AccScience Publishing / AC / Volume 2 / Issue 4 / DOI: 10.36922/ac.2367
ARTICLE

Communicating the dialog between painting and music with a mobile application

Maria Vayanou1,2* Angeliki Chrysanthi3 Eirini Pirpasou1 Angeliki Antoniou4 Akrivi Katifori2
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1 Content Management in Culture P.C., Athens, Greece
2 Department of Informatics and Telecommunications, Faculty of Science, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens, Greece
3 Department of Cultural Technology and Communication, School of Social Sciences, University of the Aegean, Mytilene, Greece
4 Department of Archival, Library and Information Studies, School of Administrative, Economics and Social Sciences, University of West Attica, Egaleo, Greece
Submitted: 4 December 2023 | Accepted: 19 February 2024 | Published: 22 October 2024
© 2024 by the Author(s). This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution -Noncommercial 4.0 International License (CC-by the license) ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ )
Abstract

Contemporary visual artists often collaborate with musicians and composers to enrich their artworks and provide multisensory viewing experiences by leveraging the power of digital technology. In this paper, we present our approach to follow in their footsteps by creating a mobile application that provides “mixed-media interpretations” for a variety of visual artworks and music pieces, spanning over different time eras, with the objective to reflect the creative dialog and multifaceted interaction between their creators through time. Targeting the broader public, we attempt to capture a variety of interconnections between works of visual arts and music that may be of interest and are comprehensible to people with varying levels of knowledge on art or music, including not only inspirational but also personal and social relationships among the artists. We provide a six-layered conceptual model to ease the description of the content produced to that end while reporting several concrete examples. Then, we focus on how to communicate and digitally mediate the intertwined and often intricate interconnections in a concise way, proposing a “three-act” story scheme to progressively display short narratives on screen, combined with music reproduction on the mobile device. Finally, we explore the potential of the proposed approach through a user study with 15 participants and report a series of promising key findings, whereas also discussing future directions and pointing out open issues.

Keywords
Art
Music
Cultural experience
Mobile devices
Digital technologies
Funding
This research was co‐financed by the European Union and Greek national funds through the Operational Program Competitiveness, Entrepreneurship, and Innovation, under the call RESEARCH–CREATE–INNOVATE (project EPETAI code: T2EDK-05135).
Conflict of interest
The authors declare they have no competing interests.
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Arts & Communication, Electronic ISSN: 2972-4090 Published by AccScience Publishing