Blog
23.10.2025
Science Communication - Bridging Cultural Studies and Technology at the Forschungsfest (Research Festival)
We were delighted to take part in the Research Festival of Lower Austria, where we had the opportunity to present our project to a broad and diverse audience. The atmosphere at the Palais NÖ was fantastic - more than 1,500 visitors attended, full of curiosity and enthusiasm. All around us, children were eagerly dashing from booth to booth, answering the questions of the festival’s quiz rally. At our stand, hosted by Matthias Husinsky from FH St. Pölten and Luitgard Voller from the OrDiV team, visitors could get hands-on experience and, just like the participants in our study, virtually explore expressionist paintings using a VR headset. It was wonderful to see how many people came specifically to our booth; at times, there was even a queue forming, which we took as especially rewarding feedback.
For several visitors, it was their first-ever experience in virtual reality, and it was a joy to accompany them as they moved from initial caution to growing confidence and full immersion. The sense of wonder was tangible: people were amazed by the immersive effect and by how quickly the high level of detail made them feel truly present in a real space, only to realize with surprise that the walls and paintings they saw couldn’t actually be touched.
Some visitors already knew the original exhibition room from the Belvedere Museum, which added another layer of fascination. Matthias offered a detailed explanation of the making-of process - from scanning the physical space and artworks to modelling, shading, lighting, and rendering the finished virtual twin. It was no less exciting to highlight and explain our research question, to discuss preliminary assumptions of our findings across generations, to philosophize about the major questions surrounding authenticity of art in the post-digital age, and to share our experiences from the data collection process.
Being part of the Research Festival and taking our first steps in science communication was both a personally enriching experience and a valuable opportunity to promote transparency, make our research visible, and engage with the public.
14.10.2025
The OrDiV team reached a major milestone
We have successfully completed the second and final part of our data collection. As in the first round (see blogpost below), visitors to the Upper Belvedere engaged with the same seven artworks that were at the center of the previous study phase, this time within a new reception context: using a smartphone with an augmented reality application or through a headset in virtual reality. The VR-twin was developed by Matthias Husinsky and his team from the University of Applied Sciences in St. Pölten.
A big thank-you to the 260 visitors who took part - your commitment makes this research project possible. From everyone who entered the giveaway, winners have now been chosen and will receive the latest Belvedere catalogues (in German and English) - congratulations!
09.07.2025
OrDiV Expert Workshop
Bringing together diverse academic disciplines requires more than just collaboration, it calls for intentional time to connect, exchange insights, and solve problems in real time. That’s exactly what our interdisciplinary OrDiV team achieved during a two-day, all-hands workshop and team-building session. Researchers from the National Institute of Mental Health in Prague, the University of Vienna, the University of Applied Sciences St. Pölten, and the University of Tübingen gathered at our project lead’s home base at the University of Continuing Education Krems. Over coffee and snacks, we shared updates on our latest findings, experienced challenges, the status quo of the OrDiV initiative, and potential joint future research.
The day culminated in a collaborative working group session led by research assistant Luitgard Voller, who curated selected excerpts from participant transcripts. Team members rotated through stations to analyse recurring themes — such as emotion sharing, physical vs. digital context and aura and authenticity. It was a rare and valuable opportunity to engage with qualitative data side-by-side, hearing participants’ reflections on both original and digital art experiences. Together, we identified emerging patterns and unpacked their implications for our core research questions and overarching thesis.
On the second day of our OrDiV Expert Workshop, we gathered at the Belvedere Research Center to continue our presentations, this time with a stronger focus on technology. Temenuzhka Dimova shared her work on the Chirolens app, developed as part of her research into hand gestures in museum paintings. Ava Alvarez then introduced us to the digital and VR context designs that shape her PhD studies, while visiting PhD student Maximilian Molitor presented his project on museal VR replicas and the insights he's gained about virtual reality’s role in the art experience.
After a delicious lunch at a nearby spot, we made our way to the Upper Belvedere to experience our OrDiV VR twin exhibition in person. It was a truly special moment to step into the space together and see our collaborative efforts take immersive form.
02.06.2025
Conferencing - One of Our Favorite Hobbies
In addition to data collection, data processing, and our everyday project work, we also present OrDiV at various academic conferences. You can follow our dissemination activities under the section Conference Contributions.
Our most recent contribution was made by Johanna Aufreiter and Hanna Brinkmann with their presentation "Between Original and Reproduction: Experiencing Art in the Post-Digital Age", delivered at the annual conference Mai Tagung – Museums and the Internet on May 15, 2025. This year, the event took place at the Max Ernst Museum in Brühl and - as always - brought together professionals from small, medium, and large museums across Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.
While the in-person spots quickly sold out, an additional one hundred participants joined online. Alongside many inspiring presentations, networking and a visit to the museum were also key components of the event. We were given a guided tour of the current special exhibition "Hypercreatures." The outstanding exhibition not only explored hybrid creatures, but also addressed post-digital artistic practices - making it a perfect thematic fit for our project.
18.12.2024
Data Collection Part One
After 8 weeks of onsite data collection, we have completed our first round of participant recruitment. Four of our OrDiV team members spoke to more than 200 visitors of the Upper Belvedere who characterized their experience of the seven Austrian modernist artworks in our study. Stationed within the Marble Hall, our team was able to bring their diverse areas of expertise to engage with visitors and participants from all different types of art experience backgrounds. Ava, art historian and PhD candidate in empirical visual aesthetics, Ellice, exhibitions design academic rooted in the negotiation of decolonialization processes, and Lui, cultural anthropologist along with project intern Alicia, master student at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands.
Equipped with mobile eye trackers, participants engaged with seven artworks in one exhibition room. After experiencing the art either in an original or digital condition, participants were able to share their personal insights during their viewing as well as perception anecdotes via semi structured interviews. Furthermore, a week after their visit to the Belvedere and engagement in our project, participants complete a follow up questionnaire where they can recount what they recall from their experience.
Initial reflections on the collected interview material suggest the digital viewing experience to be perceived as rather “normal” in a post digital society whereas still serving as a surface to project and grasp on the other hand the essence of originality. This is of course only one aspect of the art experience and thus we are now looking forward to going ahead with data preparation and analysis.
Above all we would like to extend a big thank you to everyone who shared their time, impressions as well as very moving stories with us by taking part in our study!
11.07.2024
How to VAIAK
"I enjoyed visiting art class in school." This is one of several statements to rate and questions to answer when completing the VAIAK. The Vienna Art Interest and Knowledge Questionnaire, developed and validated by Eva Specker, Matthew Pelowski, Hanna Brinkmann, et al., measures one or both dimensions of art interest and art knowledge. Rather than differentiating between experts and laypeople, the VAIAK assesses participants' general approach to art. Therefore, we incorporated the VAIAK into our study’s questionnaire.
Completing the VAIAK is somewhat like taking a quiz on art history, but what about the reverse? In a "How to VAIAK" workshop, Eva Specker introduced the OrDiV project associates Ava and Lui to the data structure and explained the analysis of the results in R. Our projectpartner Eva Specker is researcher at the department of cognition, emotion and methods in psychology at the University of Vienna where she runs her FWF project “Everyday Aesthetics Lab” affiliated at the department’s Evalabs. She guided us through the scripts provided on the open-access platform OSF and reported her findings from additional qualitative analysis of the answers, aiming to understand the underlying process as to how participants respond. Furthermore, Specker pointed out that parts B and C of the three-part questionnaire depict the Western canon (based on what is taught in many art history classes) but could be modified to match other traditions in future iterations.
For those interested in delving deeper into the subject, check out https://osf.io/88d2d/.
29.05.204
Lab-Visit University of Applied Sciences St. Pölten
In order to answer our research question, the OrDiV project has had to assemble a team of thinkers across sectors. Our transdisciplinary group is comprised of Art Historians, Cognitive Psychologists, Curators, and Digital Technologists. The partners in charge of producing, designing, and coding the virtual reality condition component is headed by Matthias Husinksy from the esteemed Department of Media and Digital Technologies at the University of Applied Sciences St. Pölten. Last week our three tech savvy collaborators, Matthias, Julian and Ramon hosted a hands-on meet and greet with the potential technology we will be using for the project. The St. Pölten team had previously scanned the exhibition room to create the VR twin simulation and brought us up to speed to the potentials and capacity their software might be able to provide for the study. As we tried on a myriad of headsets and stepped into virtual scenes, for those of us who are not frequent climbers of the VR landscapes, we leveraged a greater sense of what this condition might look like and feel like to our participants. What began as an informative site visit also ended up being a great team building activity.
16.04.2024
Kick-Off Meeting at Belvedere
OrDiV’s national research partner, the Belvedere, has been a pioneer in sharing their collection in digital formats. Through their esteemed research center, this world class museum has provided an expansive overview of 800 years of art, film, music, and architecture on their website in a free, open, and linked access fashion. The Belvedere Research Center is headed by Christian Huemer, an art historian whose research focuses on the international art market, collecting patterns, French and Austrian Modernism, and digital art presentations. Along with Johanna Aufreiter, art historian and scientific project coordinator at the Belvedere Research Center, and Ellice Jachek, OrDiV’s project associate with a background in exhibition design, Huemer hosted the OrDiV project team at the Belvedere 21 for our kick-off-meeting.
After the welcome by the project lead Hanna Brinkmann, Huemer provided an overview of the missions of the BRC as well as how their work is shaping ongoing discourse about the digitization of cultural heritage. Their cohort of art aficionados and scientists document, trace, index, and study Austrian art in an international context. In addition, their team has created innovative and exciting interactions to view artworks in augmented reality as well as through forensic imaging. Thus bridging the rich collections of the Belvedere and various external projects the Belvedere Research Center constitutes a hub where scientific research and museum practice merge. They essentially support our research aim opening their exhibition spaces to investigate alongside the museum’s visitors how the engagement with art can be experienced and perceived within the context of different media. In sum, our insightful kick-off-meeting at the Belvedere 21 offered us a beautiful view on our research project, compounded by the divergent perspectives that form our team.
