Body and Mind in Virtual Dark Tourism Experiences and Artwork Creations: Embodied Cognition Reaction Perspectives

VR can create an immersive multisensory environment by augmenting digital human senses, creating any sensations in the virtual environment [10, 14]. Sensory stimuli can facilitate individuals to create perceptions through cognitions and affections, enhancing user experiences in an immersive environment [10, 15]. When a stimulus impinges on the receptor cells of sensory organs, sensations aid in the perception of sensory stimuli [6]. The sensory experiences stimulated in the virtual environment can influence individuals’ perceptions, such as human minds, mental imagery, or cognitive imagination.

Moreover, users can construct their storylines and imaginations while exploring virtual environments depicting places they have never been. A content stimulus like a narrative enables users to build original stories based on their experiences [15]. Content can transports people to another world and a transported individual can have emotional responses in which users are involved and interact [15, 16].

Dark tourism is emotionally laden tourism that evokes tourist negative emotions [2] and simultaneously proceeds the cognitive experience [1]. Negative emotions, such as fear, sadness, or sorrow can influence psychological state of tourists, as described by embodied cognition theory [8, 9, 11]. This theory describes how people respond cognitively, affectively, and physically to an environment and some sensory stimuli. Cognitive processes necessitates comprehending their intimate relationship to the motor surfaces that may generate action and the sensory surfaces that offer sensory signals about the world. The embodiment implies the information processing, facilitating connection between cognitive processing and the sensorimotor systems happen [17, 18]. Experience in dark tourism can help tourists process information by activating sensory information processing, which is gained through sensations from predominant visual stimuli [2, 3, 11, 14]. Simply having people visualize physiological sensations and read verbal expressions associated with sensory-based metaphors can elicit embodied cognitive reactions [18], resulting in cognitive, affective, and behavioral states [7].

Art creation involves cognitive and affective, by involving cognitive intervention, critical engagement, positive challenge, physical and mental development [12, 13]. Further, art is a conduit for externalizing our inner cognitions, emotional states, and sensory engagements [12, 13]. The creative process and the resultant artistic product serve as conduits for innovation, fostering avenues for introspection and sociocultural influence [19]. Historical movements within the realm of art have consistently wielded significant agency in effecting shifts within the social fabric, with artistic endeavors frequently catalyzing transformative cognitive changes and engendering alterations in ideological inclinations. Creating artwork establishes a seamless synergy between the human apparatus (psychomotor faculties), mental, and affective through an interactive fusion of artistic elements and materials [13, 19]. However, creating artwork transcends just the chemistry between the body and mind. The process encompasses a plethora of multi-interactions with visual elements and materials. In other words, the interaction of artists with the features and materials significantly influences our aesthetic perception of the artwork, contributing to the establishment of the brain’s state of consciousness [19, 20]. Visual elements and art materials becomes a vital conduit for an aesthetic analysis and appreciations of an artwork. Predominant visual stimuli can provide a connection between body and mind in the art creation through sensorial engagement.

Combining dark tourism and art creation can provide this study with an integrative body and mind through virtual dark tourism experiences. Figure 1 shows our conceptual framework, which we observe in this study. This framework posits experiencing virtual dark tourism through different stimuli triggers different sensations, and an individual can create any perception. The source, such as embodied experience, can generate more abstract outcomes, often from the concrete sensory domain [18]. This sensory information processing might be enhanced with other sensory channels. Sensory information processing can start sensorimotor enactivism [17], a sensorimotor activity that can explain the perceptual experience. Individuals create any possible perception to understand the relationship in the sensory experience and perceptions.

This study employs a qualitative vignette experiment design [21] as a direction to bridge the quantitative experiment and qualitative research method. Qualitative Vignette experiment design denotes vignettes used in qualitative semistructured interviews to introduce experimentally controlled variety in information and can be considered a mixed method. This study started with creating a virtual tour as an experimental tool. We use one of the dark tourism sites in Indonesia, “Museum Sisa Hartaku” (English: Museum of the Rest of My Treasure). This museum is a museum to remember the volcanic eruption in Indonesia in 2010 with 400 casualties and mass evacuations. Figure 2 shows the screenshot of two scenes of Museum Sisa Hartaku.

Employing a vignette experiment design enables researchers to conduct experimental design and provide context-rich data with a mixed-method approach to understanding causal relationships [21]. In the first stage, each participant provided a written reflection on their virtual dark tourism encounters. Participants then create an abstract clay model representing their virtual tour experience, uploading three pictures of the artwork and writing an art appreciation. Table 1 shows the example of datasets. Then, the collected data underwent deductive content analysis [22], comprising reflections, artworks, and appreciations which prioritized the identification of patterns and themes [22], encompassing both negative and positive expressions of sentiment.

Participants in this group elicited various emotions, most telling the excitement of the virtual tour. They observed the museum collections virtually and used their artistic background to analyze the museum collections. For instance, R4 declared, “In the Virtual Tour at Sisa Hartaku, I saw kinds of works made in different mediums.” They just reacted naturally and expressed positive emotions, as written by R12 as follows: “I saw a lot of artworks such as ceramics, wall hanging, painting works, am really happy to go through this tour.” We also found a misinterpretation of the meaning of virtual tour, as declared by R5, “Please, what I experienced was the old artworks.” R5 understands that the artwork is a part of old collections. Some participants also have negative emotions by feeling dark and scared, as stated by R29, “It was a little bit scary and interesting,” and R23, “And felt emotional about how the room is very dark.”

Respondents of the second group felt the excitement of the virtual tour and wondered about the museum’s creation. R31 stated, “I was so excited to experience this tour as my first time seeing something like this.” Narratives can evoke some negative emotions, such as sorrow. R6 reflected, “I felt emotional watching these scenes because the place was dark. I have never seen broken arranged pots, old ragged bags, some cracked buildings with bushy areas.” They also reflected on the event of the disaster and understood the story behind the Museum Sisa Hartaku. Based on their understanding and reflection, they can show empathy for the victims.

Audio can evoke more negative emotions, such as sadness, worry, and potty, as stated by most participants. R8 reflected, “The experience I had in this video is very emotional because I was picturing the incident in my mind.”, whereas R18 said, “I have not experienced anything like this one, but this museum exploitation with the sound made me kind of emotional, but I wanted to try without the sound.” Participants observed that the several museum collections can make them feel emotionally involved, enhanced by the auditory stimuli. From the museum collections, participants learned about the museum, while auditory stimuli evoked negative emotions. R9 wrote in the reflection, “I observed many items that depicted the way the people live their lives,… they used before the disaster. I felt so emotional during the observation of the museum.”

Participants harnessed artistic talents within this group to decode virtual tour visuals, yielding artworks that mirrored their experiences. Absent narrative or sound, they instinctively formed objects like televisions and household utensils. Participants found and observed these collections during the virtual tour experiences. R12 appreciated the cooking materials artwork, as described, “The artwork serves as cooking material which we use in our various homes… In the virtual tourism, l saw some of the pot l think they were using it to cook food.” In terms of the object colors, these groups tend to use bright colors to project more positive emotions, which can be recognized as their excitement with the virtual tour, as mentioned in the virtual tour reflections.

The narrative significantly predominantly influenced cognitive encounters for this group of participants. In their artwork descriptions, some expressed condolences for victims. This group creates artworks that encompass the interpretation of the volcanic eruption. Participants highlight the effect of volcanic eruption by creating fragmented and burnt objects, such as shattered earthenware bowls, fragmented pots, and burnt houses. R17 reflects on the artwork by expressing, “This work was done to show that disaster is a bad cause which leads to great loss of life and properties. The artwork was built to show how disaster can destroy our items.” The artworks created use dark hues to signify the conditions after the disaster, evoking adversity. Meanwhile, several participants used bright tones to project their sympathy and empathy.

Within this group, diverse thematic artworks emerged with a different range, such as museum-related objects, household objects, and museum collections, indicating various interpretations of the virtual tour. We posit that the mournful resonance of the sound likely influenced affective aspects, enabling the participants to link their creations to museum artifacts and ancient museum collections that appeared in the virtual tour. R9 expressed, “The story behind this clay model represents the animals around the museum when the disaster took place and take their lives.”. Participants crafted artwork with a less bright color.

Our study involved only 32 participants from Ghanaian undergraduate art students. We acknowledge our small sample size. However, we must be careful when we generalize the result to a more enormous population. Future studies can extend our research by exploring a larger sample size and comparing it within different countries. In addition, due to limited access to VR head-mounted devices, we only provide a non-immersive virtual tour experience with less technology embodiment. Technology embodiment influences emotions and engagement [16], and future research can understand the impact of technology embodiment on the embodied cognition of virtual tours.

This study provides a theoretical contribution by extending the embodied cognition reactions in virtual dark tourism by relating the virtual tour with artwork creation [8, 9, 11]. The finding reveals that participants are not only associated with the level of darkness of the colors but also reflect their clay models with different objects, choosing the suitable theme to express their experiences. In addition, we extend the current study by covering the other stimuli, such as content stimuli (narrative) and sensory stimuli (visual and auditory), in the virtual dark tourism experiences [10, 15].

The emergence of VR in tourism can benefit destination managers in expanding existing markets to different countries and lowering the cost of travel. Many destination managers already adopted the virtual tour; however, they do not capture what is precisely the tourist experience. This study’s findings can help unbox online travelers’ embodied virtual travel experiences and provide an understanding of the different effects of auditory and narratives in the virtual environment.