Adaptive audience engagement: A critical exploration of engagement with (VR) art through bodily data

This transdisciplinary study introduces a new understanding of the processes of audience engagement with arts and starts with nuancing key concepts in audience studies. The research concentrates primarily on the audience experience of engagement, differentiating it from the facilitation of involvement by artists and arts professionals and the actions of audience development.
The research offers a highly original contribution to methodology in audience studies. Audience studies lack an approach to empirically study the complexity and dynamics of in-the-moment and real-life engagement that could combine analysis of signs of engagement in bodily reactions with audience reflections on their experience and contextual influence of the artworks themselves. The research fills this methodological gap by merging humanities and natural sciences perspectives into a novel analytical framework. I pilot a multilevel mixed design with an exploratory-explanatory focus based on the philosophical approach of critical realism that enables the integration of quantitative and qualitative data. I explore them through a critical narrative, looking for causal mechanisms.
The study introduces the technology of virtual reality and biometric sensors into the humanities analysis. Virtual reality (VR) has a double function – as an environment providing lab-like conditions for data collection (reducing external distractions and increasing the reliability of the study) and as (still perceived as a novel) art form which can attract new audiences. Wristband biometric sensors unobtrusively collect the audience’s physiological reactions (heart rate and skin conductance) and illuminate processes of in-the-moment physiological engagement with arts. The research demonstrates that such a study is also feasible within the field of humanities. Yet, there are constraints to replicating such an approach as it requires multidisciplinary knowledge (or a team), IT programming support, and costly equipment.
The thesis explores and compares audience (bodily and reflective) experiences during two VR art projects. They illustrate directed (art in a closed form) and semi-directed (when artwork adapts to audience reactions) engagement. Audience reflections and the virtual reality artistic content provide contextual influences on bodily engagement processes and expose generative mechanisms in action. The data reveal that the data from participants’ physiological reactions often support their post-experience assessment of the experience. This indicates that bodily data help to infer internal engagement with specific artistic content, even without participants' cognitive feedback. Yet, post-experience reflection provides salient clues for an understanding of an engagement. The study concentrates on specific experiences of engagement, but its outcomes offer universal insights.
The literature review and the research analysis strongly indicate that bodily engagement is adaptive. It can take various forms in line with the functions of the art, so the findings support previous theories about artistic content shaping the audience experience. There are different types of engagement stretching between relaxed alertness and high arousal. Experience of engagement is, thus, not a function of the audience but a function of the audience during a specific artistic (and social) context.
The research suggests new directions for arts engagement studies. The findings question a few existing audience studies (and broader) conventions, for example, the claims that affinity with arts is a prerequisite for high-quality engagement or that increased audience agency contributes to deeper and more satisfactory arts engagement. The study also reveals new possible themes for arts audience studies, for instance, the contribution of situational interest to raising more enduring curiosity about the arts and the influence of cognitive bias. The analysis suggests matters for studying audience physiology, which go beyond existing humanities interests. In this way, the research offers several original contributions to the practice of the arts and knowledge across the humanities and natural sciences.