In search of whether it is possible and what the differences are between mediated and unmediated art experiences, the research question which has been formulated is 'how art is experience?', what makes an art experience meaningfull' and 'what conditions have to be met to make it meaningful'. 

Starting point in this research has been several sources, from overmediated art exhibitions, to the question how unmediated is defined: 'reducing the mediation of an aesthetic experience'. 

Mediated art concerns especially passive visitors, as mediation refers to the power/influence/impact on shaping the perception of art. 

Underlying the general fascination with art is a unique experience. When individuals describe art or explain why they go to museums, most often they refer to a complex mix of psychological events (Pelowski and Akiba, 2011). Art viewing results in a myriad of emotions. Reactions can differ greatly between individuals and settings (mediated and 'unmediated'), and between experts and novices.

Psychological models looking into art experience generally have three main components: (1) inputs that feed into experience. These might include personality of the viewer, social or cultural setting, backgrounds, as well as the specific artwork and its history (Bullot and Reber, 2013); (2) processing mechanisms; and (3) mental and behavioral consequences (outputs) that arise from processing art.

=> how is art experienced? what is a meaningful art experience?  which conditions make them meaningful? => which affects are influenced and why? is there a difference in affects between 'experts' and 'novices'? is it possible to grasp an experience without learned understanding? 

Context of these questions are formed by contemporary art/curating/education. 

Art has the capability to influence basic aspects of affect. This can come from: (1) Affect, specific emotions/moods evoked by content or derived from the act of viewing; and (2) Actions, for example gesture, eye movement, or physical movement during art reception.

Art also has been connected to numerous aspects of perception and understanding (Leder et al., 2004), including: (3) Appraisals or particular judgments (beauty, liking); (4) Meaning-making as well as ability to strengthen conceptions, help us to learn, challenge our ideas, or even lead to insight. (6) Novelty: Art can impact what we see, induce changes in visual or perceptual experience involving new attention to physical aspects.

There are also elements which are more art-specific, or which are particularly salient in reports of art experience: (6) Transcendence: feelings of more sudden change, epiphany, or catharsis (Pelowski and Akiba, 2011); (7) Aesthetic mode: “aesthetic” emotions and responses, which might involve a state of being, whereby one detaches or uncouples from concerns or everyday life perceptions, often related to periods of contemplation or harmonious enjoyment, as well as potential positive reaction to negatively-valenced or troubling art (Cupchik et al., 2009). (8) Negative affect: Art can also evoke negative reactions such as disgust, queasiness or anger—outcomes that particularly require an explanation in models of experience (Silvia, 2009).

John Dewey (Art as Experience) distinguishes between experience in general and "an" experience. Experience occurs continually, as we are always involved in the process of living, but it is often interrupted and inchoate, with conflict and resistance. Much of the time we are not concerned with the connection of events but instead there is a loose succession, and this is non-aesthetic. Experience, however, is not an experience.

An experience occurs when a work is finished in a satisfactory way, a problem solved, a game is played through, a conversation is rounded out, and fulfillment and consummation conclude the experience. In an experience, every successive part flows freely. An experience has a unity and episodes fuse into a unity, as in a work of art. The experience may have been something of great or just slight importance.

Such an experience has its own individualizing quality. An experience is individual and singular; each has its own beginning and end, its own plot, and its own singular quality that pervades the entire experience. The final import is intellectual, but the occurrence is emotional as well. Aesthetic experience cannot be sharply marked off from other experiences, but in an aesthetic experience, there is completeness and unity and necessarily emotion. Emotion is the moving and cementing force.

There is no one word to combine "artistic" and "aesthetic," unfortunately, but "artistic" refers to the production, the doing and making, and "aesthetic" to appreciating, perceiving, and enjoying. 

Timotheus Vermeulen defines aesthetics as a dimension of experience; a dimension that engages with the world around us on the level of visual form, acoustic form, touch, or otherwise. Importantly, vermeulen continues: aesthetic experience is above all an affective experience! It is - according to vermeulen - a sensation of resonance. 

One of the artists on the research catalogue - C. J. Hollins - explores the idea of art experience as follows: 

'What I am trying to grasp here is a way of sensing that our powers of recognition work to stop us experiencing when we look at any object or event. For this reason I will not be describing the art experience as a procedure that sets out to impose an idea upon an end result; like the story in a book, or recording social interaction through film, or any other media. My position is that, to come to know the art experience, you have to learn to sense any object or event without any idea about what confronts you. '

Perception underlies meaning-making. Art Education is about meaning and value we attach to them, based on perceptual experiences (White, 1998)