Museum report·London
Munch's The Scream Beats Calmer Works as Most Enjoyed in Goldsmiths Study of Unsettling Art
Researchers at Goldsmiths, University of London, fitted visitors to the immersive FRAMELESS experience with sensors and found that Edvard Munch's The Scream, the artwork that unsettled people most, was also the one they enjoyed most.
Visitors to London's FRAMELESS immersive art experience got the biggest kick out of the artwork that made them most uneasy, according to new research from Goldsmiths, University of London. The study, carried out by the university's i2 media research group, tracked how people responded to five projected paintings in the venue's Beyond Reality Gallery, and found that emotional intensity and enjoyment went hand in hand rather than pulling in opposite directions.
Sixteen participants aged from 19 to 84 took part, almost all of them visiting FRAMELESS for the first time. Wearing heart, skin and eye-tracking sensors, they spent 22 minutes moving through works by Edvard Munch, Thomas Lowinsky, Odilon Redon, Max Ernst and Hieronymus Bosch, while the researchers measured their bodily responses against each person's own resting baseline and asked them to rate how intense each piece felt.
Munch's The Scream stood out on every measure. Viewers reported suspense, tension and unease more often during it than during any other work, their skin conductance rose 18 percent above baseline, and their blinking fell 15 percent, a pattern earlier research has linked to heightened attention. It also scored highest for emotional intensity, at 3.5 out of 5. Yet when the same visitors ranked the five works by enjoyment, The Scream came first.
The calmer pieces told the other half of the story. Lowinsky's The Dawn of Venus and Bosch's The Garden of Earthly Delights were both rated at 2.4 out of 5 for intensity, and people more often described joy, delight and calm while watching them. Their heart rate variability, which tends to climb in more relaxed states, rose by an average of 16 and 18 percent respectively. Professor Jonathan Freeman, who leads i2 media, said the pattern echoes what his team has seen over 25 years of audience research: a little tension, felt somewhere safe, can itself be part of the pleasure, much as it is in horror films or on rollercoasters. FRAMELESS creative director Ryan Atwood added that the findings show an artwork need not soothe or flatter to leave a lasting impression.
