Realtà Aumentata: enunciazioni digitali in museo

Abstract

Ever since Benveniste outlined a modern theoretical framework for enunciation, this concept has been a central topic in semiotic studies. The development of new digital technologies provides the analysis with new items that stimulate further theoretical reflection, especially in the field of visual semiotics. Unlike Virtual Reality (VR), in the regime of Augmented Reality (AR) the real world is not substituted with a virtual one: the real world, indeed, is not denied, but is integrated with additional information (texts, images, etc.) that can be received through wearable technologies (WT). Smart glasses are one of those latter, that function as user’s prosthesis in the experience of the world. In a museum, the visitors can keep on looking the space surrounding them through the lenses of smart glasses, but this produces significant changes in the perception of both the place and the objects within it. The aesthetic experience of the museum is characterized by the simultaneous presence of “opacity” and “transparency”. The case study proposed in this paper regards Palazzo Poggi Museum in Bologna, where in 2019 ARtGlass® have been implemented in an AR itinerary. The analysis leads to reflect on the devices of illusive interaction into immersive digital environments, and on how they influence both the visitor’s movements into the space and the experience of the exhibited objects.