual Cultural Heritage.