An Introduction to the Immersive Museum Experience

Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us for today’s webinar with Rachael Cristine Woody. My name is Bradley, and I will be your moderator for this webinar titled an introduction to the immersive museum experience.

Before we start, I would like to take a moment to provide some information about our company and introduce today’s presenter. Lucidea is a software developing company specialized in museum and archival collections management solutions as well as knowledge management and library automation systems. Our brands include Sydney, Presto, Argus, ArchivEra, Eloquent, and CuadraSTAR.

Now I would like to take a moment to introduce today’s presenter, Rachael Christine Woody. Rachael is the owner of Relicura and provides services to museums, libraries, and archives. She specializes in museum collections management systems, digitization technology, digital project management, and digital usership. During the course of her career, she has successfully launched multiple digital projects that include advanced digitization technology, collaborative portals, and the migration of collection information into collections management systems. She is also a popular guest author for Lucidea’s Think Clearly blog and has provided us with many great webinars that are listed on our website, so please feel free to check those out after today’s session. Take it away, Rachael.

Great. Thank you so much, Bradley, for your introduction. Thank you to Lucidea, of course, for hosting us today, and thank you for attending what will be another very interesting, at least for my brain, sort of topic, continuing along in our series of online storytelling and using collections that are at the heart of the stories we tell.

For today, we’re going to cover the introduction to an immersive experience. So in today’s context of conversation, there’s some, story infrastructure elements we’ll be looking at, but also very technically specific elements we will be looking at in terms of what creates an immersive story using digital collections and some online setting and tools.

And then because I love examples, we are going to go through a few different examples that are present currently and that can be publicly checked out if you happen to be in the geographic area, but just different, physically, placed locations doing quite a bit with digital collections and creating that immersive experience in a digital format.

We’ll talk a little bit about competition slash challenges that these immersive experiences can pose because unlike some of the other story areas and examples we’ve covered, the examples that we have today are incredibly proprietary, created by corporations that are very much tourist oriented, but are for profit entities, which is not our normal fare with working with museums and archives. But there are some great takeaways we can have here and some great benefits that can occur or at least, inspiration that goes sort of hand in hand with those competition challenges.

All right, so let’s get into it.

First of, before we hop in, the immersive experience. What we mean by that and sort of the technical elements or characteristics we’re looking for when we look at these examples are going to be like large screens, or large projections onto, images onto walls or within those large screens. And it’s not just like gigantic TV screen. This is like several stories tall, sometimes all encompassing, can be, in some, spaces three sixty degree projections can be available. So the sheer size that we’re thinking of with these large screens or projections is much more than we would typically be referring to when thinking about just a large screen incorporation in like a museum exhibit.

Another major characteristic that we see here looking at technology in this immersive experience definition is that they are using both virtual and augmented reality elements.

They are not using it as solely a virtual reality or augmented reality experience. It is only a part of this immersive experience.

We got to see some augmented reality tools implemented when we looking at a Harvard Museum exhibit in our previous webinar how the augmented reality helped to bring to life that particular story.

And in this case for the immersive experiences there are many things happening which also then incorporate the either VR or AR the virtual or augmented reality.

We will then have, moving images as another major characteristic so while some of the images may be static and we’ll see an example of that in our first example. Many more of them are now moving towards moving or animated images. So what could have been a still image is now animated or at least has movement to it whether zooming in or out for example.

As well as the incorporation of video or providing like live event, live streaming of an event happening. So we’re moving we have images and they’re incorporated we’re also moving into an area where we are incorporating video.

Then we are looking at engaging multiple senses and if you’ve been with us for a few of our storytelling webinars you will remember that engaging multiple senses is fairly common as part of our storytelling infrastructure.

However, you will notice that with these companies, and granted there’s big budgets behind to these companies, they are able to engage even more senses than what we’ve been able to do, at least for the vast majority of us, in our museum settings and you’ll hear about a couple examples, in today’s webinar of where they’ve been able to increase and improve upon what we would normally have incorporated in our museum setting.

And then quick refresher in case you are new or it’s been a minute the storytelling infrastructure is something that we’ve had a through line through with these different examples and different executions of an online or digital story And so we’re gonna keep true to that in terms of these immersive experiences while not necessarily crafted or guided by museum professionals or, with that sort of lens of being a museum. They still, of course, are telling a story, and the story elements or infrastructure in this case is present. And so we are going to review story path, the different performance types, and then, as we just talked about the sensory settings involved in these immersive experiences.

So, first example is the immersive Vincent van Gogh phenomenon and this one you may recall was coming out of like the after year one of being in a global pandemic. Everyone was very much experience and culture starved.

And so when this particular, and actually there were several different Van Gogh experiences, plural, many of them, several, like three or more I think I’ve counted at this point popped up all around the same time, but touring the country, and actually countries with this particular experience.

With this one, the topic and subject of this experience was Vincent van Gogh and of course focus on both the person as well as the artwork they created.

Now while there were several of these Van Gogh experiences they all had somewhat similar hallmarks and so for each of these there was the use of multiple rooms so different physical rooms to walk through as part of this experience.

They were using projection on the walls and so, well in all surfaces actually because there was also ceiling and floor, as well as different physical elements within the building where projections, were all encompassing. And so, in this case, not, needing to borrow or have on loan like a museum the actual Van Gogh artwork and instead using the digital surrogates of Vincent Viego’s artwork and remixing them in some refreshing ways.

This also had, artwork as the only light source so, for many of these if not all of them it was an extremely dark, setting. So somewhat senses depleting in terms of really taking out any sort of, distraction of light in this case, but also there were some controlled sound elements and really having artwork be the primary and only focus in many of these rooms.

There was animated elements. So if you are familiar with Van Gogh’s work this is, painted artwork. It is, a still image of a sort and what they did to incorporate and introduce movement into it was using simple concepts like zooming in and zooming out of particular areas of the artwork.

Some of the more sophisticated areas or rooms of these experiences did also add in, animation.

And so, for example, one of the, I think it was one of the windmill paintings actually animating the windmill part of that particular artwork to lend some, dynamicism to that. So using animated elements of what was otherwise still artwork, helps to increase that immersive portion.

And then as I mentioned, music and sound effects. So light was dampened. The only light we have is the artwork and then introduced is music and sound effects. And so for some areas it was more like ambient sort of sound or music, again on the lighter side because the immersive part is visual or at least the intent of the immersive part is visual in this one.

But for some of the others, they depending on what the scene was, there were naturescapes. So, nature sounds that could potentially have matched whatever the artwork was depicting. So really, in addition to that visual part which is the primary adding in additional immersive elements through additional senses.

And then at least one of these had augmented reality features. So being able to use a mobile or smart device and having it augment part of that immersive experience lending even more immersion potentially as well as just different ways to engage with artwork that at this point is very well known to us but yet being presented in a very new way.

So in terms of recognizable elements, looking at our storytelling infrastructure, the story pathway for the Van Gogh experiences is very much a multiple pathway. There may be a suggestion of an order that you could go through the rooms, but it is by no means prescriptive in a sense. And so you really get to choose where you go if you skip a room, if you go around the room backwards or counterclockwise. No wrong way to experience the immersive elements of this.

The performance types, very much visual. In fact, the majority of these experiences are very low to zero text, which is a an interesting choice we could have a whole webinar on later. And then for the sensory settings though, we’ve got the lighting and sound, lighting being one of the big ones, sound being secondary, but we’re also getting color and for some of them the incorporation of smell. So thinking about like those naturescapes for example having those, nature sounds to go with it as well as nature smell. So smell is something museums have incorporated previously, but it’s not really commonplace for many of our museums and especially in like a more artwork setting versus maybe a sciences setting.

And so having that added in as an additional sense is, is an interesting ad and interesting to experience and we’ll see that come up again in one of our other examples.

So, performance the difference for these, performance styles, just to highlight it, is we’re the little to no text in terms of what we would typically expect at a museum if we were go going to a Vincent van Gogh museum exhibition.

But also the the reliance then because there is no interpretive text or very little interpretive text, or even descriptive text, we’re relying entirely on visuals as the storytelling medium. So there’s no written word. We’re also while we’re getting perhaps music or ambient sound, there’s no information being communicated audibly. It is entirely based on visual, which as a storytelling mechanism may seem odd. However, some of the storytelling methods from several different cultural ancestors, you know, it reminds me of the the Kwipunats of the South American cultures several, several centuries ago.

But having the kwipu knots is like a very tactile way of remembering and telling a story. So being able to read those kwipu knots, again, it’s not a visual input, it’s a sensory touch input. So, that’s all to say that there it a story can still be a story even if it doesn’t have any words whether written or, audible.

So being different from a museum, needing to keep in mind there are a couple items here. So mobility avoids ongoing capital costs for this particular there are several, for several of these for profit corporations. They don’t necessarily need to purchase and invest in, a museum building, for example. So one of the main differences is their costs are very different and a way that they are keeping costs low is not having one specific geo locked structure, which also then of course supports the, national and across the country’s tours that they are doing.

They are also using digital surrogates so they’re avoiding object related costs. So, they have they’re not doing any sort of loans so there’s no sort of fees needing to be paid either to the museums and or with any sort of transportation costs or insurance costs. So they’re avoiding any like object specific or object incurring costs on their end by using entirely digital circuits.

We can also assume that the design and execution of this particular immersive experience while very technically sophisticated ultimately and from what we can infer we don’t know for sure required very little staff on their part. So again they’re not a brick and mortar museum. They’re not necessarily creating anything above and beyond this one particular exhibit, at least not at that time. And so the requirement for staff to be on board, is significantly less. And even if they did have a curator and or some sort of collections professionals, they would be most likely contracted or very temporary employment versus any sort of longer term permanent employment at a museum.

And then, as sort of a final and major difference of museum execution in terms of structure and the for profit execution of this experience, is that the scarcity and hype of this particular immersive experience being available helps to bump the interest of people to attend. So it is benefiting or these experiences, plural, are benefiting from only being in a town for a few weeks to maybe a few months, and then they move on. And so the scarcity of needing to see it within a couple of months is there.

And, also, the fact that it is new and not something that they’ve seen at a museum before necessarily helps to increase that interest. So they’re capitalizing on some newness as well as some scarcity, which, you know, museums, there’s some difficulty as to being able to capitalize on those elements. But I think in observing these differences, we may be able to find some inspiration in terms of how we may be able to do business in quotes a little differently.

So moving on to our second example, there is a district in London called the Outer Net. And so while it is not, just one building, it’s multiple. It also is a very much built with the thought of a neighborhood in mind. So wanting to provide, dining, hotels, etcetera, all within that one locality.

And it is also different from the Van Gogh experiences in that this is very much geo locked. Is like it is permanent structures, permanently owned in the London area so it is not going to have that traveling component, at least not with this particular and specific example we’re looking at.

So, presented as a district, it has many other amenities which is perhaps something museums can, leverage and take advantage of in their own setting.

They do tend to and in the OuterNet’s case, they partner quite a bit with modern artists and local artists. Now it is London, England, so access to some pretty incredible artists is much easier.

But being able to incorporate real and live and fresh and new art as part of the experience they’re providing.

They also are partnering with local museums. They are only a couple years old so there’s not a huge amount of examples of them partnering with different types of museums.

But when they do it’s been in a lovely sort of cross section in sharing of museum content in this new and fresher space that has a nice co relationship into generating interest back into the museum they partner with.

In addition to the concept of immersive art in general and the immersive district they’re creating, they also, in addition to that, present limited events. So live concerts is something that they provide.

And in addition to it being provided within one of their buildings, they also livestream that particular event into their immersive and free to the public space. So providing that immersive experience outside, again, leveraging everything digital and bringing this sort of live event to the public in a very public space.

And all throughout this district, on whether it’s, moving and engageable artwork or in with the live show events, there are several interactive elements one can have with those different elements throughout the district. So it is presenting it in a it’s a recognizable way in terms of presenting art and a little bit recognizable from the Van Gogh experience we saw, but sort of elevating it in terms of the addition of those live events in addition to those, museum partnerships and then the concept of being able to provide it publicly for free as well as have elements that are paid for. So, fascinating approach, especially since it it is multipronged.

In terms of the recognizable story infrastructure, the outer net has multiple pathways and partly this is because some of the elements the way they are physically oriented, tend to have very short and focused stories essentially. So there may in fact actually be multiple miniature stories that you experience throughout and there’s no wrong way to do that in terms of an order.

The performance types we’ve got oral, written, and visual. So, this case depending on the type of artwork or the type of performance you’ll have more of one than the other, but it is more traditional than perhaps what we saw in the Van Gogh experiences.

And then for the sensory setting, we’ve got the light and sound and then color and texture. And the other net does a tremendous job with the complete saturation and projections of those colors and then using physical texture with the projection of that color image overlaid just to bring a richness to it. It’s a fascinating meld of digital with physical to bring in additional sensory inputs.

So, the experience different from a museum.

For the outer net, there seems to be an equal focus on the tangible and intangible culture.

Now for a majority of museums depending on what your topic is or your collections are it tends to lend itself towards more one or the other. Usually for most of us it’s very tangible culture, It’s going to be very physical artifacts versus the intangible culture which are things like folklore, music, dancing, things that very much are a product of and embody our culture and our cultural values and yet are not some sort of actual tangible physical item.

So, outer does a very interesting job blending both.

Next is the ability to react nimbly to cultural moments. So the outer net, especially because it does have that public space depending on what has happened, event wise, and we could be talking as, as silly and enjoyable as like a pop culture moment where we are super into something for a week. The OuterNet will incorporate that into their public space or if there’s current events happening, that we want to memorialize or experience collectively.

They do an excellent job with such a flexible space being able to react to those.

And they are event forward. So as much as the district is created very intentionally to be a very cross cultural space and provide these different immersive experiences.

The ultimate focus at least in terms of quantity and focus of their attention appears to be on the events and more the intangible culture versus the immersive and, more tangible of the artwork and images. So interesting to think about the differences there.

The last example I have for you is The Sphere and The Sphere is located in Las Vegas, Nevada.

And of of the two spaces, they they are different in their own right, but the Sphere, in my opinion, takes some of those story or technical elements to, like, the next level. So in my opinion, is perhaps one of the most advanced immersive experiences that we could look to for observation and inspiration.

So features of this sphere, they have holographic and still art. So, moving just beyond the projection of images but actually creating holographic images in terms of like it’s not just projected against the wall it is actually like hologram of a particular item being presented.

There’s the intersection of art science and technology happening here. So for example in Van Gogh it was artwork.

In the alternate that we just talked about, it was artwork, but it was also music and events. So while also art, it was like the visual art and like the musical and audible art.

The sphere is art but also science and technology which are, not things we typically see mashed up together, certainly not in a more typical museum setting.

We also are benefiting in this experience from a high technical investment and how that is present in their interactive displays. So in addition to the holographic art, being able to seamlessly engage in a digital format with different sort of displays and interactions, is first class here.

Additionally, when we are thinking about sensory, settings, there is a theater as part of the sphere where the seat you are sitting in will provide to you a haptic, sense or touch. So, the seats are fully haptic so if there is any sort of movement or impact or any sort of like, touch sensory you will feel it through your seat.

Additionally, they’re incorporating the sense of wind as well as scent. So another example of where smell is being brought in as part of that full immersive experience and then like adding on and creating a full sensory setting with the the touch sense as well as the wind touch sense.

This particular, example also has robots and at least as of the time I was researching it had one of the most advanced robots, that we know of in the world and one that you can interact and socialize with in the lobby area of the sphere. So if you’re into robots, that is, that it will be a very interesting experience for you. They have concert films. So OuterNet had those live events that they projected in terms of, concerts. Here, they have concert films where they have filmed specifically within for the sphere and then being able to play those throughout the day where tourists can come in and witness or watch the concert film.

And then they partner with legendary icons, which in Las Vegas is pretty typical in terms of any sort of cultural icon, especially of legendary status. Apparently, they will work with, whether it’s doing concert films for those that are musical artists or, any other sort of interaction or event with that particular person. So an interesting use of different parts of our culture and quite a a vast selection of different parts of our culture, especially with our art science technology blend.

So looking at storytelling infrastructure, the recognizable path here, again, multiple pathways to keep it simple in terms of no wrong way to experience things.

There could be several different stories at a time similar to the outer net, and so the miniaturization of that experience can help keep that story contained.

They then have for performance types oral, written, and visuals. So, the usual trio here and same with the outer net. And then for sensory setting, we’ve got the usual lighting and sound, color and texture, but they are also bringing in temperature and smell. So really engaging all of our senses in this sort of immersive environment depending on which experience you are, in there to experience, but just the the sheer engagement of all of those senses is one of the more advanced examples I have seen for an immersive experience.

So, terms of experience different from a museum, the sphere has focus on music and film. Like, there is art incorporated and artwork incorporated, but, much more sort of event or intangible culture driven.

And then as I had mentioned, that blending of art, science, and technology, while not groundbreaking in a sense, while not new, certainly is uncommon and I think a very interesting presentation given the immersive focus they have there.

So, when thinking about these experiences that we went through, they are for profit built experiences and certainly not traditional museums in in really any regard. And so there can be some certain competition and challenges that emerge, of course, for museums that exist in the area or who may wish to do similar things but budgets and resources are just not quite at the same level as several of these for profit areas. So, as these things cropped up and especially with the prominence of which the Van Gogh experiences really took over in, like, twenty twenty one through twenty twenty three, many museums were understandably concerned about those, taking over and sort of saturating the somewhat modest audience that would be, interested in going to a museum to maybe see a similar thing.

One of the other sort of challenges or concerns is, perhaps more of an intellectual one in terms of absence of quote real art.

Now there’s definitely problems with that particular statement in general because of course what is being presented by, especially the sphere in the outer net is art, and intangible art.

Where I think this concern is coming from though is perhaps from those Van Gogh experiences where there is very much the real artwork out there, but perhaps by offering people access to the digital surrogates in perhaps a more captivating way, I think what the real concern here is the real art in quotes, losing any sort of appeal or priority to present when our desire as human beings in general to see our work is being met by digital surrogate versus the real thing.

And then the potential devaluation of professional staff. And of all of these, this one is one I am particularly sensitive to.

When companies are putting these immersive experiences together, it is working with and presenting art.

And while there are certainly different staff members they will employ for, you know, event management, for example, I do think that by the nature of them providing these immersive experiences and in the way they’re providing them, especially in the Van Gogh experience where they don’t necessarily need art handlers and they don’t necessarily need curators, it can provide or it can elicit a devaluation of those professional roles.

So I’m not sure if this is entirely on those numeracy experiences in terms of devaluation of our field is something that’s been happening for quite a while now. It’s certainly not these these new kids on the block that are causing it.

But it does spark a very interesting and needed discussion, think, in terms of when does it make sense for professional staff to be present and how can we define and somewhat separate out the museum roles versus the roles that are present for these immersive experiences. Realizing that these are different beasts while certainly related, there’s, you know, just the different resources, the different shape and size, the different purpose, I think introduces enough differences that we need to have more conversation about it.

So with immersive experiences as a reference point though, I think we as museum professionals can look to those for some great areas of innovation and inspiration for how we tell stories. So while we may not necessarily be able to afford all of the blockbuster items, there are things we can do to help up level what it is that we are doing with our story production and help to provide, I think, what our larger community has shown interest in in terms of seeing and experiencing all that museums have to offer in new and fresh ways. So something for us to consider, especially as we navigate our challenges.

So in conclusion, we took a look at Concepts of the Immersive Experience with some very specifics in terms of what we mean by an immersive experience when we’re talking about digital or online storytelling. And then we took a look at three different examples of immersive experiences provided by for profit organizations. The first one was the immersive Vincent van Gogh experiences where there were multiple experiences and they were traveling. We then took a look at the OuterNet which is an experience district based in London, England.

And then our final example was the Sphere in Las Vegas, Nevada, which is perhaps the most, as of now, technically advanced immersive experience you could have, and that that does an interesting blend of art, science, and technology.

We then took a look at competition challenges, the sort of concerns that we as museum professionals have raised as these immersive for profit experiences have become more commonplace or people are more aware of and how to balance that with what are the ideas and inspiration and innovation we can take away as museum professionals and apply in our own home institution.

So with that I will leave you with a note to check out the latest book we’ve put out with Lucidea Press, The Discovery Game changer: Museum Collections Data Enhancement. So if you are super into your collections data in your collections management system, this particular book focuses on strategy for how you could, enhance your data to help increase discovery of your collections and use of your collections. So discovery and use is I know something that’s really important, in my work and I imagine if you’re at this webinar it is important for you too so, feel free to pick up your free e copy courtesy of Lucidea Press.

And with that, I’ll turn it back over to you, Bradley.

Thank you, Rachael, for the wonderful presentation. And to our audience, if you’d like to learn more about our museum collections management system called Argus, please feel free to visit our website or reach out to us at sales at Lucidea dot com, and we’d be happy to have a chat with you.

And if you have any questions on any of our software or our company, our contact details are listed on the screen, and please stay tuned for more webinars and content related to this series.

On behalf of the Lucidea team, I thank you all for attending today, and until next time. Thank you.