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Tristan Barrière 

Empirical Visual Aesthetics Lab, University of Vienna

Aesthetic experiences are a fundamental part of our lives, shaping how we perceive the world and influencing our wellbeing. Although deeply personal, these experiences universally affect mood, attention, and physiology. While often associated with nature or art, they can also be elicited by mundane, everyday objects. Although preferences for natural over urban scenes are common, the underlying mechanisms remain unclear. Urbanization further complicates this, as noise, crowding, and pollution can disrupt positive aesthetic experiences. Conversely, urban green spaces and art may mitigate these stressors by fostering wellbeing; however, research directly comparing nature and art in this context is lacking. Furthermore, aesthetic research has traditionally focused on laboratory settings, missing the real-world dynamics essential to daily life. My project aims to determine whether aesthetic experiences are measurable in everyday life and how they influence our lives. Through the use of a multi-method design—combining eye-tracking, physiological and subjective measures, and mobile imaging—we investigate how environmental content, context, and setting moderate both the experience and its effects. We compare a variety of real-world contexts with laboratory settings to gain a holistic understanding of how aesthetic experiences manifest in real-world contexts.