LOOP CONTROL OF EMOTIONAL BALANCE IN A MUSEUM REALITY VIRTUALITY CONTINUUM PROBLEM DEFINITION AND PROPOSED APPROACH
Year: 2016

The authors collaborate in exchange of knowledge and problem definition in the field of museum studies in control loop of a reality virtuality continuum. Their research activities focus on accessibility to cultural heritage museum collections in Russia and communication studies related to nonverbal signs of stress or negative reactions of visitors, aiming to improve emotions in virtual space. Consequently, adaptive interfaces to overcome such stress are developed, deriving from research, design and validation of new methods and tools for personalized storytelling and adaptive guides, combining the Museum physical and digital world.  The popular term "virtuality" is very attractive, especially in the field of digital heritage. Advertising the accessibility and the participatory culture in digital worlds, one forgets the pure value of cultural heritage and the main role played by new technologies applied for its dissemination. In the beginning of 21st century, websites on cultural heritage were uncommon. Today their percentage still is very low compared to the business sector of the global net.  This fact shows week relevance of the products in the field of digital heritage. The studiesof this relevance and feedback from consu mers of such products became effective tools for collaborations between museums.  While there is a set of EVA 2016 SAINT PETERSBURG, RUSSIA 132 international standards and recommendations for websites and multimedia programs in the field of cultural heritage [3,4,5,6,7] none include methods of feedback evaluation and psychological aspects of museum communication  The next step in exploring virtual worlds should consider human aspects in adaptive and personalized environments  Traditional museum studies take into account visitors' preferences according to gender, age or personal thematic preferences, so, they fix only grounding. Adaptive software takes this data and personalizes interface and content from the cognitive component point of view [1117].The cases of implementation in museums are still a few. The set and quantity of information are recommended by level and preferences of a curator without psychological speci fics of an individual. We could title this type of human orientated adaptability differential, not personalized. The positive experience during museum visit is related to the positive emotions experience. Strictly speaking, this is not the joy of cognition, but specific experience of museum communication, having a clear and valuable component. The research reported here focuses on this subject, by defining the problem in the field of museum studies in a control loop of a realityvirtuality continuum.  Our research goal is situated within the topic of museum communication studiesaiming at defining a new social paradigm where the individual and the community are in the center of the cultural heritage narrative, situated in physical and virtual museums. Consequently, we are looking at designing an adaptive interface for virtual and mixed museums as a system of improved interaction and social accommodation. There are various ways to enhance museum space and museums' visitor experience [8].The various types of computer abilities allow developers a wide choice in the digital world [17] The conservative museum society has little chance to follow all technological changes, resulting that they relate to virtuality as a new type of a book with images.A best example is a longterm discussion on the definition of "virtual museums"  Any application of a common terminology describing the parts of a computerized virtual system [17] for museums or similar cultural institution needs is helpful and gives many advantages [21, 22] One of them comprisesthe new communication media for museums, such as dedicated websites. It starts before the visit when potential visitorsbrowse the website of a museum and get preliminary information on collections and exhibitions. Once visitors enter the physical museum they may get in contact with museum staff, explore exhibits, be led by museum guides or have implicit or direct contact with curators. Over the years several approaches and methodologies have been developed to collect feedback from visitors [23] Recent research revealed that visitors who prepare their museum experience (through virtual interaction with the museum collection through the internet) have a richer visiting experience than the casual visitors; there is a difference in age groups and gender between real and virtual visitors [24] Consequently, adult visitors often come to museums not only for an edutainment experience but to experience positive emotions (good feelings) from dedicated cultural events. Humanorientated platforms for education and training are innovative methods accessible to everyone. On line access allows distributed users to jointly operate in a common virtual space [25] The same approach can be used in museums. In the same time, projects aiming to control behavior of visitors in a museum space should consider its cognitive component. Electronic devices may be applied to evaluatevisitors' satisfaction from the information gained during their visit.  There are se veral reasons why many computer applications for communication of Cultural Heritage in museums, or those aimed at improving the museum experience, are not adaptive. A counter example is the experience to combine virtual models of museum objects with text information Braille script and quick audio guides for augmented reality at archaeological exhibitions  Apart from facilitating communication for disabled visitors, casual adaptation implies only age and native language. Now it is turn to make a humancentered system with virtual environments. Communication plays a leading role in the formation of a positive visiting experience of museum exhibitions, particularly for the mutual adaptation of visitor and museum artifact: any communication process provokes changing of information and mutual adaptation of subjects  The archaeological exhibition is a message with encoded information, including facts, ideas and emotions, which are translated to visitors by means of verbal communication (text description) or nonverbal (images) This encoded information relates to the object itself, as an archaeological artifact once part of a (nonexisting anymore) culture, but it is also a museum exhibit in the modern present and as such often embeds values of a "precious" "art" object. Moreover, the message transmitted by the object and its communicative apparatus is manipulated by the curator of the exhibition, the archaeologist who excavated it, or the communication expert who prepared the communi cation material. The visitors' channels of reception can be natural (sensor systems) or artificial;the number of recipients may differ from single persons to a group. Their reaction becomes an indicator of effectiveness and adequacy of the communication apparatus to transmit the message and to be positively received by the visitor. The result of communication can be expressed as a change of behavior of the recipient or an increase of his resistance to absorb the message. Within the artificial intelligence domain, cognitive psychology defines "frames" as the (ideal model) structures of information and certain stereotypes helpful for adaptation of human behavior in a new environment or an unknown situation.  Action and interaction during communication are on verbal and nonverbal levels. VerSection 4. Digital Resources of Museums Museum Communications 133 bal communication uses human speech, while non verbal communication usesparalinguistics, proxemics, body language, gesture, kinesthetic or olfactronics.  Thus communication is a synthesis of sensor and social processes that can be applied in the museum communication, resulting in a visitor model of personal exploration of a museum space characterized by an evaluative judgment. Emotional state of museum visitor during museum communication is not abstraction. While the evaluative judgment is a social attitude, it is formed on three levels: expectation and satisfaction; attitude (affective and cognitive) behavior. This way the emotional state is an attitude ability to change behavior. The verbal instance of attitude is described by scaling psychophysiological parameters that express emotional (affective) components(Thurstone type Scale, Likert Scale etc. onedimensional scales and factor analysis measure the cognitive component. Unfortunately, the revealed contradiction between fixed verbal reactions and real behavior of humans during the attitude measurements makes unreliable any prediction of behavior. Adaptive software and personalized interface attempt to change attitude and frame. The idea of research consists in analyzing the change in attitude, relying on existing psychological theories (Congruence theory, Cognitive Dissonance theory,Balance theory) individual specifics of recipients and the study of structure of their attitude.The authors suggest to study the emotional basis of cognitive dissonance of visitors interacting with virtual environments designed at enhancing their museum experience and located in the physical museum space. Such a study must consider the special character of the stimulating materials (museum collections) and the possibility to fieldmodeling cognitive and emotional components of visitors.