LanternOperAR: Engaging Yue Opera Culture with Chinese Philosophy in Hybrid Gift through Interactive Experience

Yue Opera is a traditional Chinese through-sung storytelling style that conveys Chinese cultural ideologies and historical depth. In this context, Augmented Reality (AR) has been adopted in cultural venues to break the passive watching experience, turning the audience into active participants. In this paper, we present an exploratory case study of LanternOperAR, a hybrid cultural gift to promote Yue Opera with the Chinese philosophy of Yangmingism. We incorporate the tangible interface and virtual content to create an interactive cultural experience. Specifically, we conducted a fieldwork study to investigate the promises and challenges of promoting Yue Opera. Based on expert interviews and an online survey with the public, we derived a set of design goals to guide the design and development process. Our approach incorporates the application of artificial intelligence (AI) image processing, generative AI, information visualization, and gamification with AR technology to generate and visualize cultural knowledge in AR-based narratives and interactions. We evaluated LanternOperAR with 20 participants and acquired some positive feedback on system usability and overall experience, as well as some suggestions for further improvements. Our findings provide insights into the design of cultural products and cultural applications as guidance for cultural researchers and practitioners.