Interactive Digital Engagement With Visual Artworks and Cultural Artefacts Enhances User Aesthetic Experiences in the Laboratory and Museum

Abstract

Digital technologies reshape the way we interact with our environment, including with artworks. Advanced computational imaging solutions allow having extremely high-resolution digital reproductions of artworks outside museums, presumably increasing artwork engagement. We tested whether exploring such reproductions via an interactive interface heightened aesthetic appreciation and enhanced recognition. With this interface, observers can move, turn, zoom, and relight the digital reproductions (http://artmyn.com/; https://osf.io/3srfw/). In Study 1, 82 participants explored paintings in the laboratory. In Study 2, 63 participants explored precious cultural artefacts in the museum. In both studies, participants’ aesthetic appreciation (interest, pleasure, intensity, subjective learning) was higher towards artworks they had explored interactively as compared to non-interactively or as physical objects, highlighting the advantage of the tested technology. However, we found no evidence that interactive exploration improved artwork recognition. More studies are needed to learn when and why digital interaction is beneficial above and beyond subjective aesthetic evaluations.

Acknowledgements

We thank Elena Arbona Cuesta for collecting some of the data in Study 1 and the Fondation Martin Bodmer in Cologny (Geneva), Switzerland for collaboration in Study 2.

Disclosure statement

LB and PG were working at ARTMYN and NDu was working at Fondation Martin Bodmer. However, these affiliations did not influence the study design, analyses, results, or their interpretation. Thus, we declare no conflicts of interest.

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are openly available in OSF at http://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/3SRFW

Additional information

Funding

This project was supported with the Collaborative Research on Science and Society (CROSS 2016) Program, encouraging collaboration between the University of Lausanne and EPFL (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne). The original project title was “Digitizing visual art—Does a multimodal enriched visualization enhance our aesthetic experience?,” with CM as PI, MV and ND as co-PI, and DJ, LC, and IC as employees. The finalization of the research article was possible thanks to the support from the Swiss National Science Foundation, providing a Postdoc.Mobility fellowship grant to DJ [P500PS_202956] and a project funding grant to CM [100014_182138]. HL was supported with the project grant WWTF ESR20-034 from the Vienna Science and Technology Fund.

Notes on contributors

Domicele Jonauskaite

Domicele Jonauskaite is an experimental psychologist, studying cognitive and affective connotations of color across cultures and individuals. She holds a PhD degree in psychology from the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. She is currently based at the University of Vienna, Austria, where she focuses on aesthetics, art, and blindness.

Nele Dael

Nele Dael is a senior behavior scientist studying the expression and perception of emotion, personality and social skills in organizational contexts. She is particularly tuned into the development of new technologies for behavior research and application. Nele Dael currently leads the workplace well-being research program at IMD Lausanne.

Loïc Baboulaz

Loïc Baboulaz is the CTO and co-founder of ARTMYN, a company specialized in high-fidelity, high-resolution and multimodal digitization of visual artworks. From 2012 to 2016, he led the e-facsimile project, a Google focused research award, at EPFL. Loïc Baboulaz holds a PhD in Image Processing from Imperial College London.

Laetitia Chèvre

Laetitia Chèvre worked as a researcher assistant at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. After obtaining her MSc degree in Clinical Psychology and Psychopathology, she began a post graduate training as a psychotherapist. She now works as a clinician at the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry in Lausanne University Hospital.

Inez Cierny

Inez Cierny holds a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and is pursuing a PhD degree in psychology, both at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. Professionally, Inez works as a theatre director and a pedagogue. She created her own method of preparation for actors (4 Pillars Method) which integrates mindfulness techniques.

Nicolas Ducimetière

Nicolas Ducimetière is the vice-director of the Fondation Bodmer. He is a specialist of book history, bibliophilia and Renaissance poetry, and a curator of exhibitions. He is also the vice-president of the Fondation Barbier-Mueller and a member of the Swiss UNESCO Commission.

Anna Fekete

Anna Fekete is a PhD candidate in the Faculty of Psychology at the University of Vienna, Austria. She investigates how visual art and music can influence people’s emotions and well-being; and is interested in behavioral, physiological, and endocrine measures in laboratory as well as ecologically valid (e.g., museum) environments.

Pierre Gabioud

Pierre Gabioud graduated from EPFL with a Master of Science in Communication Systems in 2017. From then on, he has been building web applications in the interaction between art, music, and the digital world. He has been working for ARTMYN since 2017 as a software engineer.

Helmut Leder

Helmut Leder is professor of Visual Empirical Aesthetics at University of Vienna. He published more than 200 papers, in various fields of empirical aesthetics and visual perception (GS:08:22 = 13.799, Hi = 61). He was the president of the IAEA, Fellow at the Italian-Academy at Columbia (2018) and received the Arnheim-Award of the APA (2020).

Martin Vetterli

Martin Vetterli graduated from ETHZ, Stanford, and EPFL. He taught at Columbia and Berkeley, led the Swiss NSF, and is President of EPFL. His research in CS and applied mathematics led to three textbooks and numerous papers. He is a fellow of IEEE, ACM and a Member of NAE.

Christine Mohr

Christine Mohr is a full professor for Cognitive Psychology at the University of Lausanne. After having acquired some research experience on synesthesia, she started to focus on the relationships between color and affect. Her second research line concentrates on the psychological mechanisms of irrational beliefs (e.g., the paranormal, superstitions).