Magicarts: An Interactive Social Journey In The Art World

Considering the virtual museum visit as a group activity, in this paper we explore how to support and facilitate social interactions between visitors in the 3D environment of an interactive virtual museum, while also accounting for isolated moments of personal engagement with the cultural content.Moving towards this direction, we present the design of MagicARTS, a multi-user virtual gallery that enables groups of visitors to explore collaboratively the gallery's cultural resources. The visitors are able not only to go through narratives and informative multimedia content, but also to dive into the virtual world of the artworks, moving inside their 3D environment or watching the depicted characters come to life. Most notably, the MagicARTS visit is a social experience: visitors are empowered to talk with each other, share their feelings about the artworks, point to gallery exhibits, as well as invite other group members nearby, in a playful way.