The Tang Xianzu Memorial Hall in Fuzhou is a comprehensive cultural venue built to commemorate Tang Xianzu, one of the world’s hundred great cultural figures and a master of Ming‑dynasty drama in China. It is also one of Jiangxi Province’s ten major memorial halls dedicated to historical luminaries.

Appreciation of a Fine Article | Methods for Shaping and Approaches to Constructing Emotional Affordances in Virtual Museums

Author:

Source:

Tang Xianzu Memorial Hall Official Account

Time:

2024-02-03

Wellcome Collection at the Science Museum, London

The Emotional Affordances of Virtual Museums: A Case Study of the London Science Museum’s Online Resource “Objects and Stories”

Jiang Han

【 Abstract 】 Emotional experience in virtual museums has long been an overlooked topic in museum studies. This paper adopts a phenomenological perspective to examine the relationship between virtual museum experiences and emotional affordances. Drawing on a case study of the London Science Museum’s “Objects and Stories” online resource series, the research demonstrates that sensory‑based engagement and shifts in perspective are two key mechanisms for generating emotional affordances.

【 Keywords 】 Virtual museum; affect; affordance

I. Introduction

With the “sensory turn” in museum studies in recent years, there has been a growing body of discourse on sensory engagement in museum experiences. In the process by which visitors encounter “objects,” unconscious affects emerge. (affect), conscious emotions (emotion), and feelings are generally regarded as essential dimensions of experience. Audience research conducted in physical museums has demonstrated that intense emotional arousal within the environment can exert positive effects on visitors’ cognition, attitudes, and behaviors. Visitors engage with museum spaces through their bodily perceptions, giving rise to personalized emotional expressions. However, most studies have focused solely on the relationship between emotional elements and multimedia such as sound, light, and electricity, paying scant attention to how these elements interact with the intrinsic qualities of the objects themselves and with the interpretive tools used to present them—factors that shape the ways museum narratives captivate and engage audiences. Meanwhile, virtual museums are often viewed merely as information‑dissemination platforms that extend the boundaries of museum institutions, with their emotional mechanisms frequently overlooked.

This paper examines how materiality and narrative strategies in virtual museums constitute emotional affordances that can be experienced. Approaching the museum experience from a phenomenological perspective and grounded in affect theory, it analyzes the London Science Museum’s online resources “Surgery” and “Understanding the Body.” The study elucidates two mechanisms through which museums shape emotional affordances—engagement with sensory modalities and shifts in perspective—and explores how these affordances offer virtual museum audiences pathways for meaning-making.

II. Theoretical Framework

(1) The Sensory Experience of “Things”

The foundation of the museum experience lies in the perceptual interplay between humans and the material properties of objects. An object’s attributes influence visitors by triggering associations that engage perception, emotion, sensation, cognition, and memory. This impact both shapes the visitor’s experience and becomes an integral part of the object’s materiality. Visitors engage with an object through multiple senses, and its properties enable them to encounter both its qualitative characteristics—such as color, texture, shape, scent, and sound—and its structural features—such as height, weight, and dimension. Sensory perception serves as the conduit through which humans and objects connect. Modalities like vision and smell help forge a close bond between visitors and the attributes of the objects they encounter. Visitors are the agents who perceive and interpret objects, while objects, in turn, are perceived and interpreted; the two depend on one another, operating in tandem to constitute a holistic experience. Within this dynamic, museums can shape the experience by guiding how visitors perceive objects and by highlighting specific attributes of those objects.

(II) The Concept of the Virtual Museum

A virtual museum is a digital entity that complements, enhances, and amplifies the characteristics of its physical counterpart by emphasizing personalization, interactivity, user experience, and rich content. Web pages serve as a crucial foundation for the existence of virtual museums, embedding images, text, collection data, and more into viewers’ daily lives via personal electronic devices. Drawing on visual media, web interfaces not only replicate the exhibition functions of physical museums but also support self-directed activities—such as Google Street View, mobile guided tours, online exhibitions, and social-media interactions—by organizing diverse digital formats. Compared with experiences in physical museum settings, these digital offerings are more “action‑oriented and exploratory.”

In most cases, virtual museums employ an object‑centric, information‑rich approach to interpreting their exhibits. The objects displayed in virtual museums exhibit considerable fluidity within the user’s personal environment; accordingly, many scholars argue that they should not be viewed merely as substitutes for physical artifacts, but rather as relatively autonomous digital entities worthy of independent examination. Their material properties are manifested in the experiential opportunities offered by the virtual museum’s narrative design—such as the ability to observe from multiple perspectives, manipulate the objects, and engage with audiovisual effects. These immediately perceptible attributes, together with textual information requiring deeper interpretation, coalesce to form the content of digital storytelling, in which multi‑layered sensory and emotional mechanisms serve as indispensable elements for forging connections between objects and audiences.

(3) Emotional Affordance

To explore how materiality and narrative modes create opportunities for perceptual experience, it is necessary to draw on phenomenology and psychology as tools for elucidating the relationship between the body and its environment. This study focuses on two dimensions—affect and emotion—each serving as a basis for examining embodied and conscious experience, and collectively refers to the set of conditions that make such experiences possible as “emotional affordances.”

1. Emotional arousal, intensity, emotion

Affect is the process by which the body and an object establish a connection or resonance through contact. It embodies the experience of a sensory stimulus, expressed bodily but not fully captured by consciousness or language; the impact of this experience is termed “intensity.” The perceptible qualities of objects serve as the source of this intensity. Whether material or digital, objects radiate intensity through their sensory forms, thereby forging a bond with human beings. While humans cannot fully articulate intensity through language, when they anticipate narrative continuity in their lived experiences, they can discern and describe their deeper responses—manifesting spontaneous reactions to objects through deliberate, conscious actions.

Unlike nonverbal affect, emotions can be consciously recognized and articulated by the individual. When the body receives a certain intensity during an affective experience and imbues it with meaning, emotion emerges. The phenomenologist Massumi terms this process “qualification,” whereby sociolinguistic vocabulary is deployed to mark intensity and is projected through the audience’s psychological and bodily responses. The intensity originating from a given source does not bear a direct logical connection to its content. For instance, moving images on screen elicit immediate affective responses in viewers through their duration, color, and other perceptible attributes—qualities that radiate intensity directly into the body. When off‑screen narration offers interpretation, sociolinguistic meanings are superimposed onto the original image. In this way, intensity is transformed into emotional expression through qualification, leading viewers to perceive the image as “pleasing” or “joyful.”

2. Empathy as an Emotional State

In museum studies, much research on emotion focuses on how to cultivate empathy—or emotional resonance—with history. A common approach to eliciting empathy is perspective taking. When guided by an appropriate narrative framework, audiences can be enabled to imagine themselves in another person’s situation and to understand events from that individual’s point of view. Empathy is a broad category of other‑oriented emotions, encompassing feelings such as sympathy and compassion. It lies at the heart of museum institutions’ values, helping visitors connect with others’ stories and fostering a deeper understanding of alternative ways of life. This goal can be achieved by arousing “empathetic concern”—that is, by prompting an emotional response to another’s circumstances. Two commonly employed narrative strategies for facilitating perspective taking—imagining others and imagining oneself—can help foster this emotional state.

Adopting the perspective of others means, in storytelling, encouraging an awareness of others’ circumstances and their resulting implications, helping audiences imagine what it is like to be in someone else’s shoes. It employs a narrative mode that directs attention toward another’s viewpoint; at the same time, the narrative also reminds the empathizer of the distinction between themselves and the “imagined other.”

The imaginative self‑perspective invites individuals to consider how they would think, feel, and act in a given situation. Employing this narrative stance lays the groundwork for understanding others’ suffering and predicaments, guiding empathizers to internalize others’ emotions as their own. This perspective is more likely to be effective when the empathizer shares similar experiences with the imagined other; otherwise, it can be more challenging to imagine another person’s thoughts and feelings.

Both perspectives emphasize taking others’ well-being into account in specific contexts. This consideration implies that empathizers assign value judgments to others’ circumstances: events perceived as bringing pleasure to others are attributed positive value, while those that cause others pain, sadness, or danger are assigned negative value.

3. Availability

“Affordance,” introduced by psychologist James J. Gibson, refers to the properties of objects, environments, or media that are perceived by an observer as being available for use. These affordances remain invariant even when the observer’s needs change. While akin to the concept of object properties, affordance emphasizes the relationship between the observer and the observed—it denotes a characteristic of the environment that both supports the observer’s perceptual activity and sustains the environment’s own existence.

In museums, the radiation intensity of objects or specific environments, along with the narrative elements that shape emotional responses in their surroundings, can be attributed to “affective affordance.” Given the inherent openness of virtual museum websites, directly measuring the embodied impact of affordances on visitors is challenging; nevertheless, one can still examine, from the perspective of curatorial intent, the perceptible characteristics of digital storytelling as it orchestrates the arrangement of objects, thereby delineating several forms of affective affordance.

III. Research Methodology

(1) Case Selection

This paper employs a case-study approach to analyze the emotional affordances of virtual museums. In selecting cases, we adhered to the following criteria, which align with both virtual museum contexts and affect theory:

1. Resources in the virtual museum can be accessed via web browsers;

2. The content of a virtual museum encompasses diverse perceptual attributes and emotional narratives.

The website of the Science Museum in London features a wealth of virtual museum content. Among its offerings, the “Objects and Stories” resource organizes collection information around various themes. The “Stories” series within this resource is structured by topic, covering medicine, chemistry, and other scientific disciplines. This study focuses on two closely related series—“Surgery” and “Understanding the Body”—for in-depth analysis.

(II) Research Process

The research data were primarily drawn from the “Surgery” and “Understanding the Body” webpages, as well as from semi-structured interviews conducted with editors in the Science Museum’s Digital Department. The core dataset encompasses perceptual elements—such as online interactive features, textual information, images, and video—presented across these two resources. The interviews focused on themes including the target audience, methods for presenting digital artifacts, and anticipated impacts on visitors; content related to the webpage components was distilled into a second data set. Finally, the second data set was coded and compared with the first to validate, interpret, and refine the findings of the thematic analysis.

(3) Data Analysis

This study categorizes emotional affordance into two components: affective morphology and qualitative affective elements. To identify the themes associated with these components, the analysis was conducted based on the following research questions:

1. In “Surgical Procedure” and “Understanding the Body,” what type of perceptual element can convey intensity?

Appreciation of a Fine Essay | A “Cool” Reflection on the Museum’s “Hot” Appeal

Notice | 2024 New Year’s Day Opening Schedule for the Tang Xianzu Memorial Hall in Fuzhou City

Appreciation of a Fine Essay | A “Cool” Reflection on the Museum’s “Hot” Appeal

Notice | 2024 New Year’s Day Opening Schedule for the Tang Xianzu Memorial Hall in Fuzhou City

Fuzhou Tang Xianzu Memorial Hall (Fuzhou Tang Xianzu Culture and Arts Center)

WeChat Official Account

WeChat Service Account

TikTok account

Cultural Relics AI Knowledge Base

Smart AI voice narration

Panoramic VR

Business license

Gan Public Security Bureau Filing No. 36100202000343