Museology 4.0 and Emotional Responses to Works of Art

Project
Exploitation of artificial intelligence for the extraction of emotional characteristics in works of art for the elaboration of artistic exhibition paths in virtual reality

Summary
The creation of museum experiences are currently based on traditional approaches that call upon the content of the museum's repertoire of works, the expertise of the curators, and the theme envisaged for the exhibition. There is call for museums to innovate and provide curators with tools that could assist the process of design in creating museum exhibitions that can, for instance, evoke various emotions in visitors (e.g., fear, sadness or joy). This project aims at exploiting technologies and expert knowledge from artificial intelligence (AI), computer vision, virtual reality, museology and cognitive psychology to develop a tool capable of recommending to the curator a set of works of art that evoke the desired array of emotional responses and allowing them to visualize various exhibition design scenarios in a virtual environment. Such a system will allow our partners - OVA and the Musée national des Beaux-Arts du Québec (MNBAQ) - to innovate in information technologies and museology and to create new strategic alliances, thus contributing to the economic and cultural development in Quebec and in Canada through the creation of new markets and the dissemination of new museum approaches.