"Just Talking about Art" - Creating Virtual Storytelling Experiences in Mixed Reality

This paper reports on interdisciplinary findings and first results of the ongoing EU-funded R&D project “art-E-fact”. Within the project, a generic platform for building a particular genre of Mixed Reality interactive storytelling experiences is under development. It enables artists to script interactive dialogues for multiple virtual characters and a human participant, as well as to freely design any interaction devices and modalities. The interactive play “Just talking about art” will be illustrated as an example. With an edutainment motivation, it introduces virtual characters positioned next to real art pieces in an exhibition. These characters discuss art, while prompting visitors for their opinions and questions. They also provide entertainment by enacting personal conflicts. The content and design issues of the play will be shown as one representative example of what can be built with the art-E-fact platform. The main technical components for the direction of interactive dialogues are explained, and authoring issues are pointed out.