NODEM 2014 Proceedings

TACTEC, Transforming Art and Culture Through Engagement and Construction
With this study we aim to answer the following questions:
1) Do the visitors become closer to the artwork presented?
2) Does the presented model promote the creation of new visual narratives?
3) How can we relate the potential for creating new images to the characteristics evident in the presented
model?
In the presented model, the informational paradigm can be found in a brief record, where a few notes about
Hieronymus Bosch can be observed; that is, for example, the name, the origin, the period in which he worked
and the name of some of his artwork. The latest version of the prototype of TACTEC allows visitors to interact
with a virtual exhibition of Hieronymus Bosch’s masterpieces. The platform also constitutes itself as a medium
that presents visitors with a pool of possibilities to perform and do visual compositions. Different art principles
and techniques used in the fields of photography, music, literature, and visual arts have been considered as
basic assignments for developmental options. Some of these principles were associated with the logical principles
used in collage, montage and mixing techniques (Pollig & Suhle, 1982; Adamowicz, 1998; Wescher, 1980).
Some concepts such ownership, authorship, reproduction of artwork and the spectator emancipation (Weisstein,
1978; Benjamin, 1992; Benjamin, 2008; Rancière, 2010) also constitute the prototype’s design. Knowing
the concepts listed, it was also considered the dimension of “Art as Experience” by John Dewey (Dewey, 2005)
and some of the arguments and foundations of communication and visual culture (Arnheim, 1990; Rose, 2002;
Freedman, 2003 & Arnheim, 2005). This group of concepts and techniques allowed us to establish the creation
of a materialized model application in an exploratory platform - TACTEC prototype – developed for a multitouch
surface. The adopted methodology was the “development methodology” (Richey & Nelson, 1996; Richey
& Klein, 2005; Richey, Klein & Nelson, 2008). In order to validate the model implemented, usability tests were
conducted at the Center for Computer Graphics (CCG), at the University of Minho, and afterwards its validation
was also executed in a museum context, at the Sociedade Martins Sarmento (SMS) in Guimarães, Portugal. The
testing sessions at the SMS museum created some images posted on the project’s Facebook page, at Transforming
Art and Culture Through Engagement and Construction (TACTEC, 2013).
This application simulates the environment of an art studio (Baudrillard 1994). It allows visitors to go on a journey
through the artworks presented there and it also gives the visitors the possibility to create new and original
images. The development of activities in the canvas results from a free exploratory action, at the level of
the subject’s relation to the available visual elements, basing itself on general principles of learning the arts
through experience (Dewey 2005). This approach moves away the game scenario because it provides visitors
with interaction without rules, boundaries or specific final objectives. Therefore, all visual results are possible
and it depends on the visitor’s activities.
Related Work
The world of museums is changing (Simon, 2010). Institutional structures are opening its doors to technology
and enabling the creation of spaces dedicated to experimentations using the interactive media. Visitors now
have access to game-like applications (Pujol et al., 2012; Ardito, Lanzilotti, Costabile & Desolda, 2013), they are
able to stand before virtual actors (Swartout et al, 2010) and explore the different exhibition content in museums
on multi-touch tables (Ciocca, Olivo & Schettini, 2012; Correia, Mota, Nóbrega, Silva & Almeida, 2010;
Michael et al., 2010). There are several applications developed for tablets and smartphones such as the ones
that we can find at Louvre, Paris (Louvre, 2012), and also projects of augmented reality and other interactive
systems (Alisi, D’Amico, Ferracani, Landucci & Torpei, 2010). The museum opens the doors of its galleries and
its treasures through virtual tours exhibitions, as it can be noticed by several museums that joined “Project Art”
from Google (Google, 2011). The technology settles and the panorama extends to actions of enjoyment, recreational
actions, and information panels enriched by interaction scenarios. Many of the developed solutions are
NODEM 2014 Conference & Expo
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