Phygital Curation - Embodied Experiences
(2024) KOVM12 20241Division of Art History and Visual Studies
- Abstract
- This thesis examines users’ responses to immersive art installations and the curatorial challenges of exhibiting such hybrid, “phygital” forms. It asks:
How do the virtual worlds created by Danish artist Jakob Kudsk Steensen evoke emotional responses and empathy, shaping users’ understanding of the world?
How do exhibition design and curatorial aesthetics influence users’ embodied encounters with these digital environments, and what challenges arise in translating the artist’s virtual universe into physical space?
The research combines content and exhibition analysis with field studies, interviews, and phenomenological observation, drawing on theories of Semiotics, Animism, Empathy, and the Sublime. The study positions “Phygital... (More) - This thesis examines users’ responses to immersive art installations and the curatorial challenges of exhibiting such hybrid, “phygital” forms. It asks:
How do the virtual worlds created by Danish artist Jakob Kudsk Steensen evoke emotional responses and empathy, shaping users’ understanding of the world?
How do exhibition design and curatorial aesthetics influence users’ embodied encounters with these digital environments, and what challenges arise in translating the artist’s virtual universe into physical space?
The research combines content and exhibition analysis with field studies, interviews, and phenomenological observation, drawing on theories of Semiotics, Animism, Empathy, and the Sublime. The study positions “Phygital Curation – Embodied Experiences” as a bridge between traditional exhibition practices and contemporary multisensory experiences, exploring how bodily perception guides meaning-making within immersive digital art.
Analysing Steensen’s works, such as Tongues of Verglas, Liminal Lands, and RE-ANIMATED, the thesis finds that his art reanimates endangered ecologies and challenges modernity’s divide between nature and culture. Through animation and animism, his installations foster empathy and moral awareness toward non-human entities. Observations reveal that most participants reported distinct bodily sensations and emotional engagement, suggesting that immersive art can trigger moral and sensory reconnection with nature.
The study concludes that Steensen’s phygital environments expand curatorial practice beyond display toward experience design — demanding new terminologies, interdisciplinary understanding, and attentiveness to how digital-physical aesthetics shape user perception. Ultimately, the research proposes that the convergence of art, science, and immersive technology holds the potential to cultivate new forms of subjectivity and awareness in the face of ecological crisis. (Less) - Popular Abstract
- Phygital Curation: Embodied Experiences explores how immersive art can reconnect us to empathy, awareness, and the living world. Focusing on the digital universes of Danish artist Jakob Kudsk Steensen, the research examines how virtual environments evoke bodily and emotional responses and how curators can shape these experiences in physical space. Through this lens, the study argues that curators act as mediators between the digital and the tangible — designing encounters that deepen our relationship with nature and with each other in a time of ecological urgency.
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
http://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/9214575
- author
- Fernsten Nilén, Anna LU
- supervisor
- organization
- alternative title
- Phygital Curation - Embodied Experiences, A multimethodological exploration of meaning-making process, curatorial considerations and embodiment in Jakob Kudsk Steensen's immersive installations.
- course
- KOVM12 20241
- year
- 2024
- type
- H2 - Master's Degree (Two Years)
- subject
- keywords
- Immersive installations, Phygital, Semiotics, Animism, Embodiment, Empathy, Phenomenological observation
- language
- English
- id
- 9214575
- date added to LUP
- 2025-11-18 14:30:03
- date last changed
- 2025-11-18 14:30:03
@misc{9214575,
abstract = {{This thesis examines users’ responses to immersive art installations and the curatorial challenges of exhibiting such hybrid, “phygital” forms. It asks:
How do the virtual worlds created by Danish artist Jakob Kudsk Steensen evoke emotional responses and empathy, shaping users’ understanding of the world?
How do exhibition design and curatorial aesthetics influence users’ embodied encounters with these digital environments, and what challenges arise in translating the artist’s virtual universe into physical space?
The research combines content and exhibition analysis with field studies, interviews, and phenomenological observation, drawing on theories of Semiotics, Animism, Empathy, and the Sublime. The study positions “Phygital Curation – Embodied Experiences” as a bridge between traditional exhibition practices and contemporary multisensory experiences, exploring how bodily perception guides meaning-making within immersive digital art.
Analysing Steensen’s works, such as Tongues of Verglas, Liminal Lands, and RE-ANIMATED, the thesis finds that his art reanimates endangered ecologies and challenges modernity’s divide between nature and culture. Through animation and animism, his installations foster empathy and moral awareness toward non-human entities. Observations reveal that most participants reported distinct bodily sensations and emotional engagement, suggesting that immersive art can trigger moral and sensory reconnection with nature.
The study concludes that Steensen’s phygital environments expand curatorial practice beyond display toward experience design — demanding new terminologies, interdisciplinary understanding, and attentiveness to how digital-physical aesthetics shape user perception. Ultimately, the research proposes that the convergence of art, science, and immersive technology holds the potential to cultivate new forms of subjectivity and awareness in the face of ecological crisis.}},
author = {{Fernsten Nilén, Anna}},
language = {{eng}},
note = {{Student Paper}},
title = {{Phygital Curation - Embodied Experiences}},
year = {{2024}},
}