Apart from artistic assignments, such as painting or modelling, and the reflection of one’s own artistic works and process, art education contains another field of action – the reception of artworks and images. Concerning the reception of art, the main goals that are pursued within arts education are, among others, the cultural education of students and generating ideas for future practical assignments (Peez, 2018). The methodology for art reception regarding primary and secondary education (Regel, 1986; Schmidt, 2016; Uhlig, 2005) as well as the importance of this field of action in art education (Busse, 2014) are very well discussed. Therefore, this paper focuses on another aspect that has a significant impact on the process of the reception at school: The different media carriers with which the artworks are viewed.

Teachers often don’t have the possibility to enable their students to see the original of every discussed artwork. Various factors are causing this, for example the tight schedule in school or the location of the original artworks. Therefore, students often encounter artworks through other media carriers like photographs, slide presentation or digital facsimile (Reymond et al., 2020). The history of the relationship between art classes and the media used to display these artworks shows, that the two aspects are strongly connected. According to Tietenberg (1999), the Fine Arts could only establish itself as an academic discipline because of the developments in the display of visual media. With today’s variety of different media carriers, one cannot longer dichotomise with regard to the original artwork and its technical facsimile. Rather the result of the expansion can be described as a matrix of original, analog and digital media, whose qualities and the effect on the reception differ from each other (Hubard, 2007). With the development of multi touch screens used for example for tablets and the resulting new natural user face, this matrix is being extended once more.

The basis for a conscious decision which media carrier is used to show artworks to students, should not be the equipment of the respective schools, but rather a didactical consideration. The aim of the study is to develop a model with which the different media carriers and their qualities can be classified. Due to their technical topicality, the focus lies on tablets and their use in classes. For this purpose, the tablet’s qualities regarding the reception process will be compared to the more common media carriers that are currently used – digital projection – and the original.

With recourse to the models that explain the process of art reception it becomes clear that the majority of the reception process dependents on the learning group as the individual elements depend on mutual exchange between students with regard to their experience, perception, and connection to their individual position (Schmidt, 2016). Merely the initial encounter with the artwork is an element which solely relies on the relationship between the object and its observer. They engage in an equal dialogue (Kemp, 1985) which is shaped by the media carrier. Instead of trying to capture the whole process of art reception and to factor out the respective differences between the learning groups, the study focuses on the initial encounter and the differences in the dialogue between the spectators and the artwork. 

In conclusion, the study tries to shine a light on the topic of educational chances that may occur in the process of the initial encounter with artworks and the difference in reception between tablets and other media carriers. This empirical study is comparing three classes, who each view the same artwork with a different media carrier.

To approach the understanding and analysis of a systematic model of the qualities of different media carriers in the initial encounter with artworks, the different goals of the element need to be categorized first. For this study, the literature-based categories which emerged are the following: 1. Establishing the dialogue with the aesthetic object (Kemp, 1985; Regel, 1986; Uhlig, 2005) 2. Recognizing the cultural embeddedness of the work (Barth, 1985; Otto, 1983) 3. Possibilities for aesthetic experience (Dewey, 1934; Seel, 2013) 4. Inspiration for own artistic projects (Peez, 2018) 5. Change in attitude and action (Hooper-Greenhill, 2004) The research design of the study is based on a mixed methods approach to allow a multidimensional look on the different categories. One week before the initial encounter with the artwork, the participants completed a structured questionnaire to determine their presupposition and experiences regarding artworks for the fifth category. The questionnaire was repeated directly after the encounter and consisted of both items with a 6-point likert scale and open-ended questions. During the encounter the participants were observed according to the aspects of the fourth category, which were rated on seven ordinal scaled aspects. Meanwhile, the participants filled out a worksheet that queries aspects from the first and second category. By using free-text questions, the answers can firstly be used to develop a nominal and ordinal scaled category grid, and furthermore, the participants' focus can be worked out on the basis of the percentage document area. To give further depth to the study, individual participants were interviewed afterwards on the process itself and further aspects, that may not be covered with the five categories. The interviews were analyzed using Mayrings’ (2008) summary content analysis method. The design was tested during a pilot phase with nine participants half a year before the larger study (n = 64) was carried out in the seventh grade (age 12 to 13). Every one of the three classes got the same question and the same basic conditions, only the media carrier differed. Similarity of these basic conditions was ensured by selecting three classes from the same school, taught by the same teacher, and by having the exact same work assignment. It should be noted that both the instruments of the study and the declaration of consent of the study participants were reviewed by the Ethics Board of the University of Paderborn and found to be unobjectionable.

The main expected outcome of this study is a verified model to determine different media carriers and their qualities for the art reception in school. For the first run, tablets and the natural user interface in general are focused in order to integrate them into the matrix of already existing possibilities, such as projectors or the original per se. An important consideration is that due to the different categories this study relies on, there cannot be one media carrier that is generally better than the others. The results of the study are currently being deliberated. Based on the literature, there are some assumptions, that will be tested against the findings of the study. The original artwork for example is an item with a unique historicity (Blunck, 2011), where maybe the formation process and age are more visible because unlike the digital facsimile it is a real object. If this hypothesis can be reproduced, the participants who view the original should have longer and more in-depth answers regarding the aspect of working out information about the time of creation of the artwork. Reproductions on the other hand have the function of being communication tools because they allow unrestricted access to the visual memory (Weissert, 2011). The results are expected to show qualities for different goals for art education. Depending on the didactical decision, the model should serve as a guide for teachers, for example by determining whether or not an excursion to the original artwork is necessary or if the resources should be utilized for another reception.

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