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The project, developed by a team of Una Quantum, consists of the digital renovation of the Archaeological Civic Museum of the Municipality of Collelongo (AQ) through the realisation of its website. The action plan aimed to highlight the essential role of open software and open workflow in the field of cultural heritage research and management, focusing on the use of programmes for 3D reconstruction, the creation of virtual tours and GIS (geographical information system) and WebGIS software (LeafletJS V.1.7.1). The website is structured using a modern and dynamic user-friendly interface which is subdivided into three main sections: the virtual tour, the online catalogue and web maps.

Extended Reality (XR) technology represents an innovative tool to address the challenges of the present, as it allows for experimentation with new solutions in terms of content creation and its fruition by different types of users. The potential to modulate the experience based on the target audience’s needs and the project’s objectives makes XR suitable for creating new accessibility solutions. The “Includiamoci” project was carried out with the aim of creating workshops on social inclusion through the combination of art and technology. Specifically, the experimentation involved ten young people between the ages of 28 and 50, with cognitive disabilities, who participated in Extended Reality workshops and Art Therapy workshops. In the course of these activities, the outputs obtained were two: a virtual museum, populated by the participants’ works, and a digital set design for a theatrical performance. Through two tests, one on user experience (UX) and one on the degree of well-being, the effectiveness of the entire project was evaluated. In conclusion, the project demonstrated how the adopted solutions were appropriate to the objectives, increasing our knowledge of UX for a target audience with specific user needs and using XR in the context of social inclusion.

The use of information technology in the field of cultural heritage makes it possible to involve more and more people in the promotion of cultural heritage, fostering social, cultural, economic and community growth. This work stems from the interest in using Virtual Reality (VR) in the field of cultural heritage, creating a tour of the city of Bari that tells its evolution over the years. To this end, a low-cost VR360 application has been developed which, by means of a cardboard, allows the user to experience a virtual journey through time. It tells the story of the city, focusing on its urban expansion and the evolution of its architectural styles, influenced by various dominations over the centuries, up to the current state. The virtual environment was created from spherical images of the city, captured through 360° cameras and enriched with various types of information content. The user experience was assessed by means of a questionnaire derived from previous work that was generalised and adapted to the considered scenario: the results showed a very good level of satisfaction, usability, engagement, immersion and sense of presence; the highest score was obtained for the visual quality of the images of the virtual environment.

Video mapping is defined as a particular form of augmented reality capable of transforming any surface, flat or irregular, into a dynamic surface capable of enriching human sensory perception. Video mapping projections can become a medium to link the historical facts and the location by means of the valorisation of the monument and narration of its story through images and sounds. This paper aims to show how video mapping, beyond its purely technological aspect, can be linked to cultural heritage and represents a tool capable of becoming a mediator of culture, tradition, and legends. It is used to pass on and tell the legend of the foundation of the present Cathedral of Maria Santissima della Madia in Monopoli through the animation of the pictorial cycle by Nicolò Maria Signorile preserved in the church.

In this work, the perception of affordances was analysed in terms of cognitive neuroscience during an interactive experience in a virtual reality environment. In particular, we chose a virtual reality scenario based on the Leap Motion controller: this sensor device captures the movements of the user’s hand and fingers, which are reproduced on a computer screen by the proper software applications. For our experiment, we employed a sample of 10 subjects matched by age and sex and chosen among university students. The subjects took part in motor imagery training and immersive affordance condition (a virtual training with Leap Motion and a haptic training with real objects). After each training sessions the subject performed a recognition task, in order to investigate event-related potential (ERP) components. The results revealed significant differences in the attentional components during the Leap Motion training. During Leap Motion session, latencies increased in the occipital lobes, which are entrusted to visual sensory; in contrast, latencies decreased in the frontal lobe, where the brain is mainly activated for attention and action planning.