Introduction
While mobile connectivity and the web have dramatically increased connections across a global society, there remain a number of opportunities to tap into virtual space as a way to bring about informed dialogue and present unique perspectives. One very compelling draw for visitors to any museum are the changing exhibits, whether they are pulled from the archives or are borrowed pieces, traveling across the country or globe. We propose that the Worcester Art Museum become the premier innovator in the realm of audience appeal, visitor draw, return patronage, and engaging, informative experiences with the adoption of the Virtual Reality Museum Space [VRMS].
Current Constraints
The number and frequency of new exhibitions is constrained by space, available traveling pieces, and pieces for loan, as well as the time that any one such exhibit should be showcased before bringing in another in order to ensure sufficient audience reception. Preparing pieces for travel and display requires significant forethought and planning, as well as the obvious need for a set schedule of availability at each location. Further, certain pieces or exhibits may never be able to be shown on loan or make a circuit of visits, whether because they are simply part of a permanent collection or are physically incompatible with travel.
The VRMS Solution
What if such exhibits could be on permanent loan to a set number of collaborating museums across the globe, all concurrently? An online museum might meet such needs, but would offer a number of significant trade offs. While there is no replacement for seeing exhibits in person, up close, in the museum setting, the Virtual Reality Museum Space meets several of the failings of an online exhibit while providing a truly unique experience.
The concept behind the VRMS is to provide a 3D, fully engaging and immersive experience for the visitor. VRMS utilizes the immersive virtual reality technology of a headset such as the Oculus Rift to provide a visitor event that will captivate while preserving the integrity of scale, visuals, and audio of an exhibit — but more importantly it will also preserve the context that was intended by the artist and museum alike.
The VRMS Experience
Before describing the technology, it is important to understand where and what the VRMS will be. The VRMS experience is meant to occur AT the museum. Each host museum of the collaborative would have a dedicated space for visitors to access the VRMS which would serve as any other display space for an exhibit/piece. But rather than finding a single exhibit, the visitor discovers that the VRMS offers an entrance into any number of exhibits. These exhibits are curated, professional museum presentations, and the selection offered through the VRMS portal is specifically chosen to provide a tailored viewpoint — perhaps a global perspective, an extended exploration of a particular time period, or a focus on a specific medium or artist. The difference is, these exhibits would not normally be accessible at the host museum because they currently ‘live’ at other museums in the collaborative.
The VRMS experience starts when the visitor puts on the Oculus Rift hardware, wireless headphones, and holds a wireless joystick. The visitor becomes instantly immersed in a virtual museum space — a complete 3D world with colors, textures, lighting, and 3D audio. This world is entirely enclosed, as the Rift is a virtual reality framework to be worn across the eyes. Now the visitor is free to explore, walking through the spaces with the press of the joystick and having complete range of vision by simply turning his/her head as one normally would when inspecting an exhibit. He/she can hear any intended media including sounds emanating from the piece and voice-over narratives written by curators and/or artists.
Ideal Exhibits
While ALL exhibits may be showcased via the VRMS, certain types of exhibits lend themselves to this unique medium. For instance, an architectural space is one which would be very difficult to send on a visiting circuit, would normally be viewed from all angles, and permits movement throughout. All of which is nearly impossible to represent or capture via other mediums such as photos, videos, or even interactive electronic applications. And yet, the VRMS would allow the visitor to be inside the space, look around freely, and be able to visit this space within the context of a museum, yet not require travel to the parent location, nor require movement of the piece to the host museum. For physical considerations, architectural exhibits, large sculptures, furniture, and items too delicate for travel are excellent candidates.
For reasons relating to rarity and popularity, paintings, photographs, video/audio media, and small scale items would benefit from the VRMS treatment as well. Because, while a photograph of a photograph may present a general idea of the work to a user online, being able to see the photograph to scale, from a set height perspective, surrounded by the other intended photographs from a collection, within a curated space with intentional color calibration and at a higher resolution, allows for a far more authentic experience and generates a similar context to the original.
Augmented Reality & Extended Opportunities
Recreating a display setting and context, though extremely important, is not the only possibility with the VRMS experience. By hosting exhibits in a realistic, yet virtual 3D space, opportunities for interaction and novel layers of further education and perspective present themselves. Augmented reality allows a visitor to have engaging interactions with pieces on exhibit such as learning more about a given portion or area of a piece, or being able to enquire about the techniques used, via a virtual docent.
Perhaps visitors would like to recommend this exhibit to their friends or share a tour of their favorite exhibits for their students. Maybe the visitor is looking to see other recommended exhibits based on a shared appreciation of the particular piece they are viewing, in order to discover more pieces throughout the virtual and physical collection.
All of this information can be accessed and customized based on the individual user. There will be those who wish to enjoy an exhibit in silence. Others will wish to learn about the medium. Still others will be interested in all the work by a particular artist or movement. Each visitor’s needs can be met without interfering with those of other visitors with different interests or requests, all by allowing simple, intuitive interactions to occur such as voice commands or a quick click on a reactive, disappearing, in-display GUI [graphical user interface].
Accessibility
Further, the VRMS is designed with accessibility in mind. While the Rift does require sight, movement via the joystick is accessible to those with limited mobility and can be easily adapted to use mouth joysticks or the like. Audio can be provided in alternative ways, and all aural and written material can be localized [translated] and thus offered on demand in a specified language. All non-exhibit material will be made compliant with visual accessibility guidelines and the VRMS hardware is inherently wheelchair accessible. The VRMS would also benefit the visually impaired in that such visitors would still be able to move about the virtual space and receive audio cues about their exploration as well as audio descriptions of the exhibits themselves, on demand. The augmented learning experience described previously would also be accessible and of use to all visitors.
Museum Collaborative
Another aspect of this proposal is the museum collaborative. The VRMS experience can be deployed under a number of scenarios by the Worcester Art Museum. For instance, a museum collaborative could include other art museums from the Massachusetts region, thus providing support for one another, encouraging physical visits and exploration through inspiration via the virtual space. As all participating museums would have an art focus and be within a relatively small geographic location, visitors would have a shared interest and in-person visits would be a practical and obvious choice to further extend the experience.
On the other hand, a museum collaborative might consist of art museums from different states — even sister museums — providing interaction with exhibits not easily accessed by visitors of any one of the museums due to distance. Another possibility is to encourage extended, related exploration based on focus: for instance if the Worcester Art Museum is displaying an exhibition of Garry Winogrand, the VRMS could be set up to allow the visitor to explore exhibits from contemporary galleries, history, clothing/shoe, cultural, and industrial design museums from across the country, continent, or globe, providing access to pieces representing the 1970s. The politics, fashion, furniture, technological advancements, and social culture of that time period, would provide a context for the artist and his pieces, instantly accessible to a now, inspired and interested patron.
There is no reason that a museum cannot be part of a number of collaboratives which can either be exhibited via the VRMS based on current exhibitions, or can be chosen by the patron as separate, unique experiences.
Asset Creation
While the engine software integrates the experience, there is additional software required for asset creation. Asset creation is the process of realizing the original exhibits in an electronic medium. While some pieces such as audio, videos and multimedia exhibits may already be in electronic format, most pieces will be physical only. Some will require digitizing photographs in order to be incorporated, such as photography, paintings, sketches, and other relatively 2D media. Many though, will require a translation into 3D form. In the demonstration, the Worcester Art Museum’s Chapter House has been translated into a 3D electronic visualization via the 3D modeling software, Autodesk Maya. There are a number of ways to digitize the assets needed for 3D exhibits such as utilizing blueprints in CAD, measuring and surveying with camera shoots, and 3D scanning with non-invasive hardware including consumer tools such as the Microsoft Kinect.
It is the goal of this proposal and demonstration to offer one workflow possibility for creating VRMS 3D assets, but in practice, the VRMS experience only requires one exhibit per collaborating museum to be complete prior to deployment in order for the visitors to have a wide and engaging experience. Such an undertaking would be done concurrently by each host museum within the collaborative, and could be completed in as little time as three months. All software and the workflow outline for this demonstration is included as a supplement to this proposal.
Conclusion
In conclusion, this proposal for the VRMS and the accompanying demonstration have been designed with the hope of offering the Worcester Art Museum a peak at the possibilities of a collaborative, fully immersive, entirely unique, virtual experience for its patrons. It is believed that the innovation of the VRMS would allow the Worcester Art Museum to engage with its audience in new and exciting ways, encourage extended, even global dialogue, and inspire novel and powerful social experiences for the local community on a wide area scale.
Credits
This proposal originated from a collaborative project between Janet Tremblay who works for the Worcester Art Museum and is an independent 3D artist and animator; Scott Tongue, an alum of the Becker College Interactive Programming major; T. Ulm, Becker College assistant professor of Interactive Media: Design & Development. The demonstration project utilizes the 3D model assets of Janet Tremblay and relies on her connection to the Worcester Art Museum for access to the exhibit and various resources. Further, she approached us at Becker College in the hopes of creating an online museum space with her 3D models. Scott Tongue provided the hardware specifications, optimization and testing as well as the software, game engine integration of said hardware and 3D assets. Professor Ulm developed the proposal for VRMS and lead the development of the demonstration scene, utilizing her Oculus Rift development kit.