On the occasion of the International Day of Persons with Disabilities, on December 3rd, a selection of technologies for the inclusive enjoyment of cultural experiences was presented at Palazzo Reale in Genoa during the event “Royal Inclusion: when the home becomes a museum and the museum returns to being a home”, organized by Spoke 1.
The technological solutions were developed within the RAISE ecosystem by CNR, the Casa Paganini – InfoMus research center of the University of Genoa, ETT, and students of the Master’s Degree Programme in Digital Humanities – Interactive Systems and Digital Media, Affective Computing, Arts and Cultural Welfare (ACW) curriculum.
More specifically, the day followed this schedule:
9:30 – 16:30: free exploration of the technologies
16:30 – 17:30: guided tour led by the students involved in the project
17:30 – 18:30: workshop featuring a presentation of the RAISE ecosystem and an in-depth discussion of the technologies by their creators
The event allowed visitors to explore new ways of relating to cultural sites by experimenting with innovative technologies focused on cultural welfare, where culture and art play a role in caring for both individuals and the territory.
Participants were able to experience this historic residence in a new way, with the opportunity to interact with two interactive installations: DanzArTe and RespirArTe. In these installations, visitors play an active role and, through interactive technologies, experience a visual artwork immersively through their own bodies. This results in an authentic aesthetic appreciation in which the sonification of movement and visual arts come together to create an immersive experience, making participants protagonists in the gradual unveiling of the artwork. DanzArTe and RespirArTe were developed by the Casa Paganini–InfoMus center (University of Genoa).
Both installations were tested in Spoke 1 and Spoke 2 contexts, namely in museums and cultural venues within the smart and inclusive city, as well as in a hospital setting.
The third installation included in the visitor pathway was Arte Tattile by ETT, presented by Susanna Alloisio (Spoke 1, ETT). This project transforms a traditional 2D painting into a three-dimensional representation, highlighting the relief of the depicted objects. Visitors can explore the artwork and listen to an interactive description thanks to invisible sensors. This technology offers new access to art for blind or visually impaired people by enabling engagement through touch and hearing, while also enriching the multisensory experience for all visitors.
Finally, visitors were involved in the Emotional Maps project by CNR-IMATI, coordinated by Michela Spagnuolo (Spoke 1, CNR-IMATI). The research explores the relationship between urban space and emotional experience through an integrated approach that combines wearable biometric sensors, GPS tracking, manually created emotional maps, and subjective narratives.
During the experimentation, participants walked through an urban area while physiological parameters were recorded; upon returning, they narrated their experience and drew an emotional map of the route. The collected narratives were subsequently analyzed using sentiment analysis techniques and correlated with spatial and biometric data, enabling the construction of a subjective geography of the territory that makes visible how places and routes influence individual perceptions and emotions.
Students from the Master’s Degree Programme in Digital Humanities at the University of Genoa played an important role in the design and realization of the cultural event, acting both as guides for the installations and as authors of two additional interactive digital application proposals developed during their coursework.
The final workshop provided an opportunity to reflect on the work carried out to achieve the results presented throughout the day.
All the new experiences presented during the event represent concrete examples of the application of innovative technologies to support inclusive, creative, and personalized processes, opening up new forms of museum experiences and cultural welfare within the territory.





