Multisensory Experiences for Art Appreciation

This study aims at understanding multisensory interactions, from visual or bimodal to all senses, to design user experiences for art appreciation. Museum experiences are not just an encounter between an eager visiting public who soaks up the knowledge articulated by the curatorial team. It is a multilayered journey that is proprioceptive, sensory, intellectual, aesthetic, and social, leading to learning and reflection [1]. The target users for this study are people who are not well versed with the context of a visual artwork and are unable to interpret it. Based on secondary readings, it is essential to determine what sensory experiences we can design for and how we can meaningfully stimulate such experiences, when interacting with technology, while understanding the limitations that come into play when users need to monitor more than one sense at a time [2]. The research conducted for this study involved evaluation of simple everyday life activities for multisensorial interactions, through both qualitative and quantitative data collection. The observations from these activities and secondary readings of the subject, have further been tested in the context of visual art experiences, through auditory and visual art prototypes. The key finding of the study is that any multisensory experiences should be designed by isolating the secondary sense modalities. The experience through unconscious senses should be induced involuntarily, by associating a narrative with the entire experience. Based on these findings, a set of principles for designing multisensory experiences have been formed. These principles can further be tested in different contexts for designing intuitive immersive experiences.