What moves the eye, what moves us & how do we move in the museum space?

VDS CoBeNe funded (2022 – )

Project Members:
Anna Miscenà, Carola Korhummel, Zoya Dare, Dijana Popovic, Jörg Mühlhans, Raphael Rosenberg

Collaborators: Corinna Kühnapfel

Conducted by the CReA Lab in cooperation with the MediaLab at the University of Vienna, The MuVE project takes place in the Leopold Museum, one of the most important collections of Austrian art and the most comprehensive Egon Schiele collection in the world.
The study investigates the behaviors of 234 museum visitors as they engage with 77 artworks across 6 rooms of the museum's permanent collection. Employing both mobile eye-tracking technology and targeted questionnaires, our research offers profound insights into visitor dynamics, art appreciation, curatorial choices, and beyond. Under the MuVE umbrella, three primary lines of enquiry guide our investigation:

What moves the eye?
What catches our attention, how do we look at art and what mediates our visual experience? Are certain types or aspects of artworks more or less appealing to us? What drives our visual exploration of art?

What moves us?
What do we find interesting in the museum and why? How do individuals emotionally engage with artworks? What value do they attribute to the exhibited works and how do they remember them? How can visitors be described according to their experiences?

How do we move?
What is the interplay between visitors and the museum as a physical space? How does our embodied engagement differ between the material collection and the virtual realm of digital reproductions? What can this tell us about our relationship with art and its surroundings?