Experimental Curatorial Space - Phenomenological Aesthetics Experience Environment Simulator

This space is an experimental environment for testing how artworks behave under changing conditions.

The Concept:

Rather than treating artworks as fixed objects with stable meanings, the space treats them as presences whose effects shift according to their surroundings. Light, distance, scale, isolation, adjacency, and sequencing are treated as active variables rather than neutral backdrops.

The goal is not to improve an artwork, explain it, or interpret it, but to modulate the conditions of encounter so that different aspects of attention, perception, and duration can emerge.

What Happens Here:

  • Artworks are placed into a controllable spatial environment
  • Environmental parameters are adjusted manually (spacing, proximity, framing, orientation, sequence)
  • Each adjustment alters how the work is encountered phenomenologically
  • The focus remains on how perception changes, not what the work means

Key Principle:

Nothing in this space claims to produce an optimal experience. It exists to expose sensitivity—how small changes in environment can amplify, mute, distort, or clarify an encounter.

Why This Matters:

Phenomenological aesthetic experience does not arise from the artwork alone. It emerges from the relation between object, space, and attention. This curatorial space makes that relation explicit.

It allows artists, curators, and researchers to explore how conditions shape experience without collapsing that experience into interpretation, judgment, or narrative.

How to Use the Space:

  1. Place an artwork into the environment
  2. Adjust one condition at a time
  3. Observe how perception shifts
  4. Record changes without explaining them

What Makes It Different:

The space does not guide you toward conclusions. It exists to hold the encounter open—making visible how spatial and environmental conditions actively shape what becomes perceptible, memorable, or significant in an encounter with art.

Museum of OneRegistered Archive and Independent Arts Research Institute & Scholarly Publisher
Advancing Post-Interpretive Criticism — a philosophy of art grounded in restraint, presence, and moral proximity.

Dorian Vale · ORCID: 0009-0004-7737-5094 · ISNI: 0000000537155247
ISBN Prefix: 978-1-0698203 · ISSN: 2819-7232 · Registered Publisher: Library & Archives Canada
Contact: research@museumofone.art
Journal: The Journal of Post-Interpretive Criticism
Library: Museum of One Archival Library
Vol. I (978-1-0698203-0-3) · Vol. II (978-1-0698203-1-0) · Canada, 2025
OCLC Numbers: Museum of One (1412305300) · The Journal of Post-Interpretive Criticism (1412468296)

Archived via Zenodo · OSF · E-LIS · AfricArXiv · Zotero Group · LAC · Wayback (All) · Wayback (Snapshot) · Page.HN
Indexed by CORE · BASE · Google Scholar · Archived in Canada & the EU
All works released under CC BY-NC 4.0 · © Museum of One 2025

Museum of One (Q136308879) · The Journal of Post-Interpretive Criticism (Q136530009) · Post-Interpretive Criticism (Q136308909) · Dorian Vale (Q136308916)

Theories: Stillmark · Hauntmark · Absential Aesthetics · Viewer-as-Evidence · Message-Transfer · Aesthetic Displacement · Misplacement · Art as Truth · Aesthetic Recursion