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Galaw at Gunita: Extended Reality Murals for Experiencing Filipino Art

Jomar Delos Reyes, Sealtiel Dy, Rica Mae Sales. Orrin Landon Uy, Toni-Jan Keith Monserrat, Ryan Austin Fernandez, Jordan Aiko Deja

Abstract

Digital and interactive spaces are becoming increasingly prevalent as platforms for cultural engagement, offering new ways to make art more accessible, engaging, and inclusive. In the Philippine context, where visual art is deeply rooted in precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial histories, there is a growing need to explore how digital systems can support art appreciation without replacing or compromising traditional and physical artworks. Rather than treating digital experiences as substitutes, we argue for the value of creating interactive digital twins that allow audiences to explore, touch, and engage with artworks while preserving the integrity of the originals. In this paper, we present SoulWall, an extended reality (XR) interactive mural system designed to augment Filipino artworks through embodied interaction. SoulWall enables viewers to experience paintings and animations at scale, supporting exploratory and playful engagement while respecting artist intent. We describe the design and implementation of the system, including its mural layout, interaction techniques, and interaction logging infrastructure. We report findings from a user study focused on user experience complemented by analyses of interaction logs and spatial engagement patterns. Our results highlight the potential of XR murals as a cultural computing artifact for art appreciation and for showcasing Filipino artists in interactive public and exhibition spaces.

Galaw at Gunita: Extended Reality Murals for Experiencing Filipino Art

Abstract

Digital and interactive spaces are becoming increasingly prevalent as platforms for cultural engagement, offering new ways to make art more accessible, engaging, and inclusive. In the Philippine context, where visual art is deeply rooted in precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial histories, there is a growing need to explore how digital systems can support art appreciation without replacing or compromising traditional and physical artworks. Rather than treating digital experiences as substitutes, we argue for the value of creating interactive digital twins that allow audiences to explore, touch, and engage with artworks while preserving the integrity of the originals. In this paper, we present SoulWall, an extended reality (XR) interactive mural system designed to augment Filipino artworks through embodied interaction. SoulWall enables viewers to experience paintings and animations at scale, supporting exploratory and playful engagement while respecting artist intent. We describe the design and implementation of the system, including its mural layout, interaction techniques, and interaction logging infrastructure. We report findings from a user study focused on user experience complemented by analyses of interaction logs and spatial engagement patterns. Our results highlight the potential of XR murals as a cultural computing artifact for art appreciation and for showcasing Filipino artists in interactive public and exhibition spaces.
Paper Structure (15 sections, 4 figures)

This paper contains 15 sections, 4 figures.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Related Work
  3. Features of SoulWall
  4. Mural Design
  5. Interactions
  6. Evaluation
  7. Participants and Protocol
  8. Experimental Setup
  9. Findings
  10. Discussion and Design Implications
  11. Designing for visual salience in interactive murals
  12. Supporting spatial exploration through mural structure
  13. Balancing engagement and interaction simplicity
  14. Familiarity and onboarding in walk-up XR experiences
  15. Future Work and Conclusion

Figures (4)

  • Figure 1: Mural segment features of SoulWall, showing interactive artwork cues, highlighted and non-highlighted states across segments, and available modal interactions. Top Row: We show the murals from both the Left and Right side wing of the mural. Middle Row: We show the murals from the Center body and Center-right wing of the mural. Bottom RoW: We show the different interactions applicable with both the modals and the animations behind some of the paintings.
  • Figure 2: Eagle mural layout used as the visual structure for SoulWall. The paintings are grouped per body part which also depict a specific historical era of the country from the oldest (leftmost) to the most recent (rightmost).
  • Figure 3: UEQ-S results for SoulWall, showing mean scores for pragmatic quality, hedonic quality, and overall user experience. Colored bands indicate benchmark categories from bad to excellent, with the black line representing mean values. Graph was scaled to half values since we used the short version of the UEQ. Score trasmutations were made with the official analysis tool by schrepp2017design).
  • Figure 4: Heatmap of interaction duration (in milliseconds) across participants and artworks. Rows represent participants and columns represent individual artworks. Higher intensity indicates longer engagement time with an artwork.