© 2010 ch-arts
|
|  |
|  |
|
|
|
 |  | |
|
special event
"eMotion": mapping museum experience
NEURO-AESTHETIC IN MUSEUM RESEARCH
Can the pereception of "art" be measured? If yes, how could that be done? This is the central question at hand that has brought together an international research team from several universities to test out their ideas within the context of an experimental exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts St. Gallen (Kunstmuseum St. Gallen), Switzerland.
eMotion - Psychogeographic Museum Cartography is the title of this national research project in Switzerland, that embarks upon the question as to the measurement of the effects of the Museum and its modes of display upon the visitor. Funded through the Swiss National Science Foundation and Ubisense, the fifteen-member research team has combined efforts from various disciplinary backgrounds, to examine the ‘force-field’ of the Museum - both empirically and experientially.
After three years of preparation, the project will open to the public on June 4 at the Kunstmuseum St. Gallen. From June 5- July 19, museum visitors can participate within the project. Museum visitors taking part in emotion will be presented with a view of their own art-perception - their mental, physical as well as temporal reactions will be rendered visible within an immersive, installation subsequent to the exhibition experience. eMotion unfolds in three layers: firstly, in the inquiry methods developed specifically for the research project at hand; secondly towards the "capturing" of physiological reactions in the reception of art in relationship to the exhibition and its installation; and thirdly through the tracking of movement and time within the space of the museum.
THE MUSEUM AS FORCE FIELD
The research team follows in the conceptual tradition of Alexander Dorner, a founding figure in contemporary curatorship, by investigating the museum as a force field. The research will not attempt to name what art is, but rather how it operates within the context of the museum, the ways in which the work produce affect and effect the reception of the museum visitor. Within the canons of art discourse, there exist several theories as to the phenomenon of art reception - yet to date, they have been only rarely empirically tested. If one, for example, follows institutionally oriented models of explanation, it is the museum, or institutional context that "frames" the work of art as such. Art theoretical and curatorial positions suggest that the meaning of an artwork is created by the hanging, positioning and spatial relationships within a perceptual field. Art psychology would suggest that meaning comes from the work - its materiality (or lack thereof) and "Gestalt" to produce an effect upon the viewer. Art sociologists argue that it is the biographical baggage of the visitor - their expectations and foreknowledge - which forge an experience for the visitor.
It is the underlying thesis of eMotion that all such diverse, disciplinary perspectives, the institutional, curatorial, psychological and sociological positions, coalesce in the production of an experience for the viewer, the combined effects of "Becoming-Art" (Boris Groys). As such, the eMotion team has operated in a distinctly trans-disciplinary fashion, compounding the research angles of Sociologists, Psychologists, Art Theorists and Museums Studies. Programmers, Tracking specialists and interface developers have been working alongside the scientific team, developing tools through which tangible information can be culled.
|
|
|
|
|
UP
