Augmentation of a Virtual Exhibition of Paintings Through Sonification

In this paper, we will take into consideration a virtual exhibition of paintings and focus on one of the possibilities offered by a virtual approach: the implementation of additional features aiming at the augmentation of users' experience. Specifically, we will propose a framework to sonify paintings by introducing virtual audio sources in the pictures. The reproduction of spatialized sound during the vision of the painting is expected to induce sensory enhancement. Audio materials can be introduced either to reinforce the experience, as for the natural sounds of a landscape, or to deliver new meanings, thus aiming at Gesamtkunstwerk, i.e. an all-embracing art form. After presenting the state of the art about virtual exhibitions and the use of sonification in virtual reality, this paper will introduce a publicly available prototype of sound-augmented experience. The project, implemented in Unity, represents a pilot study to be further developed with a back-end area to let the user configure her/his own exhibition space, showcase selected paintings, and add sound sources in custom positions of the artworks.