Aesthetic experience and meaning-making process in participatory arts

With the changes and transformations that art is undergoing, aesthetic experience and the process of producing meaning appear as concepts that are questioned and given new meanings. Different, new forms of expression in art require these concepts to be re-examined and handled from different angles. This is also the case for participatory art, which is very popular today. Participatory art refers to a process in which the role of the viewer changes, where he/she changes from passive to active, where he/she is involved in the production of the work together with the artist, where he/she can intervene or be exposed, and where he/she produces meanings as a result of this experience. The aesthetic experience experienced in this process corresponds to a different experience from the aesthetic experience traditionally handled. A traditional experience based on formalist and pure beauty has been replaced by an experience based on participation and creation. The viewer is now a participant and has more influence on the work. This state of participation can reveal different dimensions of the experience. In this research, it was tried to capture the essence of the aesthetic experience and meaning-making process experienced with participation, that is, the aesthetic experience and meaning-making process experienced with participation, by investigating how the aesthetic experience and meaning-making process in participatory arts is realized. For this purpose, the purposive sampling method was used and a participatory art activity was carried out with two different groups, university students receiving art education and participants from the public, with a total of 44 participants. After the event, the participants were interviewed with a semi-structured interview form and their opinions about this experience were taken. Phenomenological method, one of the qualitative research methods, was used in the study, and descriptive phenomenology was preferred in order to highlight the views of the participants while analyzing the interviews. As a result of the research, it was seen that the aesthetic experience in participatory arts has a cognitive structure in terms of creating thoughts, prompting questioning, contributing to the individual; emotional in terms of feeling good, enjoying, arousing curiosity, being different, interesting; actional in terms of being a part of the experience, mobilizing, being effective; and social in terms of providing social interaction and creating awareness. When we look at the meaning-making process, even though the subjects chosen by the participants during the experience and the expressions related to them were different, and even though plural meanings were produced in this sense, both a cognitive and emotional process was involved in producing meaning, and they produced meanings with social content. While producing these meanings, the participants especially emphasized two starting points, meanings aimed at giving messages about social problems and meanings originating from their own experiences. Although there were differences between the two different groups in the research, namely university students studying art and participants from the public, in terms of the subjects they chose in expressing the experience and producing meaning, it was seen that they were essentially oriented towards the same starting points and their opinions pointed to the same components. How the results of this research will yield different results in different places with different participant groups is suggested as an open area for further research.