For the inaugural APA Div. 10 Conference (14.03. – 16.03.2024) part of our lab flew all the way to Denton, Texas. Some of us had a smoother travel experience than others but we did make it there and had a fun and interesting couple of days.
The conference took place in the Rayzor Ranch area of Denton which, as we learned from one of our Uber drivers, used to be ranch land owned by a family called Rayzor (could have guessed that from the name..). Instead of Longhorn cows it now mainly houses a sad mix of fast food chains and supermarkets. We did not let this sad looking place deter us from having a great time though (the Texas-shaped waffles at our hotel’s breakfast buffet definitely helped)!
Our contributions to the conference started on Friday with Stephanie Miller talking about classifying Art Experiences.
On Saturday we started with a symposium on everyday aesthetic experiences featuring 1) A more theoretical talk by Eva Specker on conceptualising aesthetic experiences in terms of their breadth, depth and length (check out the corresponding pre-print here), 2) a presentation by Anna Lena Knoll on an experience sampling study investigating experiences of beauty in everyday life (pre-print here), 3) Tristan Barrière’s presentation on a series of eye-tracking studies in different contexts (Donaukanal, Belvedere Museum, Palmenhaus at Schönbrunn). The symposium sadly missed Jan Mikuni’s talk on the impact of artistic urban street interventions on well-being.
Post lunch, Helmut Leder started the afternoon with a keynote talk on taking empirical aesthetics from the lab to real life (featuring pure powerpoint magic, see photo below).
We finished up our contributions to the conference with Eva’s second presentation of the day which explored the potential of everyday aesthetic experiences as an emotion regulation mechanism.
Pre conference we made our way to Dallas and met “our” Texans — incoming PhD student Ava (from San Antonio) and Rebekah (from Houston) who was a visiting PhD student in our lab last year — at Various Small Fires.
On Friday evening and Sunday morning we explored Denton. Unlike the sad grey Rayzor Ranch area, the rest of Denton is a little more colourful. Around the main square in downtown Denton we found more things to do than we possibly could in the limited time we had which meant no live music at Andy’s Bar & Grill for Anna Lena and no brisket at Juicy Pig Barbecue for our meat-eaters. But, we did get some “buff” ice cream at Beth Marie’s Old Fashioned Ice Cream!
(Fort) Worth a trip is the rodeo at the Fort Worth Stockyards. It for sure was an experience but will likely stay a once-in-lifetime thing for all of us. We got to witness the (questionably) “greatest song ever written”, a cowboy getting kicked in the head by his horse (is rodeo really a good sport to participate in when you live in a country with no health insurance?) and a bunch of children racing a calf and the saddest looking sheep ever. For a more lab related experience, do as Helmut did and visit one of the museums — the Kimbell Art Museum, the Modern Art Museum of Forth Worth, and the Carter Museum of American Art seem cool.
We’re looking forward to our next conference adventure which for an even bigger part of the lab will be the IAEA in May, taking place in Palma de Mallorca. We hope to see many new and familiar faces there as well!
Yeehaw!
Texas map drawn by Anna Lena and photos taken by Anna Lena, Eva, Ava, and Tristan.
Music to go along with the trip (bands from or based in Texas)*:
*this is really just Anna Lena taking every chance she can get to force her music taste on everyone