New approaches to Art and visual culture
CHArt Nineteenth Annual Conference
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CONVERGENT PRACTICES New approaches to Art and visual culture |
Maria Roussou, Greece
Virtual Reality in Heritage and Education: Issues and Challenges
The intersection of advanced visualisation technology, such as Virtual Reality (VR), and cultural heritage promises many new applications and raises new fundamental questions. Both the development of the techniques and technology and the increasing impact of interactive technologies on the more traditional arts, have matured enough as to expand VR research from the realms of military and scientific visualisation into more multidisciplinary areas, such as the contemporary arts, education, archaeology, culture at large, and psychology. Consequently, virtual reality interfaces, interaction techniques, and devices have improved greatly in order to provide more natural and obvious modes of interaction and motivational elements.
However, the prohibitive costs and inaccessibility of VR technologies, coupled with issues of usability, user training, operation, and maintenance, continue to present practical drawbacks, especially for the cultural and educational use of VR. In spite of concerns, heritage institutions, such as museums and public cultural institutions have started making use of advanced systems and investigating their educational potential in order to effectively shape visitor experience and deliver public education.
This presentation will discuss the issues involved in using state-of-the-art interactive virtual environments in public spaces for learning, historic research, and entertainment, drawing from the experience of such use at different museums with which the author has been affiliated: a cultural heritage institution of informal education located in Athens, where VR is used for the accurate reconstruction of archaeological sites, and a contemporary art museum.