New Ways of Seeing
Matthew Anderson, Damian Schofield, Lisa Dethridge · Advances in media, entertainment and the arts (AMEA) book series · 2015
As computer-driven display technology becomes more powerful and accessible, the online, virtual art gallery may provide a new platform for artists to exhibit their work. Virtual exhibits may afford opportunities for both the artist and the patron to display, view and perhaps purchase various digital art forms. The aim of this paper is to examine user interaction with digital artworks inside a virtual gallery space. We use a range of criteria to describe conditions for both the designer and the user of such a virtual display system. The paper describes a number of experiments where users interacted with a virtual art gallery and were then extensively interviewed and surveyed. Measures of what Manovich (2002) describes as ‘immersion' and what Slater et al (1994) would term ‘presence' are observed in relation to the user experience. The gallery is a three-dimensional graphic digital construction built in Second Life. The experiment aimed to describe and delineate the user's perception and navigation of space and compares their perception of art objects in the virtual environment to digital objects in a ‘real world' gallery. The data collected in this study provide the basis for a discussion of how users may perceive and navigate virtual objects and spaces in an online environment such as a game or art gallery. The results may be of use to those designing interactive three-dimensional environments.