Description
It is clear nowadays that art installations experienced through the use of immersive technologies such as Virtual Reality (VR) are attractive to audiences and, in turn, becoming ever more popular (Kim, & Lee, 2022). But what makes VR distinctive from more traditional art installations? What are the similarities? And how does the experience of these new forms of art installations compare to the experience of more traditional forms of art? Empirical studies focusing on VR often have been using designed stimuli and encounters in the lab for control over the experimental setting (see Chirico et al., 2016; Chirico et al., 2018). This may lead to the study of a different kind of art experience, different from the one of artworks in a museum. To study art experiences in an ecologically valid setting, the present study was conducted in a pop-up lab set-up at the Frankfurt Art Association (FKV). Two installations have been selected from the exhibition “The Intelligence of Plants – an Alliance of Science and Art”. The inclusion of original artworks and a natural environment (museum) in the proposed design represented an attempt to reach the “golden path” for empirical investigation of art experiences (cf. Carbon, 2020). The first installation, called Embalmed Twins I & II (2017), was composed of two sculptures of trees made of different materials by Berlinde De Bruyckere. The other was a VR installation by Marshmallow Laser Feast, called Treehugger: Wawona (2017) representing a giant sequoia tree. The installations were chosen by the museum’s art curator, Franziska Nori, because of their shared goal of connecting the audience’s bodies with the ones of giant trees. The main objective of the present study was to explore a suitable methodology for measuring the experience of encounters with physical and VR installations.Visitors voluntarily participated in the study once they reached the selected installations. They could contribute to the collection of experimental data by answering questionnaires and/or by wearing a wireless wrist-worn device (Empatica E4 Wristband). The collected data concerned two dimensions of the experience of the installations:
1. Affective dimension.
Self-report tools such as the Geneva Emotion Wheel (GEW, Scherer, et al., 2013) and Bodily Sensation Maps (BSMs, Nummenmaa, et al., 2014) were used to identify the type and strength of the experienced emotions, as well as the bodily changes underlying them.
2. Physiological and behavioural dimension.
It was measured by electro-dermal activity (EDA), heart rate (HR), blood volume pulse (BVP), interbeat interval (IBI) (Schuurmans et al., 2020), and motion-based activity recorded by the Empatica E4 Wristband.
The multimethod approach used in this multiple case study allows an exploratory discovery of the following research questions: (1) How do the emotions elicited by the physical and the VR installations relate to one’s self-awareness of bodily changes? (2) Is the strength of the emotions different for the two installations? (3) What are the physiological and behavioural responses differences between the physical and the VR installations? (4) What is the relation between the two dimensions of experience in the two installations?
| Periode | 23-sep.-2022 |
|---|---|
| Evenementstitel | Tilburg Digital Aesthetics Conference |
| Evenementstype | Conference |
| Locatie | Tilburg, NetherlandsToon op kaart |
| Mate van erkenning | International |