Past, Present, and Future
Knowing More, Seeing More: The Impact of Information on Art Perception in Three Studies
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Christopher Linden
Artworks in museums are often presented with accompanying information, ostensibly to increase understanding, and therefore appreciation, for the artwork, the creator, and/or the larger context. Though the research base supporting the efficacy of these practices is strong, fewer experimental studies have directly explored the impacts that information — and different kinds of information — have on the perceptual processes underlying art viewing (and appreciation). Over the past three years, we conducted three museum studies of art perception, in which presenting information was a critical variable. In each, we used a combination of mobile eye-tracking and questionnaires to assess participants’ engagement with, and appreciation of, artworks. Two studies conducted in Belgium, hosted at the BAC Art Lab and at KADOC, featured artworks from contemporary Flemish artists. Participants viewed the artworks in the exhibition before and after watching video interviews from the artists explaining their techniques and creative processes, allowing us to determine the effect that these explanations had on the viewing processes. The third study, conducted at the Manchester Art Gallery in England, manipulated the content of the information (art historical or visual thinking) presented audibly by guides while slow-looking at still-life artworks. This paper presents an overview of the common findings from these studies, as well as the specific caveats and limitations of each, in a synthesis of our work on the role of informational context on visitors' art perception (eye gaze and exhibition navigation behaviours) and appreciation (aesthetic and emotional responses to the artworks).
Othering Made Easy: Reinforcing African Stereotypes through Instagram
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Lawrence Wood
As social media has continually taken more of a presence in people’s lives, sharing images through visual platforms such as Instagram has increasingly become a primary form of communication. While most people use Instagram to share photos with family and friends, the platform also presents possibilities for circulating content to a wide, even global, audience. In conjunction with the ubiquity of smartphones, the ease and widespread use of Instagram ostensibly provides opportunities to not only extend the boundaries associated with different types of photographic subjects, but to actively present counternarratives, subvert negative stereotypes, and challenge problematic visual tropes. Yet somewhat surprisingly, a relatively limited amount of empirical research has examined these possibilities. Even amid widespread use by a diversity of people across a range of contexts, it is highly plausible that images posted on image-based social media platforms are further contributing to, if not exacerbating, the marginalization of people, cultures, and landscapes associated with particular geographic locations. Through an in-depth content analysis of more than 500 photographs on Instagram, this research examines the extent to which historically persistent tropes of Africa are evident on this widely used platform, including in relation to any given photographer’s country of residence. The results suggest that many of the historically embedded, problematic tropes associated with depictions of Africa continue to be perpetuated in ways that present ongoing, if not greater, difficulties when it comes to challenging what are already deeply embedded stereotypes.
Pre-Columbian Iconography in Stars and Rocks: The Trascendence of Atacama Desert's Likan Antai Culture in Petroglyphs and Rock Art
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Juan Edwards, Federico Aguirre, Enrique Vergara Leyton
This paper shows preliminary results of a study on pre-Columbian iconography, the possible meaning of symbols and figures in the Likan Antai culture. Several scholars agree that societies in the highlands of the Central and South-Central Andes, such as the indigenous people who have inhabited the Atacama Desert oases, developed a worldview in which their deities and ancestors are the owners of the world's riches. Their hypotheses about the function and purposes of petroglyphs and rock paintings depicting herds of Andean camelids and symbols on cliffs in that parched land, such as those of Alero de Taira, suggest the capacity of these images to call up the spirits to answer the people's prayer for food and animal fertility. These iconic manifestations suggest a dialog and reciprocal exchange with divinity. In fact, a correlation is perceived between the Likan Antai rock images and the figures that they and other Andean peoples identify in the celestial vault. One of the differences between them and many other ancient cultures is that they do not see animals and symbols in constellations but in dark spaces surrounded by stars.
