Capturing Aesthetic Experiences With Installation Art: An Empirical Assessment of Emotion, Evaluations, and Mobile Eye Tracking in Olafur Eliasson’s “Baroque, Baroque!”

Abstract

Installation art is one of the most important and provocative developments in the visual arts during the last half century and has become a key focus of artists and of contemporary museums. It is also seen as particularly challenging or even disliked by many viewers, and—due to its unique in situ, immersive setting—is equally regarded as difficult or even beyond the grasp of present methods in empirical aesthetic psychology. In this paper, we introduce an exploratory study with installation art, utilizing a collection of techniques to capture the eclectic, the embodied, and often the emotionally-charged viewing experience. We present results from an investigation of two pieces, both part of Olafur Eliasson’s exhibition “Baroque, Baroque” held at the Belvedere museum in Vienna. These were assessed by pre- and post-viewing questionnaires focusing on emotion, meaning-making, and appraisals, in tandem with mobile eye tracking to consider viewers’ attention to both installed artworks and/or to the museum environment. The data showed differences in participants’ emotional states, appraisals, and visual exploration, which together paint a picture of the aesthetic reactions to the works. These differences also showed how viewers’ appraisal strategies, meaning making, and physical actions facilitated relatively more or less deep engagement with, and enjoyment of, the art. The results are discussed in terms of their implications for museum studies, art education, and theory in empirical aesthetics.

The influence of the physical context and knowledge of artworks on the aesthetic experience of interactive installations

“…One of the critical features of installation art is that it is interactivebut not necessarily in the sense that the viewer can touch a work of art. It may well be the interactivity resulting from the fact that viewers dwelling or moving around in the area of the installation becomes part of the artwork (Pelowski et al 2018a).…”

“…The researchers were interested in what audience and work of art characteristics cause the artist's creations to be interpreted by the audience as art. In the exploratory study, in which the issue of the aesthetic response to installation art was addressed, an integrative approach was adopted (Pelowski et al 2018a). Researchers invited participants to the Baroque, Baroque (2015Baroque ( -2016 exhibition by Olafur Elliasson and tested spectators' emotions and visual attention, artwork appraisals and interpretations of two installations.…”

“…Viewers are likely especially focused on these aspects during the reception of the art of installation due to its interactive nature (cf. Pelowski et al 2018a). That is why in the current study, we consider the gallery context effect toward the installation art.…”

“…This appears to be particularly true in the case of installation art, which is often sitespecific and requires viewer interaction (cf. Pelowski et al 2018a). The context of a gallery allows visitors to fully experience the work of art, which is available not only for visual modality but is often experienced physically through almost all senses.…”

Using an AI creativity system to explore how aesthetic experiences are processed along the brain’s perceptual neural pathways

“…Order of video pairs (abstract vs portrait) and order of playback speed (fast vs slow), were randomized. To collect the quantitative measure, we asked the participants to rate each video on a 7-point Likert scale for A) liking (personal preference), B) aesthetic pleasantness (aesthetic beauty) and C) artistic value (how good of an art piece is the stimuli) (adapted from: Haertel & Carbon, 2014; Belke et al, 2015;Pelowski et al, 2018). Higher scores on these rating scales indicated higher agreement.…”