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and 5. Images of the Unbuilt ruin Exhibit taken at the Compton Gallery at MIT. Figures 6 and 7. Visitors placing the active cursor on a hot spot on the map and discussing the displayed views.
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We present three interactive exhibit projects which add technology to the museum space or to the museum visitor. We propose a technological intervention which helps curators and designers to achieve a balance between leisure and learning and help them be more effective in conveying story and meaning. This is made possible by tracking people and obj...
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Citations
... Responding to the demands of upleveling attraction and enlarging user groups, researchers have started to elaborate multifarious interactive applications for museum exhibitions and cultural heritage protection (Maye et al., 2014). For instance, earlier before, Sparacino et al. attempted different types of interactive applications in museum space, providing visitors with more unforgettable and fun learning experiences than traditional exhibits (Sparacino et al., 1999). Along with the development of HCI technologies and theories about interactive exhibition, researchers explored how different technologies influence visitors and what can be the best scenarios (Hornecker, 2010). ...
Plant dyeing is a traditional process of dyeing with plants, which is natural, environmentally friendly and safe. However, in modern times, due to the widespread popularity of low-cost chemical dyeing and changeless conventional exhibition forms, plant dyeing is gradually losing people's attention. With an increasing urgent need to promote this sustainable ancient handicraft, the transformation and evolution of conventional plant dyeing exhibitions are of great importance, towards experiences that are helpful for the public to understand courses of plant dyeing, during which the advocated products bring people the aesthetic satisfaction and consumption desire. To enhance the effectiveness and improve the learning experience of exhibition activities, we applied MR (Mixed-Reality) technologies to construct an environment by merging the real and virtual worlds. Allowing participants to interact with the coexisting physical and digital objects, this MR environment sets up an interactive feedback information loop between the virtual world, real world and participants, intensifying the sense of reality in user experience. In this paper, we designed a transformation of promotion from traditional physical exhibitions to mix-reality ones, and implemented Evergreen, a MR interactive space that allows people to experience plant dyeing. As it was demonstrated at an art exhibition in Xiamen city, China, we conducted user tests on site to verify the effectiveness of this proposed transformation.
... Sparacino, F., Larson, K., MacNeil, R., Davenport, G., & Pentland, A. (2004). Technologies and Methods for Interactive Exhibit Design: From Wireless Object & Body Tracking to Wearable Computers, p. 147-154. 2 Bai, J. & Boo, J. (2011). ...
... In order to compete with other entertainment spaces, today's museums and exhibits must take advantage of technological evolution to create a sense of immersion in the exhibit space and achieve a more effective communication between visitors, curators and authors. Several research groups are studying possible applications for state-of-the-art Human-Computer interaction paradigms in the area of museum design [6][7][8][9]. Sparacino et al [8] defined the concept of "Museum Intelligence", a set of guiding principles that can be applied to design interactive installations for exhibits, with the purpose of creating a sense of wonder, amusement and curiosity in visitors: Perceptual Intelligence. An interactive museum or exhibit space should be aware of visitors' presence so that it can interpret their utterances like movement, gestures and voice; Interpretive Intelligence. ...
... Once identified, the installations can customize the content according to each user that visits them. On the other hand, Sparacino et al [7] chose a less intrusive system that uses video cameras to track visitors and objects. However, the accuracy of video cameras is highly dependent on lights and calibration, opposing to RFID tags that work in almost every conditions. ...
... Much of the research on interactive exhibition design has focused on how technology can be created and used to enhance the visitor experience. For instance, early examples include Sparacino et al.'s explorations in using object and person tracking mechanisms to deliver digital content within interactive exhibitions [23]. ...
Within cultural heritage, curators, exhibition designers and other professionals are increasingly involved in the design of exhibits that make use of interactive digital technologies to engage visitors in novel ways. While a body of work on the design and evaluation of interactive exhibitions exists in HCI and Interaction Design, little research has been conducted thus far on understanding how cultural heritage professionals engage in the design of interactive exhibitions in terms of their attitudes, process, expectations and understandings of technology. In this paper, we present the results from an interview study involving cultural heritage professionals and aimed at understanding their involvement in designing interactive exhibitions. Our findings could provide the HCI community with a better understanding of the strategies and aspirations of domain professionals regarding interactive exhibitions, and to identify new ways to engage with them - particularly as these professionals' knowledge and understanding of interactive digital technologies becomes more advanced.
... The curators also discussed the interaction modality on the interactive table. The author had previously designed two similar devices: one for the " Unbuilt Ruins " exhibit, held at the MIT Compton gallery at the beginning of 1999 [Sparacino, 1999] and one also that served as the original prototype for MOMA's " Unprivate House " exhibit, held in the summer of the same year The first interactive table used two types of selector-objects to allow visitors to select content: people in a small group could collaborate and take turns in moving the selector objects on the animated table surface. MOMA instead chose to have an interactive table with separate identical " place mats " for individual visitors: several people sat around the table and each interacted individually in his own space. ...
This paper presents a series of high-end interactive technologies designed to support the communication needs and strategies of the Puccini Set Designer museum exhibit. Organized with the support and collaboration of Milan’s renowned La Scala opera theater, the exhibit took place from September 2003 to February 2004 at the Ragghianti Foundation in Lucca, Italy. This paper focuses on the methodology followed to analyze and address the museum storytelling needs, and the solution adopted. The paper also describes criteria which define museum intelligence: guiding principles and modeling approaches for the effective use and implementation of interactivity in museums. Finally we illustrate the interactive installations designed for the exhibit and explain how these respond to the analysis and modeling criteria previously defined. The museum space enhanced by these new narrative tools based on innovative technologies resembles a stage set where the main characters are the objects themselves, a set complete with special effects and stage tricks expressly designed to delight the spectator, and keep his interest alive.
... While it is not possible to design an exhibit for all these categories of visitors, it is desirable for museums to attract as many people as possible. Technology today can offer exhibit designers and curators new ways to communicate more efficiently with their public, and to personalize the visit according to people's desires and expectations [35]. ...
Designing responsive environments for various venues has become trendy today. Museums wish to create attractive “hands-on” exhibits that can engage and interest their visitors. Several research groups are building an “aware home” that can assist elderly people or chronic patients to have an autonomous life, while still calling for or providing immediate assistance when needed.
The design of these smart spaces needs to respond to several criteria. Their main feature is to allow people to freely move in them. Whether they are navigating a 3D world or demanding assistance, we can’t strap users with encumbering sensors and limiting tethers to make them interact with the space. Natural interaction, based on people’s spontaneous gestures, movements and behaviors is an essential requirement of intelligent spaces. Capturing the user’s natural input and triggering a corresponding action is however, in many cases, not sufficient to ensure the appropriate response by the system. We need to be able to interpret the users’ actions in context and communicate to people information that is relevant to them, appropriate to the situation, and adequately articulated (simple or complex) at the right time.
... Many different kinds of technology have been used or experimented in museum settings: from traditional stationary multimedia kiosks, to mobile and adaptive guides (Petrelli & Not, 2005, Zancanaro et al. 2003), wearable devices (Sparacino et al. 1999) and virtual reality (Sparacino 2003, Rousseauu 2001). Each of them has advantages and disadvantages: multimedia kiosks are rich in information but limited by their location that can be away from the artefacts being described (); PDAs are less physically constrictive than kiosks and have similar functionality, however as they are designed for individual use can disrupt the social nature of museum visits (Vom Lehn & Heath, 2003); wereable and virtual reality have a novelty factor, but to be effective for learning they have to hold visitors' attention beyond the initial surprise (Rousseau 2001). ...
Interactivity has proved a successful way to engage visitors of science museums. However it is not a common
practice when the objects to exhibit are artefacts or, as in the case of this paper, books. A study was set up to
investigate the driving criteria for the “The Life and Work of William Butler Yeats” exhibition at the National
Library of Ireland and compare those with the visitors’ opinion. Books, notebooks and personal belongings of
the poet have been digitized and used to create a rich and varied exhibition that used both interactivity and
multimedia. The result of visitors’ survey showed that the variety was a key factor for the success of the
exhibition: different people engaged with different contents and different medium to different degrees. The
design of the ambience is critical: dim lights and the use of audio as a medium have to be carefully planned to
avoid annoying instead of engaging.
... Our review of current work indicates that while there are examples of specific interactive exhibits (e.g. [59]) , there are no information design tools available that would use the same tools and mechanisms across multiple contexts (i.e. the generalizations to other spaces / criteria is not easily possible.). There is also no principled user-centric, context-aware strategy for content creation to address issues such as how and what multimedia data needs to be shown, and how are these are to adapt to the user context. ...
This is a position paper that frames a networked home as a situated, user-centric multimedia system. The problem is important for two reasons – (a) the emergence of high speed networked connections alter media consumption and interaction practices and (b) ordinary consumers currently communicate everyday experiences through limited means (e.g. e-mail attachments). We need new mechanisms for networked creation and consumption of media, as well as new interaction paradigms that will allow us to utilize the full potential of the networked, multimedia environment. We envision an augmented user-context adaptive home that enables the user to rest, reflect, interact and communicate everyday experiences through multimedia. A key insight is that the practice of consumption, communication and interaction with media, across different devices and interaction modalities, affect the user context, and in turn is affected by it. The result is a highly personalized media practice for each user. We discuss three focal areas of our current research – (a) models for user context, (b) communication of meaning and (c) situated interaction. Modeling user context is challenging, and we present a novel multimodal context framework. In media communication, we examine research issues in media acquisition, media presentation and networked sharing. Situated multimedia frameworks are physically grounded systems, that require new analytical models, interaction paradigms, and additionally require new real-time concerns. Our framework is promising, and we believe will lead to rich collection of multimedia problems that incorporate networked interaction.
... A team composed by the museum curator, the curator of scenography for La Scala, and a multimedia curator (the author), later joined by a world-class opera scenography expert, discussed the communication objectives and strategies of the exhibit, and examined how the available interaction platforms previously designed by the author [3][4] could best fit the exhibit's communication needs. The curators wished to use technology to help generate a strong visual impact on the public, and at the same time to inform and enchant the visitors. ...
This paper offers an overview and discussion of the numerous innovative technological solutions adopted for the exhibit: "Puccini Set Designer" ("La Scena di Puccini"), organized with the support and collaboration of Milan's renown La Scala opera theater. The exhibition used a wide range of state-of-the-art technologies to convey most effectively to the audience Puccini's work as set designer. For the co-presence and coordinated use of several technologies that transform the visitor from passive spectator to orchestrator of the museum experience, it marks a step towards the "museum of the future". A true innovator in opera set design, Giacomo Puccini broke new ground through the use of both modern technologies - such as electric stage lighting - and a narrative structure closer to the audience of his day. Similarly, drawing inspiration from the Puccinian set, this exhibition reinterprets the museum space as an exquisitely scenic place where lighting, choreography, narrative rhythm, costumes and colors are produced with the aid of state-of-the-art technologies. The museum space enhanced by these new narrative tools based on innovative technologies resembles a stage set where the main characters are the objects themselves, a set complete with special effects and stage tricks expressly designed to delight the spectator, and keep his interest alive.
... They look at technology as a possible partner which can help archive a balance between leisure and learning as well as help them be more effective in conveying story and meaning. Technology can help construct a coherent narrative of an exhibit for the visitor by creating experiences in which the objects on display narrate their own story in context [14]. Using interactive techniques embedded in the physical space museums can present a larger variety and more connected material in an engaging manner within the limited space available. ...
Our society?s modalities of communication are rapidly changing. Large panel displays and screens are be ing installed in many public spaces, ranging from open plazas, to shopping malls, to private houses, to theater stages, classrooms, and museums. In parallel, wearable computers are transforming our technological landscape by reshaping the heavy, bulkydesktop computer into a lightweight, portable device that is accessible to people at any time. Computation and sensing are moving from computers and devices into the environment itself. The space around us is instrumented with sensors and displays, and it tends to reflect adiffused need to combine together the information space with our physical space. This combination of large public and miniature personal digital displays together with distributed computing and sensing intelligence offers unprecedented opportunities to merge the virtual and the real, the information landscape of the Internet with the urban landscape of the city, to transform digital animated media in storytellers, in public installations and through personal wearable technology. This paper describes technological platforms built at the MIT Media Lab, through 1994-2002, that contribute to defining new trends in architecture that mergevirtual and real spaces, and are reshaping the way we live and experience the museum, the house, the theater, and the modern city.