Creative engagement and meaning creation: A first experimental protocol on interactive cultural experiences for conservation data

Abstract

This paper presents a study conducted in the framework of the PERCEIVE project, which focuses on fostering a “caring attitude” towards Art collections threatened by the phenomenon of colour change. “Sense of care” is indeed shown to exist only if there is a relationship between caregiver and care-receiver and can be elicited using specific triggers, such as “hooks” based on users' curiosity starting from a “knowledge gap”. As art practices are proved to elicit transformation in users' behaviours, this article starts from the assumption that visitors' artistic engagement could be also applied in interactive applications to improve visitors' caring attitude. We hence describe an experimental protocol for a first qualitative evaluation of a “caring prototype”, which pursues this goal, focusing on Matisse's Bathers by a River as case study, starting from conservation data. The results show the potentiality of this approach as new participatory strategy towards conservation data.