ViRS Museum

- Virtual Roman Shipwreck Museum -

An indispensable definition 'Virtual Museum'... but what is it?

As its name states, ViRS (Virtual Roman Shipwreck) Museum is a virtual museum. But what do we mean when we deal with a "virtual museum"?

Prof. Simona Caraceni provided a new definition of ‘virtual museum’ (Caraceni 2015), taking into consideration several definitions of virtual museum, as well as observing of the growing number of them from direct experience, literature review, launch events and academic and professional community meetings.

First of all, ICOM’s definition of museums can be considered the main benchmark due to its status as the most important museum institution in the world, with a strong commitment to the conservation, continuation and communication of the world’s natural and cultural heritage, present and future, tangible and intangible. Created in 1946, ICOM is a non­governmental organization (NGO) maintaining formal relations with UNESCO and having a consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council.

According to the ICOM Statutes, adopted by the 22nd General Assembly in Vienna, Austria, on 24 August, 2007, the latest ICOM’s definition of ‘museum’ is as follows:

“A museum is a non-profit, permanent institution in the service of society and its development, open to the public, which acquires, conserves, researches, communicates and exhibits the tangible and intangible heritage of humanity and its environment for the purposes of education, study and enjoyment."

Prof. Caraceni defined virtual museums as museums fulfilling the following conditions:

1. they must meet the maximum amount of museological standards defined for tangible museums (Ivarsson, 2004);
2. application of digital technology (Schweibenz, 1998).

The first comes from an official ICOM document that appeared in ICOM News, covering the new dignity to be held by of virtual museums, as compared to the ‘traditional’ ones that preserve, acquire and show collections made up of real tangible objects (Donahue, 2004:1). If ICOM began to consider digital collections as equivalent of their tangible ones counterparts, this means that the ICOM standard can also apply to virtual museums. In turn this entails that the virtual museum must guarantee the inalienability of the collection, the condition of permanent institution, the existence of a statute or an internal regulation for the functioning of the virtual museum. Moreover, fundamental is also the preservation of digital assets in a format capable of lasting for years, or capable of being upgraded periodically by museum professionals in order to make it accessible for virtual visitors, and so on.

Six categories to understand the 'virtual museum' The taxonomy

Researching different definitions of museums and virtual museums from different periods, a taxonomy eventually emerged from the observation of examples of virtual museums, using an observation–methodology: the non-chronological aspect of the taxonomy is due to the fact that, even certain practices are older than others (because social networks were created after hyper­textual links, forums or the possibility of building 3D reconstructions), some practices are still used as valid examples of virtual museums, so it is not useful for them to be considered as historical groupings.

For each of the six categories, there is a scheme in which it is described the main quality of the group of virtual museum to which it belongs, using as a basis the museum’s communication need that this category has the aim to enhance. This main quality will also be employed as the ‘title’ used discursively to refer to the category instead the letter of classification (such as A, B, C, D, E, F).

In the case of ViRS Museum, the chosen category of the taxonomy that represents it is the letter C. All the six categories are briefly shown here, but only letter C is deeply examined. Please refer to Caraceni 2015 if you want to read it in all its sections.

	Need to be enhanced	Interaction	Space	Content	Virtual/Real
A	Marketing	Open	Closed	Selected objects	Virtual on real, virtual with real
B	Educations	Closed	Closed	Selected objects	Virtual on real
C	Exhibition	Open	Closed	Selected objects	Real with virtual
D	Collections	Open	Open	All collection	Virtual with real
E	Interpretation	Open	Open	Selected works/All collection	Virtual with virtual
F	Experimentation	Open	Open	Selected works/All collection	Virtual with real

In this scheme, the six categories are to be considered in this syntax, a quick description of the virtual museum category:

1. Virtual museum enhancing museum MARKETING with OPEN INTERACTION in a CLOSED SPACE showing SELECTED OBJECTS from the museum collection, NOT allowing visitor CONTRIBUTIONS.
2. Virtual museum enhancing museum EDUCATION with CLOSED INTERACTION in a CLOSED SPACE showing SELECTED OBJECTS from the museum collection, NOT allowing visitor CONTRIBUTIONS.
3. Virtual museum enhancing museum EXHIBITIONS with OPEN INTERACTION in a CLOSED SPACE showing SELECTED OBJECTS from the museum collection, NOT allowing visitor CONTRIBUTIONS.
4. Virtual museum enhancing museum COLLECTIONS with OPEN INTERACTION in an OPEN SPACE showing ALL OBJECTS from the museum collection, ALLOWING or NOT allowing visitor CONTRIBUTIONS.
5. Virtual museum that enhances museum objects INTERPRETATION with OPEN INTERACTION in an OPEN SPACE showing SELECTED or ALL OBJECTS from the museum collection, ALLOWING visitor CONTRIBUTIONS.
6. Virtual museum performing EXPERIMENTATION of NEW MUSEOLOGICAL MODELS with OPEN INTERACTION in an OPEN SPACE showing SELECTED or ALL OBJECTS from the museum collection, ALLOWING visitor CONTRIBUTIONS.

In particular:

• The NEEDS column contains the need of the museum that can be enhanced by technology. A key reference in establishing the needs of museums that can be satisfied by technology was the Horizon report 2010 (Johnson et al., 2010). Because the taxonomy has museum professionals as its primary target, and the way technology can be understood and used for the communication of their museum’s heritage, it is centred on the enhancement of the museums’ communication requirements, namely:
  • Education and interpretation;
  • Exhibition and collections;
  • Communication and marketing.
• The INTERACTION means to cover the question of whether there are closed or open patterns for virtual visitors approaching the virtual objects in the virtual museum, or if they can be chosen.
• The SPACE is based on the observation of the browsing pattern of the ‘space’ of the virtual museum itself. For example: is it a closed or an open environment? Is it interactive or is it guided? Is it browsable only by an internet browser, or does it involve a bodily interaction in a gallery or in a room? Can it be modified by visitor actions or not?
• The CONTENT is not a description of the objects contained in the museum itself (art, pictures, paintings…), but of the digital objects contained within the virtual museum that can be touched ‘digitally’ by user­visitors.
• The VIRTUAL/REAL depicts a grid to define the relationship between the virtual and the real in the virtual museum. Five categories were defined with five intersections of the virtual and the real in museums:
  1. Real with real: identified with the traditional museum. Real objects are shown in a real space.
  2. Real with virtual: this corresponds to all the museums mixing real exhibitions of real objects with interactive systems such as sensitive tables, sensitive walls, sensitive floors and interactive multimedia.
  3. Virtual on real: this category includes a digital reconstruction of real space that can be browsed and explored.
  4. Virtual with real: in this category the researchers have identified a type of virtual museum that they define as a digital space built with the use of technology. This virtual space can shape a real space or an ideal space shaped for virtual exhibition. What identifies the virtual museum is that the objects shown are real objects that have been digitalised for display in a virtual space to be better studied or browsed.
  5. Virtual with virtual: this last category covers museums with digital spaces that do not exist in reality, and where the objects are also born in digital space (they do not exist in real world), and are created only for the museum. That is to say a completely virtual museum, according to this classification.

According to the Taxonomy The category of ViRS Museum

As already specified in the previous section, according to the way in which this museum was designed, it fully falls into category C, of which the brief description is reported below:

Category 'C': Virtual museum enhancing museum EXHIBITIONS with OPEN INTERACTION in a CLOSED SPACE showing SELECTED OBJECTS from the museum collection, NOT allowing visitor CONTRIBUTIONS.

The table of the category 'C', therefore, is structured as:

	CATEGORY 'C'
Need	Exhibition
Interaction	Open ('gesture based') inside the galleries
Space	Closed
Content	Selected objects
Virtual/Real	Real with virtual
Visitors contributions	Not allowed

Quoting Prof. Caraceni's words, in fact "Museums opting for this kind of solution aim to enhance visitors’ experience of museum galleries, offering an interactive, immersive experience. [...] this virtual museum model includes all exhibitions using on­site gesture-based technology or the use of Augmented Reality gesture and device based technology, linked to view only and only inside the actual galleries of the museum (and without any outside­of­the­gallery off­site browsing). In this case interaction with the objects and/or information is gesture based, that is to say not mediated by a keyboard and/or mouse or console, but involves the visitor’s body taken as a whole (for example installations that require sensors to be activated), or an action to be taken by visitor (touching, pulling, pushing, tapping on a screen). However there is no interactivity with the object/information on display. Visitors cannot add contents or comments; all they can do is use gesture based technology in order to view additional information on the objects on display in the gallery or to reveal extra contents. [...] However, even if visitor contributions to the collections are not allowed, due to the interactive nature of this kind of museum, the ‘pattern’ of the visit depends on visitors’ choices, thus is ‘personalized’: so they can have a completely different visit the next time they come back to the museum."

This is exactly what happens with ViRS gesture-based and/or AR experiences such as the Fish-Making (link to Fish-Making and Amphorae-Making in "Visit" link link to Fish-Making in "Technologies" page), motion-sensors projections of fish and of seamen, activated by gestures or visitors' presence (link to projections of fish in "Visit" page; link to projections of seamen in "Visit" page; and link to both of them in "Technologies" page), and the AR reconstruction of broken artifacts by means of tablets (link to AR in "Visit" page; link to AR in "Technologies" page).

Moreover, building a table that makes the Museum fit into the category listed above, the result would be:

	VIRS MUSEUM
Need	Exhibition
Example	Interactive experiences (gesture and touch based, VR, AR) inside the museum
Technology	Inside the museum, touch screens, computer displays, monitors, AR, VR, projections with motion sensors
Content	Digital movies, texts, audio, VR and AR games, images
Virtual/Real	Real with virtual
Visitors Experience	'Stunning', both for the casual and for the greedy visitor

Let's analyze in depth the table about category 'C' for ViRS Museum:

• The NEED of our Museum that can be enhanced by technology is the Exhibition one, rather than others like "Education", for example, that is typical of virtual museums that enhances pre­eminently the response to the need for more, or more exhaustive, educational resources at museums, using technology.
• The TECHNOLOGY may include touch screens or interactive projections, activated by buttons or sensors. Basically interaction can be activated by the will of the visitor, by pressing a button or touching a screen, or may be started by a visitor approaching hot spots, thus becoming an integral part of the exhibition itself.
• The CONTENTS of this category are part of the collection;< a museum, like ViRS may decide to build this kind of pattern for few . The multimedia contents may be of different types, such as video, audio soundtrack, images etc.
• REAL WITH VIRTUAL: this is typical of museums mixing real exhibitions of real objects with interactive systems such as sensitive tables, sensitive walls, sensitive floors and interactive multimedia.
• VISITOR EXPERIENCE is built up in order to create a sense of wonder in visitors.