Perception and attention (dir. Jérôme Dokic, Roberto Casati, IJN, CNRS-EHESS-ENS)

Bringing together researchers from the Institute Jean Nicod, LSCP and CRAL, this research devoted to a study of the relationship between perception and allocation of attentional resources will include both experimental studies and conceptual (philosophical) studies. One of the issues of this project is the question of the specificity of the perceptual and attentional processes in the context of our relationship to art and more generally in the context of aesthetic situations. One of the questions which will be addressed is that of the significance and attractiveness of artistic and more generally aesthetic signals in ecologically noisy situations (for example artworks in public space as opposed to artworks in museums). The researchers of the CRAL implicated in this project have already begun an empirical study of the artworks integrated which have been installed along the route of the tram of Paris as well as the artistic interventions of Daniel Buren on the tram of Tours. The aim is a) to understand the attentional conflicts arising out of the copresence of artworks and pragmatically important signals (traffic-lights etc); b) to measure the importance of prior knowledge as a catalyst of artistic attention in a “noisy” (urban) ecology; c) to assess (in the light of a and b) the effectiveness of the policies of the « artification » of publicspace.