The Museum Gaze

Raphael Rosenberg (PI), Luise Reitstätter (PI), Enkelejda Kasneci (PI) In the art museum attention is focused through the eye. In order to understand the museum gaze, it is crucial to analyse visitors mostly unconscious eye movements in relation to their self-reports. Recent technical advances have made it easier to record eye movements in naturalistic settings. However, to date, most eye tracking studies on art perception have been conducted in laboratories with two-dimensional reproductions. Mobile eye tracking (MET) studies in museums have not yet realized their full potential due to small sample sizes, constrained viewing conditions and laborious data analysis. The project uses MET to investigate the beholding of artworks in the mu seum. The goals are 1.) to study the relational gaze, i.e., how visitors alternate between looking at single artworks, written information and other objects of interest; 2.) to study the medium-specific gaze, i.e., how visitors behave when beholding sculptures in contrast to paintings; and 3 .) to empower MET for the art museum, i.e., to develop new open source solutions for automatic data annotation and 3D mapping including location sensing. The project intertwines technological developments and their application in four studies at the Austrian Gallery Belvedere with increasing technical challenges. The core method of MET is complemented by self -reported visual and verbal data in subjective mappings, questionnaires as well as video and interaction analysis registering reactions to artworks and exhibition displays holistically in a mixed method approach. By combining art history, museum studies and computer science in an innovative manner, we aim to achieve a deeper level of analysis of the actual viewing behaviour of museum visitors. The results will have significant effects a.) for art history, generating new knowledge on art perception and, for the first time, systematic data on the perception of sculptures; b.) for museum studies, providing a profound empirical base on how visitor s understand art in different exhibition displays and new tools to answer curatorial queries; c.) for computer science, advancing MET and computer vision methods for ecologically valid investigations of human behaviour. The project is led by the art historian Raphael Rosenberg, the museologist Luise Reitstätter (both Laboratory for Cognitive Research in Art History, University of Vienna) and the computer scientist Enkelejda Kasneci (Perception Engineering Group, University of Tübingen). The studies are realised in close cooperation with curators of the Austrian Gallery Belvedere.