Ricerc@Sapienza

The perception of emotion plays a significant role in the experience of art, to such an extent that it is believed that the most important aim of any art expression is actually the emotional experience induced in spectators. Recent scientific hypotheses have shown that aesthetic perception activates regions of the brain commonly associated with the experience of emotion. Nowadays art is commonly experienced also in the digital domain, with new technologies, such as Virtual Reality, enabling rich and deep experiences of cultural resources. However, in both cases the emotional response is hardly ever taken into account, except as a side effect of the experience. To date, the relationship between art and emotion has been investigated with the primary objective of understanding the underlying mechanisms, with no known attempts of exploiting these findings to deliver cultural experiences. The objective of this proposal, building on the existing knowledge in Neuroaesthetics and on partners expertise in Neuroscience, cultural Heritage and Marketing is to improve the emotional experience of real cultural assets. This objective will be achieved through the development and validation of a device aimed at quantifying the emotional engagement during the experience of cultural heritage and at improving, based on this information, the flow and the perceptual quality of the museum and/or theatrical experience. To this aim, cost-effective instruments and procedures will be developed to measure the emotional experience of people by monitoring internal neurophysiological parameters, and build cultural Heritage experiences aiming at soliciting an emotional and perceptual engagement of persons attending museums etc. Novel technological-based cultural experiences will be developed and demonstrated allowing to modulate the fruition of real art collections or events with the affective state of the users, with the possibility of suggesting custom-tailored paths resonant with their feelings