Mixed Reality: the frontier of cultural education

Abstract

This article explores the educational potential of Mixed Reality (MR), and the pedagogical value of immersive virtual technologies in cultural education. Immersive universes represent a powerful educational frontier for the art world. They are learning tools with the potential to revolutionize artistic dissemination, providing it with an unprecedented experiential value. Nowadays, our cognitive systems perceive the digital dimension as part of our alphabet. The mathematical language that encodes computer vision, and defines the logic and genetics of digital images, can be seen as a physiological connection between the individual’s mind and the virtual landscapes in which he navigates. The flow through which the imagination builds worlds that we can inhabit, and in which we can learn. MR - located in the middle of the spectrum between VR and AR - offers a seamless fusion of real and virtual. A world in which computer graphic images are hybridized into reality, surrounding objects and being animated by the individual. This technology, on which the startup Magic Leap is working, opens art education to a new world where the public can dive into the panorama of art, experiencing a real sensory dialogue between reality and imagination, building new frontiers of emotion and knowledge. This article offers an overview of the possible intersections between this technology and museum education, with a focus on the pedagogical value that immersive universes have to the cognitive systems of digital natives.