A. Camurri, C. Costa, and G. Volpe (Eds.): INTETAIN 2011, LNICST 78, pp. 103–112, 2012. © Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering 2012 As Wave Impels a Wave Active Experience of Cultural Heritage and Artistic Content Francesca Cavallero, Antonio Camurri, Corrado Canepa, Nicola Ferrari, Barbara Mazzarino, and Gualtiero Volpe Casa Paganini – InfoMus, Piazza Santa Maria in Passione, 34, Genova Università degli Studi di Genova {cavallero,toni,corrado,bunny,volpe}@infomus.org Abstract. This paper presents the interactive installation “Come un’Onda pre- muta da un’Onda” (“As Wave impels a Wave”, a citation from Ovidio’s “Me- tamorphoses” as a metaphor of time). The installation, presented in its early version at the Festival della Scienza 2009, introduces visitors to the rich history and artistic content of a monumental building: a virtual walk through the time. The core idea is to support an active experience based on novel paradigms of interaction and narration. The active experience is grounded on an information- al environment characterized by an invisible “sound scent” map. The research is partially supported by the EU FP7 ICT I-SEARCH project. Keywords: active experience of cultural and artistic content, multimodal audi- ovisual content search, Mixed Reality, museum ecology. 1 The Evolution of Museum Experience The qualitative enhancement of a visit experience, according to the user behavior, is very important in a museographic context: for example, a dynamic control of lighting may influence the visitors flow, raise or lower the attention on specific exhibits, as well as the degrees and effectiveness of interactivity of an exhibit. The immersiveness can influence the understanding of a cultural message [1]. New technologies in the mu- seums can be used to enhance the social interaction. Science centers and in general re- search on “infotainment” [2] contributed to a novel vision of “user experience”: e.g, the San Francisco Exploratorium APE-exhibits (for Active Prolonged Engagement) [3]. The aim is, in our case, to create novel adaptive cultural experiences to facilitate an active fruition of cultural heritage. We propose a mixed reality installation based on non-intrusive technology (without wearable devices) to enable an “explorative dis- covery” of a monumental site: the Casa Paganini building. The creation of a strong sense of presence [4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9] in the mixed reality environment enhances a more conscious sense of the place in the user: the ancient building “talks” with a new voice.