About iMEMA

What Does Art Mean to People?

This is a question that has many answers, depending on whom you ask.

  • Museums are constantly searching for the best way to present their collection. They might even want to offer their visitors personalised experiences.

  • Individual art lovers like to know more about their own experiences. And perhaps they like to compare these experiences and share them with others.

  • Artists want to know about the effect of their art on audiences. Some may also pursue ways to integrate their own experience in the creative process.

How can we talk about artistic experiences in a way that meets all these needs? What if there was a tool that could add a new layer of awareness to the meaning of art?

We want to conduct an all-around exploration of what ‘experiencing’ entails, by applying novel insights about meaning-making from social sciences and humanities, and state-of-the-art measurement technology.

Our Mission

We aim to measure and interpret behaviour, physiological responses, subjective feelings about art, and more.

We set out to deliver an open-source, flexible, modular, and user-friendly interface that allows individuals, artists, museums, and other stakeholders to acquire customised insights into what art means to them and their friends, to buyers or audiences, to peer groups or visitors, and even to patients or students.

Our Approach

Digital times call for the application of digital tools.

This means using digital techniques for the measurement of artistic experiences, providing relevant feedback to various users, and the ethical use of data.

It also means including new media art forms and digitised artworks and collections that are experienced virtually rather than in physical space.

Our unique value propositions

  • iMEMA is a flexible, multimodal, and safe toolbox for collecting, storing and sharing art experiences, based on the latest technology and insights about measuring, data processing, and meaning-making.

  • Tailored to a particular context and art form of choice, and available when it matters to people.

  • Supporting all people in answering the question ‘what art means’ to them, instead of answering this question for them.

  • Supporting an engaging, diverse, and accessible art discourse in society.

  • For professionals, to create new ways of making, selecting, and presenting artworks and performances, and new ways of engaging with audiences.

  • For researchers, to study the impact of art on individuals, audiences, and society.

  • For future generations, to benefit from the time capsules of art experience and meaning-making.