The digital evolution of museums and art is attracting great interest and must be part of a strategic vision of how the cultural heritage sector is changing. The new applications of immersiveness - which can be divided into heavy and light - open up new scenarios of spectacularization that generate important economic spin-offs for the world of art and culture.
The traditional fields of cinema and art are, in fact, facing competition from a wide range of applications: Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, Mixed Reality, Extended Reality, Enhanced Reality, Hybrid Reality, 3D Graphics, 360° Photo/Video, Real Time Experience, Immersive Experience and more.
These new immersive applications open up new scenarios of spectacularization that generate important economic spin-offs. This is how to find your way in this varied panorama, where the aim is to create a "Total Work" capable of involving all five senses, while new forms of entertainment are making their way onto the market.
In this scenario, it is not enough to find effective technological solutions or develop isolated initiatives, but it is essential to develop integrated strategies to approach digital culture, not only as a networked reflection of traditional cultural industries (newspapers, books, TV, museums....) but also as forms of culture born with digital technology, which therefore deserve proper attention.
In the museum and art sector, digital media certainly represent a discontinuity from the past since they call the public to interact, are pervasive and cross-media. They should therefore also be considered as a form of autonomous cultural expression, not just ancillary to established forms of museum and art display.
Museums large and small are measuring themselves against the Digital Transformation, obtaining a visibility and a relationship with the public that was previously unthinkable. In some ways, the Internet offers small organisations a greater opportunity to emerge, and to finally enter the most representative circuits, highlighting their distinctive contents and reducing the distance from the more famous and established organisations.
In this new context, Virtual Reality is probably destined to bear the most fruit. Thanks to the undoubted innovative opportunities for the elaboration of new expressive languages and for philosophical reflections on the aesthetic and perceptive level, AI could be transformed from a niche medium into the new frontier of the 'Immersive Art Experience'.
In general, we are faced with phenomena in the definition phase, technological experiments that seek their place on the entertainment and cultural fruition scenario. Virtual Reality and Immersive Art Experience are to be considered as experimental trends destined to find their own functional positioning in the contemporary universe of communication.
Like any revolution in its infancy, this one too requires attention so as not to risk being yet another example of the 'means overcoming the end' or a further push towards mass culture.
According to some experts, it would be more appropriate to highlight the educational potential of this new way of enjoying art. Indeed, with the help of storytelling and documentary techniques, immersive experiences could become a valuable tool for art education, both for researchers and for schools. This potential can rightly be considered as 'the future of exhibitions'.
The world of immersive art has recently seen the emergence of several operators. Among them, we mention Next Exhibition, an all-Italian scaleup leader in the production, organisation and realisation of multimedia and interactive temporary exhibitions. To date, the company boasts over 100 productions in 12 countries around the world and more than 3.5 million visitors.
The capital raising campaign for Next Exhibition is active on our website and here you can find all the information about it.