The Aesthetic Experience of Contemporary Installations in an Art Gallery and a Laboratory Setting: The Issue of Interactivity

Abstract

Recent research on empirical aesthetics conducted in a laboratory setting has shown that the beauty felt in response to an artwork depends on its interactivity and suggested that interactivity might shape aesthetic experience. The current study tested the role of availability of interacting with installations on naïve viewers’ understanding, liking, and affect. Participants were presented with contemporary installations alongside differing levels/degrees of interactions with them: (a) own-interaction, that is, own interactions and optional observing other viewers when interacting (in an art gallery), (b) other-interaction, that is, observing the viewer when interacting (in a laboratory setting), and (c) no-interaction, that is, interaction unavailable at all (control condition—in a laboratory setting). In Conditions B and C, artwork reproductions were presented. The results showed that in the own-interaction condition, participants liked the artworks more than in the laboratory setting conditions (when data from other-interaction and no-interaction conditions were combined). However, this result should be explained by the gallery effect rather than the degree of interactions. At the same time, subjective understanding and affective state did not differ depending on the level of interaction. Moreover, we tested what kind of affective state correlates with a greater tendency to interact with installations when viewing them in the art gallery. The variance of engagement in interaction with installations was statistically significantly positively explained (overall 42%) by valence (more positive states), subjective significance (more significant) and origin of affective states (metaphorically originating more from reasons of the mind, i.e., more deliberated upon and rational).