Displacing the art object

: a phenomenological approach to art experience and the impact of digital mediation

Abstract

Art, within the Global North, is mediated through digital means within museums, galleries, art spaces, and online. In contemporary art contexts there is a momentum of growth in the digital mediation of artworks. This trajectory will be increasingly accepted, expected, and prioritised within art experience. This thesis explores the implications of digital mediation for art experience focusing on painting, material installations, and sculpture. It addresses three questions relating to this, asking: how is art experience altered for the seer? What are the ontological impacts for the artwork? What is lost within art experience?
The impacts of digital mediation on art experience are approached through critical analysis of phenomenological literature and first-person art experience. Consistent with phenomenological practice, encounters with artworks are used to explore and demonstrate where aspects of digital mediation occur, and how they manifest in the experience of art. My perspective is grounded in a consideration of art and technology via phenomenology using the work of Martin Heidegger, Paul Virilio, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. The conflicting capacities and characteristics of technology and of art underpin the argument of this thesis. I question which elements of the artwork are altered in the process of digital mediation, how these might become evident, and their significance for the artwork. The research indicates that digital mediation can constrain, or in some cases preclude, the depth and complexity of art experience. While digital platforms may broaden access, they often do so at the expense of qualities intrinsic to embodied and sustained engagement. Art experience, as this study argues, should be recognised and supported as a temporally extended, cognitively and sensorially rich, and self-directed process. With knowledge and awareness of the impacts of digital mediation, audiences and art institutions can make conscious and discerning choices - about if, where, and how they use digital mediation. Associated content, that is mediated, can be selected and presented with greater priority for the experience of the artwork itself. Digital strategies published by museums and galleries could include priorities for art experience.
This subject would benefit further from empirical studies of user perceptions in relation to the development of new digital platforms as they are adopted within art contexts. Any studies of this kind might integrate a consideration of the power relations for the user, the art institution, the artist, the artwork, and the technology provider. Further analysis could highlight the changing priorities of users and platform developers against an understanding of art according to pre-existing theories of art experience.

Date of Award	Mar 2026
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Brighton
Supervisor	Megha Rajguru (Supervisor) & Tom Hickey (Supervisor)