A Multi-Sensory Approach to Cultural Heritage: The Battle of Pavia Exhibition

Abstract

In the last years, several museums and exhibits have adopted new kinds of interactive installations that present artworks in more attractive ways, especially for young visitors. At the same time, new communication technologies have been introduced to allow vision and motion impaired people to visit arts centers. In this work, we present the multi-sensory solutions we have implemented for the "Battle of Pavia" Exhibition, a collateral event of Milan Expo 2015. The installation combined different interaction methods to achieve two main goals: providing visitors with engaging experiences and allowing blind and partially sighted people to appreciate the exposed artworks. The used technologies include gesture communication, gaze-based interaction, 3D character reconstruction, virtual avatars, and 3D tactile images. This work can be also viewed in the context of digital humanities for cultural heritage. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first exhibit to gather such a high number of interactive technologies in a single installation. The positive response from visitors is a great spur to continue our research in this direction.