Alternating Reality: An Interweaving Narrative of Physical and Virtual Cultural Exhibitions

Abstract

Virtual and augmented reality technologies are increasingly utilized by public-facing galleries, libraries, archives, and museums (GLAM) institutions to convey both heritage and contemporary stories, information, and experiences. However, within these media, the visitors are often overwhelmed by the virtual environment, resulting in the cultural heritage content being pushed to the background. In this article, we present the alternating reality (AltR) narrative that supports the communication of cultural heritage as an interweaving experience that alternates between real and virtual environments. AltR allows both the cultural heritage content and digital technology to play an equal role in augmenting, highlighting, or explicating each other and conveying a shared narrative to the visitors of GLAM institutions. We introduce the AltR experience through an exhibition highlighting the physical replica and contemporary reimagining of one of Walter and Marion Griffin’s buildings. We conducted a study of the AltR experience during the exhibition using a low-cost virtual reality cardboard viewer that lends itself to an intuitive transition between the two environments. The findings showed that the interweaving experiences between the physical replica of cultural heritage and its virtual reimagining allows the visitors to draw the connection between the two sources of information. The narrative is created and controlled by the visitors, leading to an enjoyable experience. Finally, we reflect on the design implications of an AltR narrative for cultural heritage applications derived from the findings of the study.

Similarity of gaze patterns across physical and virtual versions of an installation artwork

“…To the best of our knowledge, this is the first case of a direct and quantitative experiment to compare real-world aesthetic experience side-by-side with its VR counterpart. A major empirical justification of this research can be linked to communicating historic and contemporary visual arts to a remote audience 69 – 72 , especially in the context of novel trends in presenting arts to remote audience in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.…”

Designing public VR installations:

“…3.7 New Pholiota, 2018, Australia: Exhibited for 2 weeks / > 1600 HMD wearers New Pholiota (NP) accompanied an architectural exhibition for the general public of a full-size replica of the heritage-listed house, "Pholiota," which demonstrated low-cost home construction [25].…”

Conceptualising Augmented Reality: From virtual divides to mediated dynamics

“…Azuma's (2019: 29) own call for research on 'nontechnical challenges' such as social acceptance requires reconfiguring AR research to questions around 'establishing AR as a new medium and finding ways to take advantage of this new form of media' (emphasis added). Meanwhile, the virtuality continuum is being bent backwards on itself (Hoang and Cox, 2018) to try to account for perceived AR experiences. We now turn to more fully consider what media are in order to more accurately decipher what AR media afford, and then consider the implications for the publics they create.…”