This paper analyzes how artificial intelligence (AI) has been integrated into immersive exhibitions as a creative collaborator across various aspects, including creation, curation, visitor engagement, participation, education, and social communication, drawing on domestic and international case studies in the era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. AI-driven immersive exhibitions go beyond the traditional context of art appreciation by transforming visitors into active participants, offering multi-layered immersive experiences that combine multi-sensory stimuli and real-time personalized feedback. In particular, AI performs the role of an active curator and co-creator, analyzing vast volumes of image, sound, text, and environmental data as well as visitor behavior, emotional states, and biometric signals, thereby dynamically altering the exhibition’s content, direction, and narrative in real time. Immersive exhibitions have evolved into creative ecosystems where artists, technicians, planners, and audiences jointly evolve the artwork through real-time data exchange, analysis, and reconstruction. In terms of spatial design, the boundaries between virtual and physical environments have blurred, with multisensory interfaces such as VR/AR, 360-degree projection, and wearable devices empowering each visitor to redefine their own experience. Furthermore, AI plays a pivotal role in realizing social value by expanding equitable art access for diverse groups such as people with disabilities, the elderly, and socially marginalized populations, through inclusive design, remote/non-face-to-face and metaverse-based exhibitions, and democratizing the creative ecosystem via NFT integration. The expansion of remote/non-face-to-face exhibitions and online platforms after the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrates that AI-driven immersive exhibitions are no longer mere artistic experiments, but represent a holistic cultural innovation encompassing human sensibility, social relations, education, and healing. This paper highlights that AI-based immersive exhibitions are disrupting the essence of artistic ecosystems, forging new paradigms for 21st-century art such as the “aesthetics of relationality” and the “ontology of experience.” Through this lens, the paper explores the core principles of future experience design in which art, technology, and society co-evolve.
Joo Hyun (Sun,) studied this question.