Beyond Learning - Exploring the Immersive Installation's Additional Experience for Visitors: Case Study of Dreamscape in the Hong Kong Palace Museum

Creating valuable knowledge and promoting cultural dissemination for audiences have become one of the most important responsibilities of contemporary museums. The appearance of immersive devices enhances the audience’s interest in visiting and deepens the audience’s visit memory, thereby promoting a rich learning experience for the audience. While gaining knowledge and relaxation is the most widespread audience reflection on an immersive installation-mediated museum experience, this does not mean that the value of immersive installations is limited to creating a learning experience for visitors. Therefore, this study explores two questions: What additional experiences can immersive installations provide visitors? Are these additional experiences positive or negative for the audience? In addition, this research takes the Dreamscape installation in the HKPM as a case and adopts the observation and interviews method to collect the visiting data of 32 audiences with different backgrounds. This study found that multicultural and memorable experiences were the most common reflections except for learning experiences. More importantly, there are many differences in the interpretation and perception of multiculturalism and memorable experience among different groups, which result from individuals’ backgrounds. Furthermore, this study also found visitors construct a similar experience based on the subtle design of immersive installations during the pandemic. Finally, this research argues that although providing audiences with a valuable learning experience remains the core function of museums, but immersive installations create more rich experiences for visitors and mediate the visiting needs of different groups from various aspects.