eMotion analyses the experience of the museum-goer experimentally. The core of our interest is the museum architecture, the art objects, curatorial installation and how they effect and affect the behaviour of the visitors.  

Gaining access to this complex realm of visitor reception in the museum requires both innovative developments in research methods and technical apparatus. Architectural, visual and audio processes of data collection / presentation will be developed in parallel with field research methods in psychology and sociology, in a wholly complimentary fashion. Methods of visitor tracking, biometric measurements, empirical social science, data-sonification as well as the experiment itself as an intervention and installation.

Visitors who want to take part in the project, will receive a wrist band at the exhibition entrance that includes several signalling and measurement sensors. The wrist-band device, will allow for the precise measurement of the path of each individual through the museum, their speed, their time spent in front of a picture/object, when and how strong an emotional arousal occurred, and lastly, when and how strong a cognitive arousal occurred. The immense amount of quantitative data generated will be further validated by qualitative questionnaires, enabling the team to interpret the complex material adequately and thoroughly.

Through the project, we hope to gain insight into the question of how the museum operates as a psycho-geographic field. Central to our study and enaction, are questions of art reception, art pedagogy, museum management – and modes of trans-disciplinary research and collaboration.

Findings for art sociology and art psychology: The results of this trans-disciplinary study could lead to a holistic understanding of the interaction of art work, curatorship and recipient – including the relation of the art object to the observer, as well as between the observer and his/her social context, speaking of his/her experience, expectation and other social and psychological variables.

The results are also relevant for curatorial studies, museum management, art pedagogy as well as art theorists and will provide them a deeper understanding of the museum context, art object and observer. 

Findings for the visitor: In a step of double reflection, the visitor (who generated the data) will have the possibility to observe their own museum engagement in the eMotion installation, moments from their course are played back through cartographic representation – providing self-insight into their specific modes of reception and implicit judgment. The scientifically generated, artistically rendered re-representation creates an abstract visual and acoustic sphere through which the viewer can reflect their museum experience.

The eMotion project has begun in July 2008 and will be completed in January 2010.

The field research phase of the project installed in the Art Museum St. Gallen (CH) will take place from the 5th of June 2009 untill the 19th of July 2009.

Kunstmuseum St.Gallen
Museumstrasse 32
CH-9000 St.Gallen
Switzerland
http://www.kunstmuseumsg.ch
 

eMotion is a Research and Media Arts Project funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation and Ubisense