Features of New Media Art Aesthetic Experience among Psychology and Design Students

Background. There is a growing digitalisation of the art sphere and the use of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to create works of New Media art. The process of interaction with them leads to the actualisation of unique aesthetic experience among specialists of different professions when they view it, which currently remains outside the scope of psychological research. Objectives. The research aims to study the features of the aesthetic experience which is a result of the process of perceiving advertising as the art of New Media and paintings made in classical painting techniques among psychology and design students. Study Participants. A total of 233 people aged 16 to 31 participated in the study (Mage = 19.2; SD = 3.08), including 101 students from the Moscow Institute of Psychoanalysis and 132 designers from the Moscow City Open College. Methods. The experimental methods were used in the study, as well as the following psychodiagnostics tools: “The Aesthetic Emotions Scale”, “The Aesthetic Judgments Scale”, and “The Aesthetic Experience Questionnaire” by H. Egermann and F. Reuben in our modification. The Friedman and Wilcoxon tests were used to analyse quantitative data. Results. Student psychologists have more intense epistemic emotions when it comes to AI-generated advertising images and images created by a designer using works by a contemporary artist. Student designers distinguish between AI-generated advertising images, unlike psychology students. Advertising images as part of New Media art are assessed by psychology students as less understandable, lacking originality and expressiveness, designed in worse quality and causing stronger negative emotions in comparison with paintings. Design students assess advertising images as less interesting and arousing, designed with less skill, more typical, and less meaningful in comparison with paintings. Conclusions. The research revealed the features of the actualisation of AE among design and psychology students while viewing New Media art and paintings by contemporary artists. The data obtained demonstrate the integration of configuration of the specialist’s personal profile into the cognitive component of the system-dynamic model of the AE.