NSF Award
2217975
In addition to their traditional role as a source of emotional rewards and inspiration, the modern mission of art museums is education. Objects of interest are presented in the context of a narrative that the museum visitor follows to learn history, materials, technique, and function, as well as relationships to the natural world and human civilization. Narrative principles for exhibition design have for decades emerged from small scale observational studies of museum visitor behaviors, such as expressions of engagement and choice of path. Building on recent advances in scientific understanding of sensory processing and behavioral choice, in combination with sophisticated computational tools for characterization of fine details of behavior, a team of scientists and museum professionals will turn a designated gallery at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art into a laboratory for investigation of human perception, action, choice, and learning. The broad applied goal of this project is to obtain scientific knowledge that will further enhance the educational mission of museums. The intellectual impact of the project will be an improved understanding of environmental and social factors that guide human behavior under naturalistic conditions. More generally, the project will benefit the larger communities of architecture and design professionals, as a model of experimental methodology and by offering a unique multifaceted dataset for analysis and evaluation of the influence of the built environment.<br/><br/>The project builds upon several technological and computational innovations. One is the methods of computational ethology, which is a new approach to quantitative behavioral analysis that employs high-resolution 3D motion capture together with machine learning methods for behavioral classification. This approach will yield efficient non-invasive measurements of visitor locations, rates of movement, poses, social interactions, gestures and expressions that reflect transitory cognitive states, such as visual attention and engagement with works of art. Observations from tens of thousands of anonymous museum visitors will be subjected to descriptive statistical analyses, to gain insights into the relationship between the structure and content of exhibition design and the behavior of individuals and social groups, and to discover spatial and temporal contingencies between visitor behaviors at different locations in the gallery. Results of these descriptive analyses will be used to develop predictive models of visitor behavior, capturing the full gamut of individual styles of visitor interaction with works of art and other visitors, informed by visitors’ sensory operating characteristics as well as sensory and motoric affordances of the gallery space. In the final stage of the project, strategic modifications to gallery design will be used to test and further develop predictive models in forecasting visitor behaviors. Results will constitute a new empirical framework for exhibition design and its impact on visitor experience.<br/><br/>This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
