Light, Information and Perception inside Historical Buildings. A Case Study

Many literature studies demonstrated that technologies belonging to cognitive can be used in museums. Physics, optics, thermodynamics and neurosciences can provide an important support to applied and practical research for lighting our Heritage. In our research we provided a multidisciplinary integrated approach for the of the luminous climate inside a historical building: Villa La Quiete in Florence is the case. The quantitative measurements of the relationship between observer and artworks were, with eye-tracking technique application. The Information Theory, read on a basis, the ergonomy of the multi-perceptive learning and optical physics, were fundamental tools for the assessment of the correct light sources in terms of spectral emission colour light temperature. The eye-tracking technique combined with the results of lighting quantification, allowed checking how the colour of light changes the observer’s, and from the information theory point of view, the communication and interpretation of the signals due to different lighting. At the same time, it was also possible to measure assessing the perceptive data of the visual path, and thus the neg-entropy, the informative of the interaction of light with works of art.