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Project

Art perception and appreciation in galleries and museums: Multi-method studies with a focus on mobile eye-tracking and questionnaires

Research in empirical aesthetics has mainly been limited to laboratory experiments or large-scale online studies, presenting natural images (photographs of outdoor or indoor scenes) or images of paintings to convenience samples (mainly students or Amazon Mechanical Turk workers). Everyone realizes that the insights gained from such studies are quite limited in terms of their generalizability to the sometimes really deep aesthetic emotions (e.g., thrills, awe, sublime) that some art lovers experience when they visit real art in galleries and museums. However, most researchers have shied away from these more ecologically valid contexts because of the difficulties to tap into these experiences by the more objective, quantitative tools that we are used to dealing with in experimental psychology. In this PhD project, we will take this daunting step and tackle theory-driven questions regarding the factors that determine the perception and appreciation of real art works (incl. installation art) by visitors of art galleries and museums. We will do this mainly by combining questionnaires and in-depth interviews with new devices such as mobile eye-tracking, mobile devices for physiological responses (e.g., heart rate variability) and mobile EEG. Several case studies are planned in museums such as M in Leuven and Tate Modern in London, as well as in smaller galleries in collaboration with contemporary artists (e.g., Patrick Ceyssens, Ief Spincemaille).

Date:1 Oct 2020 →  Today
Keywords:empirical aesthetics, mobile eye tracking
Disciplines:Human experimental psychology not elsewhere classified
Project type:PhD project