Immersive Empathy in Digital Music Listening: Ideas and Sustainable Paths for Developing Auditory Experiences in Museums

Abstract

With the development of modern technologies, museums have been engaged in the competition for novel sensory resources. Taking into consideration the main body of visitors, their experiential representation has gradually become the focal point of the museums. However, at present, the museum display is limited to visual effect. The scientific and technological methods proposed by existing research have not really formed a deep cultural memory of historical stories, and the sustainable development paths of museums need to be further optimized. Thus, the purpose of this study is to explore the conception and path of museum auditory experience development, and to verify the existing patterns of empathy in museum auditory experience development. We set up digital music vocalization tools in the museum to temporarily create the immersion experience for digital music. In this scenario, we could meticulously observe the tourists’ experience, with the joint effect of active cognitive environment and environment-driven emotion. We also conducted a timely survey on the cognition, emotion, and experience of the observation subjects after the experiment. Last, empirical methods has been used to analyze the role of immersive empathy in enhancing visitors’ experience, in order to gain insights into visitors’ perception and cognition of the museum, integrating with the digital music. After analyzing the collected data, this study found that cognitive empathy has a significant positive impact on visitors’ experience. It indicated that for the historical stories presentation, the properly integration of museum and digital can help tourists deeply understand the historical events, which could restore the cultural connotation conveyed by the designer. Emotional empathy also has a significant positive impact on visitors’ experience. It showed that that the rendering of digital music will motivate visitors’ emotional fluctuation, during their visit to the museum. And through the combination of audio-visual effects, the constructed spatial perception, allowing visitors to enjoy immersive experience. This study proposed a vision for the development of auditory experiences in museums, based on both cognitively active immersion and emotionally passive immersion of visitors. We also suggested that in the new era, museums need to reform with voice, to timely adjust and innovate their way to exhibit cultural relics, with the hierarchical design of audiovisual integration to construct a more appealing scene and atmosphere.