Adolescents in a virtual museum or how to teach about the cultural heritage of other nations

For the contemporary people, the media have become the dominant space. As noted by T. Goban-Klas, just like a fish does not notice water that surrounds it, contemporary humans do not realize that they exist in a world «immersed» in the media [4, p. 42], and most human activities (including education) are assisted by new technologies. Not only do they pose threats that we notice more and more often when analyzing their causes and effects, but also they open up new areas that are conducive to lifelong learning. As teachers, we will bear in mind that young people live in the world of the media and use them constantly every day. We will also realize that it is therefore unwarranted to separate them from the media at school, where they spend most of the day. However, education should be smartly conducive to broadening and deepening information skills (extending well beyond information technology, in which most adolescent learners are fairly fluent), i.e. those that relate to knowledge acquisition from diverse sources, improve evaluation capabilities and enhance practical use of already possessed information [14, p. 50].

In the contemporary world, everything has its equivalent in the cyberspace - public and private institutions, schools, universities and individuals alike make online self-presentation and actively participate in online communities. More and more often, new technologies are also utilized by museums and art galleries all over the world. Even though interaction with art in this way is surely different and incomplete, it can be seen as a certain substitute for direct contact; the notions of «making culture more available» and «education through art» can thus assume new dimensions.

The purpose of the article is to study ways to introduce cultural heritage of other nations to younger generation through virtual contact with art and culture.

The main material of the study. However, to introduce young people to the world of virtual contact with art, teachers wishing to employ this form of introducing students to the world of culture must answer a number of questions, including the following ones: «What is the potential of a medialized encounter between young people and art?», «What strategies should be followed to enable a discourse between the author (sender) and viewer of art?»; «How does the specific participation in the medialized world of art shape the attitudes of «being with art» and socializes to culture?».

Education through art - «open eyes for an open mind».

The idea of opening up a human being to culture through art is not new. However, it can be quite useful in the context of building cultural experience of young people, because «open eyes» make it possible to promote the attitude of an «open mind» [2; 21]. What seems incalculably valuable is the contribution of discussions and experiences on the one hand referring to transformations related to the functioning of young people in the postmodern world [8], and on the other hand drawing one's attention to the opportunities for the development of cognitive, social and emotional processes, created by the reception of art [17]. Contrary to common opinions about young people, they do search for art, need to experience it, respond to it spontaneously, without any assistance from adults. This (peculiar at times) searching concentrates on questions regarding new, frequently challenging situations, moral patterns, situation of the Other in our world [8].

When young people realize the opportunities offered by contact with art, they are more likely to choose those attitudes and values that can encompass the entirety of one's attitude towards oneself, life, other people and the world. The process of shaping an attitude of «open mind» should however be always analyzed in the context of four closely related and mutually complementary elements: (1) the way of perceiving reality, (2) the way of experiencing the inner and outer world, (3) the ways of acquiring knowledge, making it possible to promote the attitude of «open eyes for an open mind», (4) the ways of promoting a creative attitude, manifesting itself through young people's own expression and artistic activity. An analysis of these four elements allows one to notice that contact with art makes young people more sensitive to surrounding objects, their appearance and function, and their perception of the surrounding phenomena often changes as well.

The growing number of visual stimuli makes it absolutely necessary to learn how to use the «visual language», just like we learn how to use other languages. As a result, the discourse on the meaning of these dispositions for contemporary young people living in the world referred to as the «civilization of image» becomes more and more clear.

In the process of visual education, fine arts seem to play a leading role by teaching us how to notice what we often fail to notice ourselves. When highlighting this aspect, Henri Bergson wrote that «The great painters are men who possess a certain vision of things which has or will become the vision of all men. A Corot, a Turner - not to mention others - have seen in nature many an aspect that we did not notice» [20, p. 294-295].

Perception of a work of art is not only about noticing its form and content, but also about discovering its deeper meaning and intended message, a kind of philosophy embedded in it, often hidden under appearances and seemingly irrelevant details. It is not an easy task, because the perception of forms and colors, understanding of the work's nature or its anecdotic aspect requires a young person to be able to look within, to interpret what is seen in the context of certain cultural meanings and also in the context of his/her own sensitivity. The relationship between the cognitive aspect of the «open mind» attitude and its emotional aspect becomes more and more visible. Decades ago E. Souriau, one of the finest French theorists of aesthetics, emphasized that a work of art in all aspects of its existence manifests itself as a means of enriching and deepening knowledge [18]. He simultaneously remarked that it is not only about deepening, or broadening of already possessed knowledge, but rather about developing new hobbies, research passions, inquisitive thinking, analyzing various dimensions of reality in order to understand it.

Thus, the «open mind» is also conducive for discovering one's own individuality and mental life, as well as for noticing that the outer reality can be seen and interpreted in a number of ways. What follows is understanding of other people and the need to interact with them. Thus, what is important is not only the perception of the reflected world (or the world created by an artist in his/her work), but also constant acquisition and broadening of young people's experiences and development of their imagination.

Cultural education and art - a medialized dimension of cultural literacy.

An alternative for direct encounters with art, which can additionally provide certain benefits of the practical experience without the related problems connected for instance with financing the cost of travel allowing young people to see the cultural heritage «locked up» in museums all over the world, takes the form of printed, broadcasted and electronic media formats. Videotapes, films, laser discs have the advantage of time- independence, low hardware requirements and low cost in general.

Computers open up new opportunities in the process of discovering art. They also create new paths for teachers adapting presentations to their own and their students' needs. Importantly, during such «encounters with art» students must not be left to themselves in the internet. Such an approach does not yield the results expected by learners and their teachers, because beginners can frequently feel frustrated and give up since they are unable to overcome the multiple challenges associated with such models of activity. In their turn, more advanced students do not go beyond the superficial «netsurfing» [Warschauer, 2001, p. 210].

Although various studies confirm the importance of this form of perceiving art and making learning possible through indirect experience of reality, the number of teachers actually using the opportunity to visit a virtual museum is still low. On the other hand, Fisher's study shows that contrary to teachers' declaration on the use of field trips (including visits to museums) and their positive opinions about such trips' role in the learning process, the actual prevalence of field trips is decreasing - fewer and fewer students surveyed by Fisher have experience of this kind 3, p. 75- 96].

Thus, a virtual tour becomes an important element of contemporary cultural education, as it allows the teacher to transmit images and sounds from a distant location to the classroom, using a computer and a projector. Many different options exist and the choice depends on the inventiveness of teachers and students.

Available types of virtual visits include: an internet tour with a guide who organizes collections of preliminarily classified and thematically grouped websites forming a systematized material for teachers, immediately accessible online. This technique uses countless virtual tours offered online for instance by museums.

Virtual tours of this kind take students to specific, teacher-approved portals and portal subpages and simultaneously help «navigate» students through the net. Students can visit a dozen of other sites dedicated to the same topic, thus being able to learn from many different sources [15].

Virtual tours are free of charge, but by purchasing software for their generation the teacher can adapt text and add or remove tour stops.

In this way one can for instance visit museums from all over the world. Virtual tours through display halls constitute an easily discernible trend in today's museum industry. It is also a comfortable solution for those who for various reasons cannot visit an interesting place. In addition, there are no time limitations here. A museum can be visited both during the day and at night [10].

Museums can also be visited using a Street View-based solution. Moreover, Google team has developed a special vehicle (known as a «trolley») that takes panoramic pictures inside selected galleries. The user can visit 385 museum spaces, moving smoothly from one place to another or jumping directly to the desired location. Access to gallery interiors can also be obtained via Street View in Google Maps.

Users can also use a function known as Create an Artwork Collection. In this way they can share their collections with friends or other web users, or post comments about paintings. It needs to be admitted that Google has just made another step in popularizing the cultural heritage of humanity, but teachers need to make the next one in order to properly use these opportunities for making young people interested in a given culture, thus helping them understand messages as well as signs and symbols unique to the culture in question.

Young people in virtual museums - tradition meets modernity. Guggenheim Virtual Museum and Google Art Project.

The main differentiating factor of virtual museums is that they allow young people to interact with creative art. Your World. Your Imagination, i.e. the slogan used in the virtual world of the Second Life, seems to have a similar dimension here, although this dimension is connected with the formation of a direct relation between the work that speaks to the viewer in its own way and the viewer who is free to interpret it on the basis of his/her perception of the work and his/her emotions linked to it.

A virtual museum is a digital entity operating on the basis of real museum galleries. Its purpose is to supplement or expand their offer (reality) or to make it more attractive by means of personalization, enabling interaction with museum exhibits and the richness of its content. Virtual museums can operate jointly with their real-life counterparts or independently of them, still maintaining the status awarded by the International Council of Museums (ICOM). In keeping with ICOM's mission dedicated to the real museum, the virtual museum must also be accessible to visitors.

Just like in the case of traditional museums, their virtual equivalents can be designed to showcase specific objects (e.g. Museum of Art, Museum of Natural History) or can consist of new exhibitions created from scratch (similar to exhibitions in a Museum or Science Center). In addition, a virtual museum can denote the offerings of traditional museums made available on smartphones or websites (e.g. displaying digital versions of their collections, exhibitions or net art, digital art, or virtual reality). Very often when talking about museums we combine them with other cultural institutions. However, museums are completely separated from their sister institutions, such as libraries or archives. Virtual museums are usually (but not always) made available to the viewer in an electronic form, e.g. when talking about online museums, hyper-museums, digital museums, cyber-museums or web museums.

In 1992, when the internet was not as popular as today, the first Virtual Museum was published by Apple Computer in the form of a software on a CD-ROM. The Virtual Museum was offered free of charge to over a thousand schools, universities and museums all over the world. It was an interactive electronic museum where visitors could move from a room to a room and pick an exhibit to study it in depth. Exhibits in this museum were educational and came from such disciplines as medicine, plant growth, the environment and the outer space. To facilitate the user's interaction with the software, a new navigation method was developed, using prerendering of a 3D space and interaction with objects present in it (so-called «virtual navigation»). Virtual navigation used real-time video decompression for displaying and interacting with a high-quality computer animation. In addition, representations of 3D objects were used in animated sequences, thus making it possible to pick up objects, cause them to move in a 3D space, play digital videos or audio tracks. The software was designed to showcase new techniques in computer graphics, paying particular attention to the capabilities of QuickTime, back then still in its beta version.

In the following years, the growing computing power, better performance of graphic processors, introduction of 3D programs and programming languages such as VRML or Shockwave 3D all made it possible to develop a quasi-real experience of virtual space, finally transcending the idea that a virtual museum should look like its real-life equivalent.

A well known example was «Guggenheim Virtual Museum» created in 1999 by Asymptote Architecture and commissioned by the Guggenheim Foundation. The purpose of the project was to create a completely new, threedimensional, digital organism that could be discovered by visitors in real time by means of a VRLM-based interface and that would not imitate the building created by Frank L. Wright in any way. Creation of a museum existing only in the cyberspace was an ambitious idea: such a museum, instead of presenting digital equivalents of original works of art, can become a center for a new art form, cyber art created, stored and presented exclusively by means of digital devices.

Google Art Project is a compilation of high- definition online imagery from museums or art galleries from all over the world. It is also a virtual tour through galleries where a given work of art is physically present. Launched in 2011 by Google, the project features works of art from Tate Gallery, Metropolitan Museum of Art, or Uffizi Gallery. The Google Art Project website allows users to virtually visit partner museum galleries, read about the works or create their own virtual art collections. The «Guide» - one of the project's features - uses Street View technology. Many works of art are presented in the form of high quality images, and each partner museum had selected one item from its collection that was subsequently photographed and posted online as a gigapixel image (an image consisting of over one billion pixels).

The tool called Virtual Tour allows each user to virtually enter a gallery of each partner museum using the same controls as in Google Street View or by clicking the intended location in the gallery's plan.

In the Gallery View each user can enlarge every individual work of art in order to display a more detailed view. While admiring the paintings, the user can access information about their physical properties (e.g. size, material, author). Partner museums can provide captions describing the works, their history or authors. Using such services as Google Scholar or YouTube, Google provides links with additional sources of information about a given piece or the gallery it comes from.

The Create an Artwork Collection function allows users to create their own virtual exhibition using any number of available works of art and then share it on social media.

The newest edition of Google Art Project offers an updated search tool. Now users can easily find a piece they are looking for by filtering the results by the artist, museum, type of art work, date and country. Search results are displayed in the form of a slide show, thus allowing users to browse various art collections searching for pieces matching their interests.

A few partner museums offer a tour or a welcome video to their galleries. In this way users can take a virtual walk through the museum and listen to an audio guide accompanying selected works. Michelle Obama recorded a welcome video for the White House, and Holocaust History

Museum Yad Vashem launched a YouTube channel featuring 400 hours of original recordings from the court trial of Adolf Eichmann. Users can access the channel via the museum's gallery at Google Art Project.

Google Art Project contains a series of tools and educational resources for teachers and learners, such as educational videos available on a YouTube channel and embedded on the project's website, a quiz where users must match a painting with a specific artistic style, or find a symbol in a painting that represents an accompanying story/tale. Another interesting element is «What's next», a page containing a list of resources and links to various timelines of art history [1].

Another interesting example of virtualization of the cultural heritage is the Museum With No Frontiers (www.museumwnf.org). Established in 2005, it is a genuine museum with collections, exhibitions and a database. It is a result of international cooperation between museums and cultural heritage organizations, based on the methodology of the Museum With No Frontiers. Thus far, 3 thematic museums have been opened, including Discover Islamic Art [1]. The database of Discover Islamic Art contains 2,113 objects and monuments from 22 countries and 19 virtual exhibitions, while the database of Discover Baroque Art has 588 objects and monuments from 7 countries and 9 virtual exhibitions.

Conclusions and prospects for future research directions. Neil Postman, the author of the famous «Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology» (1995) strongly criticized those aspects of the development of civilization that highlight one-sided and uncontrolled development of technology without paying attention to the need for defending its cultural and civilizational values. In this context, every proposal that allows one to use the constantly changing technology to promote the ideas of humanistic education seems to be priceless. Being an element of those ideas, art can significantly contribute to enriching the personal dimension of knowledge and experiences. Art gives a shape both to our observations and to our thoughts and emotions.

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