Analysis of Emotional Experience related to Sensory Perception of Woven Textiles based in the UK

Abstract

This paper examines how sensory perception can elicit emotional experience to textiles. The Repertory Grid Technique, a qualitative tool, is used to analyse the bi-polar constructs generated by the participants at the time to evaluate the sensory perception of twelve woven textiles. The first section examines and discusses current debates on emotional experience through artefacts, highlighting differences in the terminology used and points of agreement; notably that emotional experience refers to the intangible meanings, associations and connections that an individual transfers onto their object during their relationship. Emotional experience implies that the object has an emotional significance and becomes a vessel for past events and experiences. The second part looks at the evidence generated during the practice-based investigation of this research. A three-domain framework – sensory, cognitive and emotional domains – was created based on the literature review to categorise the bi-polar constructs provided by the participants. The data shows that tactile sense has a higher rate of eliciting emotional experience when evaluating woven textiles.

Keywords

• emotional experience
• sensory perception
• woven textiles
• tactile sense
• visual sense