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Last week @googlearts published “Arts Emotions Map” of research done in collab with @GreaterGoodSC @UCBerkeley where they asked people how (images of) art made them feel. I wrote my MI/MMst thesis on exactly this kind of thing – affect, art, & info systems – so let’s dig in! 1/
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This experiment proposes that art triggers feelings, and to investigate this assumption, asked 1,300 people to describe how 1,500 paintings made them feel by choosing from a list of pre-selected words to describe their emotions while looking at images of paintings. I have Qs. /2
The video tells us that they had 2 big questions:
Q1 - How many different emotions can visual art create in viewers?
Q2 - Can a particular artwork “reliably evoke nuanced feelings like wonder and serenity and admiration”?
/3
Q1 - How many different emotions can visual art create in viewers?
Q2 - Can a particular artwork “reliably evoke nuanced feelings like wonder and serenity and admiration”?
/3
Q1: In the video, Dr. Keltner refers to this as a “new science of art and emotion,” but it’s worth noting that there is work in this field – a history in emotion research, and the whole field of empirical aesthetics. So, for Q1, there is a lot of research we can draw on! /4
Q1: Empirical aesthetics as a field really took off with Daniel Berlyne in the 1970s. Empirical aesthetics has the same focus as this study: the viewer experience with an artwork in a controlled setting, in order to better understand the “art viewing experience”. /5
Q1/2: Empirical aesthetics also asks “what ARE aesthetic emotions?”. Some proposed lists of what emotions aesthetics could evoke & how they could be grouped. Many of the same folks are interested in “aesthetic awe” (Q2) as they argue this is a felt response unique to the arts. /6
Q2: Here @AlanCowen wants to know if certain artworks can “reliably evoke” experiences of wonder, serenity, admiration – aesthetic awe? I assume he’s investigating this by measuring the kinds/numbers of responses he considers indicators of this experience as a starting point. /7
My 3 issues:
I1 - This study does not measure art experiences, but instead the experience of looking at digitized images of art on a screen
I2 - The data is from a list of pre-selected words which are then opaquely grouped
I3 – How was this study conducted & who participated? /8
I1 - This study does not measure art experiences, but instead the experience of looking at digitized images of art on a screen
I2 - The data is from a list of pre-selected words which are then opaquely grouped
I3 – How was this study conducted & who participated? /8
I1 – This study is not about the art objects, but about their digitized representations as viewed on a screen. This changes things considerably! Not only has the physicality of the artwork been removed, but the context of the viewing experience is very particular. /9
I1 – This issue of context – where do we see art? – is a question that I also have about generalizing findings from controlled/lab empirical aesthetics studies to general art-viewing. The context is very important to understand as well, as it is part of that experience. /10
I1 – You know what does very little for me? A jpg of a Rothko on my monitor. What does everything for me? Sharing a physical space with a Rothko painting, having it take up the full field of my vision while being in a space where I go to engage with art. /11
Rothko on emotions: “I’m interested only in expressing basic human emotions–tragedy, ecstasy, doom, and so on. And the fact that a lot of people break down and cry when confronted with my pictures shows that I can communicate those basic human emotions.” /12
I1 – I am not saying that galleries/museums are the only or ideal spaces for engaging with artworks! Very far from it. But, there is a big difference between art in person and the image of it on a screen, and that context is hugely important when it comes to felt experience. /13
I1/2 – And, because of this, the “Art Emotions Map” does not represent emotional experiences with artworks, but emotions experienced when viewing images of artworks on Google Arts & Culture (I assume). This makes sense for a @googlearts project, but this is a different thing. /14
I2 – My second issue is about the words and the map. In my own research, I found that lists of words were a great starting point to get participants to discuss their experiences, but ultimately were highly unreliable as an actual measurement/data gathering tool. /15
I2 – People used the same words in different ways, to mean different things, & had different degrees of agreement re: how well the word accurately described what they were feeling. It’s not just “sad”, or “very sad”, but “sad sorta describes how I felt because of x reasons”. /16
I2 – Not to mention that a predefined list of words means that only things described by those words are the only reactions deemed valid/allowed by the study. I’m surprised in the map by no existence of “anger”, for example – were there no responses, or was this not an option? /17
I2 – And then the map is not of participant’s answers, but presumably the categories that they fell into. The video tells us that “using new statistical techniques that Alan pioneered [they] made a map of what emotions does visual art produce.” I want to know what that means! /18
I3 – Lastly, how the study was done and who the participants were impact the results greatly. How many artworks did each person look at? Did answers change over time as viewers became fatigued? Did people know a lot about art? Nothing? Like art? Are (un)familiar with art? /19
I3 – Our familiarity and comfort with things impact how we feel about them, which is why this important, especially when attempting to generalize to a population as a whole. I’m really interested in the group of artworks shows as “100% Boredom”, for example, for this reason. /20
I3 – And, art museums have traditionally prioritized the experiences and emotions of certain folks over others. Whose feelings are being presented here as being universal, or at least generalizable? How does this relate to the history of the objects they were asked to judge? /21
A final note on this thread about complex responses. Here, @AlanCowen mentions his interest in “complex feelings” like wonder and serenity, but in my research, I also encountered amazingly complex artwork-viewer experiences that involved imagination, connection, empathy. /22
We don’t just look at something and react: there is a complex process involved. And sometimes that involves imagining ourselves in the setting depicted or in the place of the person in the artwork, and then having a felt experience as a result of that imagined experience. /23
I think this is fascinating and worth exploring in order to investigate the kinds of questions that are posed here about, as @AlanCowen put it in the video, “the incredible power of art to enable us to connect with each other and bone over these shared experiences”. /24
I know this is a @googlearts experiment, not a research paper, but I still think these questions are worth asking: the distinction between object/representation is important, as is how these studies get conducted. And, ultimately, I critique because I love! /25
The work I did for my thesis on this – documenting affective experiences with artworks using event-centric data modeling – was the hardest and best thing I have ever done, and if I do end up pursuing a PhD, it will be for extending what I started on with that work. /26
I am so excited that other people are interested in these same kinds of questions, and hope that initiatives like this experiment with @googlearts will get more people to think about affect, art, and their own experiences! /27 - end
