An Archaeology of Perception in the Metaverse: Seeing a World Within a World Through the Artist’s Eye

This chapter proposes a 3D Virtual Reality (VR) metaverse in the shape of a world within a world, to be used for an experiential archaeological approach, to facilitate understanding the sensoriality of past individuals. Virtual reconstructions of the archaeological remains have so far failed to recreate a realistic experiential environment. For this purpose, we selected as study site a house of artists from the past (1930) from the town of Balchik, around which we built the proposed metaverse, with the objects of study being the house and artistic work of the painter Cecilia Cuţescu-Stork. The metaverse is designed to provide rich sensory experiences in order to allow a better understanding of the artworks and the context in which they were made. The VR metaverse is comprised two connected 3D virtual spaces that users can traverse, including with VR headsets, each space contributing to a cognitive augmentation through the sensory qualities of the constructed virtual space. The metaverse reconstruction will allow access to both specialists and the public, as the metaverse is implemented on a free VR platform (Mozilla Hubs).