The Physiology of Phenomenology: The Effects of Artworks

Abstract

In a five-year long research project "eMotion-mapping museum experience," we assessed which effects artworks had on museum visitors and their behavior in the field. We tested several hypotheses such as: Does a famous work attract more attention than a less renowned one, and a "loud" artwork more than a subtle one? Do similar artworks generate similar visitor reactions? Does an artwork lose its attraction if manipulated? To investigate these questions, experiments were conducted using special technology that allowed tracking of visitors' physical locomotion and continuous measurement of physiological markers in the gallery. We also recorded visitors' general subjective assessments of their museum experience, and with respect to specific artworks. Using this innovative approach, we were able to demonstrate strong correlations between artworks, the physical reactions of the visitors, their spatial behavior, and aesthetic ratings.

Buildings, Beauty, and the Brain: A Neuroscience of Architectural Experience

“…How best to sample neurophysiological data over time and "in the field" is a question that will need to be resolved over time (Gramann, Ferris, Gwin, & Makeig, 2014). Mobile EEG has begun to be used in museum studies and innovative approaches to data collection have begun to emerge (Kontson et al, 2015;Tröndle & Tschacher, 2012). Technological issues of sampling and separating signal from noise and theoretical issues of how best to use such technology in a hypothesistesting framework remain, but these methods have great promise.…”

The Museum Experience: Mapping the Experience of Fine Art

“…An important distinction between the eMotion project and previous studies on art perception was the decision to use original art. Most other research relies on facsimiles, which cannot provide accurate assessments of physical interactions with “the real thing” (Tröndle and Tschacher ). The eMotion data show that participants displayed physiological responses as soon as they entered the first gallery.…”

“…Variables of the visitor's cognitive reactions were constructed from the visitor's gradings of these eight aspects of the artwork: content/topic, artistic technique, composition, beauty, the artist, its importance in art history, presentation of the artwork, and connection/correspondence to the other artworks of the exhibition (the grading used a Likert scale from 5 = excellent to 1 = poor). For each visitor, we then calculated nine emotional and eight cognitive index variables by averaging the personal assessments of all ten artworks (for further details, see Tröndle and Tschacher ). Subsequently, we conducted forward‐method regression analyses, with the grading of the above emotional and cognitive variables as independent variables, and the contemplative, enthusing, and social experiences factor scores as dependent variables.…”

Experiencing Exhibitions: A Review of Studies on Visitor Experiences in Museums

“…Most of these new empirical aesthetics and fine‐art reception studies, however, have not yet been recognized in the field of visitor studies, or put to use in investigating visitor experience in fine art museums. A reason for this might be that most of these studies investigating aesthetic experience are laboratory based, and the methodologies deployed have not been tested in “real” environments like fine art museums (see Tröndle and Tschacher 2012). Martindale formulates this idea quite drastically in his analysis of recent trends in empirical aesthetics: “Behaviorism has certainly produced some very interesting theories and results, but they are of marginal relevance to psychology.…”