Interactivity when speaking about virtual reality refers to the particular relationships established between the digital model and its users. It indicates the possibility that the user participates in the process of information transfer mediated by the computer. A medium is therefore interactive if it allows the user to influence the communicational content or form. There are different levels of interaction: the lowest allows the user simply to choose information; the middle allows the user to create or insert content; the highest makes the virtual environment respond appropriately to the user’s input. Immersion in virtual reality should be correctly understood only in immersive simulations where the user interacts with the environment via all five senses. However, the term usually refers to spatial simulations that are usable only through sight, that is, via screens in which the user has the impression of being able to move freely.
Published in Chapter:
Giving Form to Absence: Experiences in Representation, Communication, and Narration for the Places and Community of Amatrice
Elena Ippoliti (Sapienza University of Rome, Italy), Andrea Casale (Sapienza University of Rome, Italy), Michele Calvano (Sapienza University of Rome, Italy), and Francesca Guadagnoli (Sapienza University of Rome, Italy)
Copyright: © 2019
|Pages: 37
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-5225-6936-7.ch014
Abstract
This chapter is motivated by the possibility of an intelligent use of digital technologies by experimenting with communicational forms and languages to enhance cultural heritage. The experimentation was conducted about a particular case study —the urban space of Amatrice and its community, overturned by the earthquake on 24 August 2016 and the successive aftershocks— with the goal of investigating the opportunities to integrate material and immaterial, tangible and intangible artefacts with reference to the experiences proposed for visitors, the type of individual and collective use, and the digital interfaces/devices and physical supports. The overall goal is to propose various visits, that is, different types of “virtual museums,” investigating in particular the specific contributions that the discipline of representation and the details of its communicational models can contribute to the context of correlations between representation/innovation and technology/communication.