□Abstract
Our work is an interactive art that augments the experience of reading picture books by combining physical books with projected images. The user can enjoy reading experience that fuses the physical experience and the rich visual expression that along the story.
□Background
Books are one of the significant media composed by the invention of character, figure and the paper used to record it, making a contributing to the development of humanity. Paper books have spread people through printing technology. Paper books are still considered to be a format favored by many people. Reading, such as reading aloud or silently, has existed various forms with human beings over the ages. Technology related to printing and distribution has helped spread of reading. In addition, the ways of reading and the positive effects of reading have influenced each other. In other words, “the ways of reading” and “the development of printing and distribution,” have had a big impact on “the lifestyle and thinking of the people of that time.”
□Implementation
□The reading experience in two directions
(1) the experience of reading the book itself
•when the user turns the page of a book, the AR marker on the page is read and an image with highlighted text is projected
•when the user hides the AR marker beside of a picture, an image of response to the story is projected
(2) the experience in the space with the book
•when the user write one’s wish on strips of paper attached an AR marker, hang it on a bamboo tree, and an image of Orihime and Hikoboshi meeting is projected
As a prototype for our study, we produced “Immersive Tales.” The theme of the prototype is “TANABATA.”
□What is “TANABATA?”
“TANABATA(Star Festival)” is a famous traditional festival celebrated on July 7th in East Asia. The weaver girl (symbolizing Vega) and the cowherd boy (symbolizing Altair) cross the Milky Way and meet each other again once a year. This story is originally from Chinese legend. In Japan, people write wishes on a piece of paper and hang them on bamboo trees in TANABATA Festival. It is said that wishes may come true.
□Verification experiment
A survey was conducted to 13 people who experienced the prototype. We used a five-point scale to ask the question, “How much did the reading experience change in terms of satisfaction and immersion in the device of our work compared to reading only the paper book?” Out of five-point scale, 1 is “better without interactive elements of our work” and 5 is “more satisfying and immersive with interactive elements of our work.” The survey focused on four items. The average response value was 4.75 out of 5. This result indicates that good figures were obtained for the expansion of space related to reading.
□Future works
This time, we built a system that works with the original picture book, but in the future, we try to create a platform that can be adapted to a variety of books already published in the market, not just our prototype of book.