Enhancing User Experience in Art Galleries Using Augmented Reality

This project utilizes audio AR, coupled with traditional visual AR, to provide enhanced immersive experiences inside art galleries to bridge the gap between art enthusiasts and non-enthusiasts in terms of experiences and overall interests. We hope that by amplifying the arts, we will generate increased interest among those who would otherwise not visit art galleries, as well as increase visitation rates.

We will pick famous artworks from a certain period of time, which have similar themes across them. The goal is to be able to amplify the specific emotions or activities the artist intended to depict in those artworks. We will use different sonification approaches to add auditory cues to multiple elements within the artwork. Furthermore, visual cues will also be added to complement the auditory cues and provide a holistic enhanced experience to visitors. This wll lead to a more curated experience for gallery visitors. We will capture measures such as time spent at each painting, extent of head motion while viewing each painting, total time spent inside the gallery, spatial movement inside the gallery space, overall satisfaction score, and also use emotion rating scales to capture their affective states before and after the gallery visit.

The study can be carried out ‘live’, meaning study participants can attend the gallery session with patrons during a normal viewing. We expect this to create a general sense of excitement which will bring in more participants and patrons at the same time, who will have the opportunity to experience novel AR techniques within an art gallery setting.