Interactive Art Interpretation: How Viewers Make Sense of Paintings in Conversation

Abstract

This study explores the talk of viewers as they encountered paintings in an art gallery. An inductive analysis of conversations recorded between viewers and one of the researchers resulted in the identification of three categories of art talk: Evaluation, Attraction, and Storytelling. Further, the authors distinguish two design features governing this kind of talk, Narration and Reification. Viewers verbalize their experience of paintings in order to interactively manufacture meaning. This sense‐making process is consequential not merely for the viewers' understanding of the artwork but for their conception of the world, and of themselves and others in it. Perhaps most significant, viewers employ artwork as a material and symbolic resource in the ceaseless interactive fabrication of their own identities.

Jurassic technology? Sustaining presumptions of intersubjectivity in a disruptive environment

“…These could include discrete material objects, assemblages of objects, sounds, smells, or even the space as a whole (to the extent that it becomes objectified as a focus of interpretation). 21 As Bruder and Ucok (2000) have shown for art museums, the interpretation of objects is an interactive accomplishment. But interacting subjects have more trouble making sense of some objects than others.…”

“…Research in the fields of sociology and cultural studies has tended to focus either on the history and operation of the museum as a social institution (Alexander 1996, Blau 1991, DiMaggio 1991, Zolberg 1981 or on the politics of representation involved in museum exhibition (Bennett 1995, Jenkins 1994, Lisus and Ericson 1995, Luke 2002, Macdonald 1998, Winans 1994, Zolberg 1998). Both of these currents emphasize the institutional production of the cultural object, neglecting the micro-interactional processes by which visitors achieve a sense of meaningful, shared experience of that object (exceptions include Bruder andUcok 2000 andvom Lehn et al 2001). Visitor studies in the field of museology do emphasize reception; but they have traditionally focused on the individual visitor's experience (Bicknell and Farmelo 1993, Bitgood and Patterson 1987, Falk and Dierking 2000, Robinson 1928, and Screven 1976 and have only begun to attend to interaction among visitors (Diamond 1986, McManus 1987.…”

Art museum visitors: interaction strategies for sharing experiences

“…These propositions imply the following: (1) before or after visiting the museum, individuals do not interact with other individuals in their social circle with whom they can share the experience, though not the visit itself; (2) individuals do not interact with other visitors (strangers) present in Museum Management and Curatorship 243 the museum and following a similar itinerary (contrary to the studies of Vom Lehn, Heath, andHindmarsh 2001 andVom Lehn 2006); and (3) individuals do not interact internally in silent conversations with themselves (obviating the studies of Falk andDierking 1992 andBruder andUcok 2000) or hold symbolic conversations with the works and their authors (Csikszentmihalyi and Robinson 1990).…”

Re-Introducing Visitors: Thoughts and Discussion on John Falk’s Notion of Visitors’ Identity-Related Visit Motivations

“…Bruder and Ucok (2000) suggest that viewing art is a social process through and within which viewers do not question each other's knowledge but instead value each other's points of view, judgements and comments while interacting with one another. In these two examples shared attention on the painting 3 has been achieved through one member's performance.…”

“…It is obvious by listening to their conversations that adults in dyads are in most cases paying a visit in order to have fun and enjoyment, something expressed by their frequent laughs and jokes in between shifting from one exhibit to another. As Bruder and Ucok (2000) argue, viewing art is more about 'What do you think?' rather than 'What do you know?…”