Abstract
Abstract The use of the senses of vision and audition as interactive means has dominated the field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) for decades, even though nature has provided us with many more senses for perceiving and interacting with the world around us. That said, it has become attractive for HCI researchers and designers to harness touch, taste, and smell in interactive tasks and experience design. In this paper, we present research and design insights gained throughout an interdisciplinary collaboration on a six-week multisensory display – Tate Sensorium – exhibited at the Tate Britain art gallery in London, UK. This is a unique and first time case study on how to design art experiences whilst considering all the senses (i.e., vision, sound, touch, smell, and taste), in particular touch, which we exploited by capitalizing on a novel haptic technology, namely, mid-air haptics. We first describe the overall set up of Tate Sensorium and then move on to describing in detail the design process of the mid-air haptic feedback and its integration with sound for the Full Stop painting by John Latham (1961). This was the first time that mid-air haptic technology was used in a museum context over a prolonged period of time and integrated with sound to enhance the experience of visual art. As part of an interdisciplinary team of curators, sensory designers, sound artists, we selected a total of three variations of the mid-air haptic experience (i.e., haptic patterns), which were alternated at dedicated times throughout the six-week exhibition. We collected questionnaire-based feedback from 2500 visitors and conducted 50 interviews to gain quantitative and qualitative insights on visitors’ experiences and emotional reactions. Whilst the questionnaire results are generally very positive with only a small variation of the visitors’ arousal ratings across the three tactile experiences designed for the Full Stop painting, the interview data shed light on the differences in the visitors’ subjective experiences. Our findings suggest multisensory designers and art curators can ensure a balance between surprising experiences versus the possibility of free exploration for visitors. In addition, participants expressed that experiencing art with the combination of mid-air haptic and sound was immersive and provided an up-lifting experience of touching without touch. We are convinced that the insights gained from this large-scale and real-world field exploration of multisensory experience design exploiting a new and emerging technology provide a solid starting point for the HCI community, creative industries, and art curators to think beyond conventional art experiences. Specifically, our work demonstrates how novel mid-air technology can make art more emotionally engaging and stimulating, especially abstract art that is often open to interpretation.
Highlights
Humans are equipped with multiple senses to perceive and interact with their environment
Through an in-situ approach, the intended users who have an intuitive interest and knowledge about art environments, are reached and can provide valuable feedback on the multisensory design and integration efforts. Building on these prior works, in this paper, we present research and design efforts carried out as part of a six-week multisensory art display – Tate Sensorium – in an actual museum environment (i.e., Tate Britain art gallery)
The interviews brought to the fore the general feeling that sensory augmentation can awaken a museum visitor’s imagination, make the visit to the museum or art gallery more engaging, and has the ability to elicit strong reactions, establish a connection to, and build a narrative around the art
Summary
Humans are equipped with multiple senses to perceive and interact with their environment. HCI researchers and practitioners are increasingly fascinated by the opportunities that touch, smell, and taste can offer to enrich HCI. Recent examples of such experiences include the novel olfactory display by Seah et al (2014), taste-based gaming by Murer et al (2013), olfactory in-car interaction by Dmitrenko et al (2016), digital flavour experiences by Ranasinghe et al (2014), and the added value of haptic feedback for audio-visual content by Maggioni et al (2017). This research has motivated further investigations of the design possibilities for creating novel mid-air haptics experiences (Ablart et al, 2017). The blurred edges of the spot and the slight halos around some of the larger dots at its circumference recall a solar eclipse, a black hole or the negative of photographs of light reflecting off planets in the dark galaxy”
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