Abstract:

Even today the majority of museums are designed as containers of objects, with the goal to preserve and make their shape and material aspect accessible to the public (not the sensory one that is neutralized behind a barrier of inaccessibility). The relationships established among the objects are of typological and chronological relevance. Their being related to a sphere of life, to a perceptive and symbolic universe, patterns of behaviour, actions and living people, is often overlooked. The reconstruction of senses and symbolic dimensions that are beyond the object's appearance can instead take the visitor in the middle of a powerful experience.

The purpose of multimedia inside a museum is the creation of an artificial system that reflects technologically, symbolically, the sphere of life. Thus it embodies and transmits content that otherwise would not be perceptible, increasing the awareness and understanding of ourselves in the flow of history. Storytelling is the fundamental tool that allows us to recreate the context, to penetrate the form and meaning of things. Narration means creating a harmonic convergence of script, image, light, sound, mood and atmosphere, in order to compose an expressive unit into which the object is the protagonist, as both a starting and ending point. Indeed a dramaturgy takes place.
The more the essence of the message is conquered, the greater the emotional impact on the visitor will be. His ability to process thoughts, to understand and establish associations will turn on, but also his faculty to enter into a dimension of creativity and self-transformation. For this purpose a direction is needed, combining different languages and techniques from virtual reality, cinema, theatre, enlightenment and a team of professional personnel able to combine scientific accuracy of the content with its expressive translation.

A case study developed following these principles is the installation created under the CEMEC European project, Connecting European Early Medieval Collections, for an exhibition travelling across European Museums. It is dedicated to the Kunágota sword, belonged to an Avar warrior chief of the 7th century A.D., currently preserved in the Hungarian National Museum in Budapest, where the installation is now on display. A holographic showcase containing the real original artefact is integrated in a bigger projection wall. Multimedia contents and lights alternate inside the showcase and on the wall during the different moments of the experience. The installation uses techniques of illusion to make sensory aspects emerge and to favour the full immersion in the story.

The experience happens in a dark room of about 15 square meters, and it is composed by three main phases:
1. Wait, neutral vision of the exhibited object, the attention is focused on the artefact inside the showcase
2. Total vision, contextualization and dramatization of the object, through a big projection on the wall
3. Details, analytic narration regarding the objects’ figures and pieces, through a holographic projection inside the showcase, interacting with the real artefact.

The effectiveness of such digital storytelling system is tested through a user experience evaluation conducted at the Museum. Preliminary results reveal the concrete embodiment of visitors along all the storylines and the correspondent learning benefit. Attention and memorability are highly reached thanks to the context of fruition and the emotional narration.

Keywords:

Museums, virtual museums, narration, contextualization, holographic showcase, user experience evaluation, new convergence of media.