Take the long take
The experiential processes of film makers and spectators triggered by unedited shots
Participants
Cooperation between:
Katrin Heimann (Interacting Minds Centre, Aarhus University, Denmark)
Christian Suhr (Interacting Minds Centre, Aarhus University, Denmark)
Henrik Hojer (VIA Aarhus)
Funding
Interacting Minds Center, Trapholt Museum
Contact
Katrin Heimann <katrinheimann@gmail.com>
Christian Suhr <suhr@cas.au.dk>
Status
Ongoing
Summary
A common hypothesis about long takes is that they create a special presence and access to social reality due to the unbroken continuity of space and time (Bazin 1967: 28; Kissel 2008; Grimshaw and Ravetz 2009; Rattee 2012). In addition, it has been argued that long takes allow participants a specific mode of free viewing in which the attention of spectators wanders freely and independent thoughts and meta-thoughts arise (see MacDougall 1992: 37). Consequently, long takes have been applied by with a political aim by ethnographic filmmakers to allow viewers “to see and judge for themselves” without interruptions or filmic manipulation. Also in european art house cinema long takes play a role. In this study we are using experimental material from ethnographic film, as well as from fiction film to for the first time investigate the actual effect of this device when it comes to experience. For this purpose, MP interviews are combined with eye-tracking data. Pilot results will first be presented at the Conference of the Cognitive Study of the Moving Images in Hamburg, June 2019.
Updated on 4/4/2019
Catch me if you can
A micro-phenomenological investigation of aesthetic attraction in the museum context
Participants
Cooperation between:
Katrin Heimann (Interacting Minds Centre, Aarhus University, Denmark)
Karen Grøn (Trapholt Museum, Denmark)
Joerg Fingerhut (HU Berlin)
Funding
Interacting Minds Center and Trapholt Museum
Contact
Katrin Heimann <katrinheimann@gmail.com>
Status
Ongoing
Summary
Visiting an art exhibition is a cognitive challenge: It is impossible to attend adequately to all art works. Visitors therefore watch selectively, a fact that points to a decision process that is of high interests especially for museum disseminators and curators. How do we choose the pictures we attend closer to? In this pilot study we collected first data on the experience of museum visitors illuminating this question.
Updated on 4/4/2019

The body as a locus for the experience of museum and architectural spaces
Participants
PhD student: Marcus Weisen
Thesis advisor: Claire Petitmengin
Status
started 11/2015
Summary
This doctoral research investigates sensory, emotional, aesthetical and cognitive dimensions of bodily experience in the encounter between visitors and museum spaces. This experience is of a largely pre-reflective nature and gives rise to “sensory thought” according to thinking in art and architecture inspired by phenomenology. For this research, we will use the micro-phenomenological interview method that enables precise descriptions of the pre-reflective dimension of experience, to collect accounts of lived experience of museum spaces and to identify their underlying structure. The research will provide empirical verification of hypotheses formulated in phenomenological writings about architecture.
Updated on 1/12/2016

Participants
Fergus Anderson (Alanus University, Germany)
Hanne Bess Boelsbjerg (University of Copenhagen, Denmark)
Kiku Day (Aarhus University, Denmark)
Karen Gron (Museum director at Trapholt Museum of Modern Art and Design, Denmark)
Emily Hammond (School of Psychology , University of Exeter, UK)
Justin Kelley (Rice University, US)
Anne C. Klein / Rigzin Drolma (Rice University & Dawn Mountain, US)
Eva Kreikenbaum (Basel University Hospital, Basel, Switzerland)
Jennifer Obbard (University of Aberdeen, UK)
Elsa Oliarj Ines (Film maker, Paris)
Kiki Palmer (Kristianstad University, Sweden)
Claire Petitmengin (Archives Husserl, ENS Paris, France)
Bruna Petreca (Royal College of Art, London, UK & Centro Universitário Belas Artes de São Paulo, Brazil)
Mary Rees (Saybrook University, US)
Donata Schoeller (ETH Zurich, Switzerland)
Mette Steenberg (IMC - Aarhus University, Denmark)
Gregory Walkerden (Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia)
Marcus Weisen (ENS Paris, France)
Funding
Self-funding and Interactive Minds Center
Status
Completed
Summary
The goal of the project is to conduct a pilot study on the experience of encountering a work of art. During a one-week workshop (26-30 September 2016), eighteen researchers trained in micro-phenomenological methods visited the exhibition of Olafur Eliasson in the chateau and park of Versailles (June-September 2016), and then made micro-phenomenological descriptions of particularly significant moments of this visit, which resulted in a synthesis document.
Publication
Synthesis document "Touching / Being touched by art".
Updated on 10/3/2017

Participants
PhD student: Bruna Petreca (Royal College of Art)
Supervisors: Prof. Dr. Sharon Baurley (RCA) and Prof. Dr. Nadia Bianchi-Berthouze (UCLIC)
Mode of funding
CNPq – Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico, Ministry for Science and Technology of Brazil (CNPq), within the Science without Borders programme.
Status
Completed (June 2016)
Summary
The textile selection is a crucial part of the design process, for which there is no systematic understanding and no support in place from the designer experience perspective. In the selection, designers need to synthesise technical information, their sensory and affective experience around textiles, and its related meanings. However, currently the textile industry just provides methods to describe, measure, or predict the properties of textiles perceptible to hand manipulation: methods that only partially support the designer. The thesis addresses this gap by contributing new understanding of when and how the textile selection happens in the design process, uncovering tacit processes and embodied aspects integral to it, and secondly, by developing a toolkit to support the designer experience when selecting. The Micro-phenomenology approach was brought in to explore the embodied aspects of textiles selection emerging as significant through my previous studies on tactile experience in more depth, using the ‘Micro-phenomenological Interview’ (Petitmengin, 2006) method to obtain a first-person verbal description of experiential processes. The latter revealed 3 types of touch behaviour and 3 tactile-based phases of the textile selection process, and their dynamics. The findings from the interviews were later used as input for designing ‘The sCrIPT Toolkit’, comprised of instructions that facilitate focus and elaboration of the textile experience in the textiles selection.
Publications
Petreca B. 2016. An understanding of embodied textile selection processes and a toolkit to support them. Thesis. Royal College of Art.
Petreca B., Bianchi-Berthouze N., Baurley S. 2015. How Do Designers Feel Textiles? In: Proceedings ACII’ 15. IEEE.
Updated on 16/01/2017

Participants
Bruna Petreca, Art Direction
Paula Petreca, Direction and choreography
Mode of funding
ProAC – Programa de Ação Cultural da Secretaria da Cultura do Estado de São Paulo, Brasil – (funded through PROAC call 04/2015)
Status
Finished (August 2016)
Summary
The Diptych of The Crowds (“Díptico das Multidões”) is formed by two choreographies (Cosmos & Axis) that investigated the city's lanscapes and the construction of urban bodies, the places of pause and the changes of journey, while asking how "we can be so many and be together, without uniformity."
In this project Bruna Petreca has used micro-phenomenologcal interviews technique as a means to tap into the dancers perceptions and discover means to express these materially collaborating to the dance expression. These interviews served as a basis to develop the concept of the art direction and supported greatly the costume design. Throughout the exchange process, the dancers also revealed that the process supported their own creative process.
Communications about choreographies
http://www.abcdmaior.com.br/materias/cultura/alem-de-batalhas-de-mcs-praca-da-matriz-tambem-e-palco-para-danca
http://idanca.net/projeto-co-estreia-novo-trabalho-em-pracas-do-abc-paulista/
http://www.dgabc.com.br/Noticia/2007493/social-do-diario-danca-na-praca-incentiva-arte-em-santo-andre
https://catracalivre.com.br/sp/spetaculo/barato/satyrianas-2016-danca-circo-e-performance- invadem-roosevelt/
Videos
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-p6R-7tr-o
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7QoxvCfKIk&t=1243s
Updated on 16/01/2017
Olafur Eliasson, Fog assembly, Versailles, 2016
Photo Claire Petitmengin