Abstract Art in the Age of New Media is a virtual group show curated by Serena Tabacchi and Marie Chatel featuring works by Banz & Bowinkel, Gibson / Martelli, Joanne Hastie, Harrison, Willmott, Aaron Scheer, Alex Reben, Arnaud Laffond, Chris Dorland, Casey Reas, Darcy Gerbarg, Brendan Dawes, Kjetil Golid, Mathieu Merlet Briand, Maurice Benayoun, Mario Klingemann, Shohei Fujimoto, Yoshi Sodeoka, Sara Ludy, Snow Yunxue Fu, Markos Kay, Damjanksi, David Young, Gordon Berger, Bård Ionson, Manfred Mohr, Robbie Barrat.

A multidisciplinary team headed by two UCL researchers has been awarded a research grant from the British Academy to unravel the psychology of how people view and remember artworks in a gallery. The collaboration between cognitive psychologists, cultural and digital sector professionals takes place in the context of an online shift for art collections worldwide.

An art gallery is a psychologically interesting place. Different art objects form a spatial layout, and visitors must navigate around the space to view the objects. The team’s previous research shows the spatial environment surrounding an artwork is implicitly integrated with our aesthetic responses to the work itself. Building on recent neuroscientific work on how the brain represents space, this new project will investigate how spatial layout of objects within a museum can influence different aspects of the viewer’s experience.

How does the position of each object within the gallery layout affect how much we like the object, and how well we remember it? The researchers conducted a number of online experimental studies, using specially-developed art exhibitions within a virtual museum. This project involved a unique collaboration between cognitive psychology researchers Dr Mariana Babo-Rebelo and Prof Patrick Haggard (Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, UCL), art curators Serena Tabacchi and Marie Chatel (MoCDAt) virtual reality expert Kadine James and artist and developer Allen Namiq (Hobs3D).