lesson 4: psychology and art - close encounters of a strange kind or a match made in heaven?

wilhelm diltey

• natural sciences

• humanities

natural sciences

explaining general laws of nature (erklären)

o External forces, invariant principles, repeatable

humanities

understanding humankind and complex phenomena resulting from interactions between humans such as history, culture and religion (verstehen)

o Total experience, not to be reduced to a small number of factors isolated in the lab, essentially non-repeatable

Snow

the 2 cultures”

-        Humanities <> sciences and engineering

-        Arts <> sciences

-        Arts engagement and aesthetic experience <> experimental aesthetics, computational aesthetics, neuro-aesthetics

Arts engagement and aesthetics experience

- Full-blown, rich experience

- First-person perspective

- Unique, subjective

- Influenced by personality, history, context, culture

- Case studies with qualitative methods

Exp aesthetics, computational aesthetics, neuro-aesthetics

- Focused on small number of factors, isolated for max experimental control

- Averaged overlarge samples for max generalizability

- Reduced experience, operationalization, rating scales

ideal scenario

-        Full-blown, rich experiences

-        From a large number of diverse pp

-        Investigated in-depth in all their aspects

-        With a large number of diverse art encounters

-        In their proper context

-        Using a large combination of methods

symmetry project

900 pp were asked to indicate image regions containing symmetry for 200 images if artworks and 200 images of natural scenes, with 50 raters per image

clustering (symmetry project)

-        Regions of symmetry

-       what most people do when asked to point out the symmetry

charm project

Image aesthetic assessment (IAA)

-        Rate the aesthetic value → tend to give numbers in the middle of the scale

CHARM

a novel tokenization approach that simultaneously preserves Composition, High-resolution, Aspect Ratio and Multi-scale information

conclusion CHARM

balances computational cost with the preservation of crucial aesthetic information for achieving optimal performance in image aesthetic assessment

LAPIS

Leuven Artworks Personalized Image Set

-        = dataset of art images with art and image attributes + aesthetic score

results LAPIS

-        Range around the mean

-       Some more liked styles (baroque, impressionism, rococo …)

-        Some less liked styles (abstract impressionism, color field painting, minimalism)

FIAT

Flexible Image Annotation Toolbox

-        Different types of visual elements that people can use to annotate the image

-       Specific thing in specific images

eye-movement

tracked in the lab when looking at an image

• heatmap

• scan map

• network map

heatmap

red if there’s a lot of fixations, blue if not

scan map

how the eyes move when they explore the image

o   The more the it follows the composition of the image (here it follows the swing), the higher the appreciation for the image will be

network map

o   Circles: hotspots → the bigger the more views

o   Lines: thickness = how often you get transitions between the hotspots

3 case studies (Palettes)

1. A time and a place to perceive art

2. Immersion and aesthetics in Ganzfeld experiences

3. Complexity, order and aesthetics of dance

typical museum visit

-        Viewing time: reported averages of 25-30 seconds/artwork

-        Explorative approach to viewing

-        Motivation: interest in exhibition, love of art, social expectations, tourism, boredom …

-        “Nobody goes to an art museum to participate in a research study”

explorative approach to viewing

wide range of behaviors possible (approaching, retreating, viewing on angles, returning to re-view certain works)

expirimental aesthetics research

-        Viewing time: sometimes free viewing, sometimes restricted at moderate to extremely short timescales

-        Restricted viewing approach to viewing

-        Motivation: receiving course credit/other monetary reward, contributing to scientific knowledge

-        “Nobody goes to a psychology lab to have an aesthetic experience”

restricted approach to viewing

often artworks presented on computer screen, without ability to zoom in, re-view or change angle

experimental tradeoffs

o Stimuli control vs exhibition cohesion

o Freedom of movement vs restriction

free viewing

no viewing constraints applied (unlimited time, zoom in/out, revisit)

rigid viewing

pp could only view each artwork for 10 sec, from set angles

museum free viewing

instructed to visit exhibition as they naturally would

lab free viewing

o   Gallery overview screen presented

o   Click on artwork to view, use across keys to change angle, press space to return to overview

museum rigid viewing

o   Guided from artwork to artwork in pseudo-random order

o   Instructed to keep eyes on the floor, expect for the 10 sec viewing period for each artwork

lab rigid viewing

artworks presented on screen for 10 sec, in random order

museum matters

for more in-depth, rather than simple, assessments of art experience → questions that invite pp to reflect on their experience more result in higher ratings in the museum space

ganzfeld (GF)

-        Unstructured, homogeneous visual field (Schmidt et al, 2020)

-        You take all the details away, but still have your eyes open

-        Here: designed a Ganzfeld lab → pp sits down and is emerged in a color field (20 mins)

experiences in ganzfeld

hallucinations, blackouts, complete loss of depth, alterations in consciousness

blackouts

• Decreased eye-movement

• Increased alpha or alpha rebound

hallucinations

predicted by alpha accelerations

conclusions ganzfeld study

-        The Ganzfeld effect induced altered states of consciousness

-        Higher liking and beauty in dynamic GF compared to static

-        Art perception was a predictor of liking and beauty of the light installation

-        Blackouts were characterized by a decrease in eye movements

-        Alpa power was lower during decay and higher during hallucination than baseline

low-level explanations

the dynamic in the movement of the dancer, the difficulty …

high-level explanations

the kind of story, the music, the dance as a whole art piece …

choreography

organization of dance material

complexity

quantity and variety of information → variability

dance moves that people wouldn’t be able to do themselves

variability

amount and variety of information presented simultaneously (or over short time spans)

order

the way in which this information is organized → predictability

predictability

the presence/absence of a principle for the organization of movement that predict changes

confusion

complexity without order

boredom

order without complexity

de Keersmaeker

a formal approach to choreography

1.     Spatial organization based on geometrical patterns (circles, squares, diagonals)

2.     Drawing inspiration from sacred geometry (golden ratio, Fibonacci sequence)

3.     Structural relation to music

fase

• 2 dancers

• Simple movements

• Repetition

• Low overall complexity

rain

• 10 dancers (7 women, 3 men)

• Complex, rich movements

• Counterpoint

• High overall complexity

complexity in fase

• phase shifting

• suspension and attack

phase shifting

changing the spatial relationship between dancers

suspension and attack

changing the dynamics of the movement

complexity in rain

• spatial patterns

• gender-based grouping

• counterpoint

spatial patterns

diagonal and Tadin line

counterpoint

video-scratching (Tadin line)

viewing behavior

o   More variability in movement = more switching

o   Trajectories from the dancers

o   Influence from different choreographic levels (ex shadow in Fase)

o   Ind differences

playground

• Where psychology-researchers can enjoy themselves

• Everything comes together here

podium

• Where psychology-researchers can show what’s possible

• Progress by combining lab-experiments, online studies, museum studies …

Psychoesthetics as psychology

What comes together here

• Aesthetics and experiences as subjective, private events (how to make them measurable?)

• Interplay between perception, cognition, emotion (determined by multiple, interacting factors)

• Some general principles, but also large individual differences (interest, familiarity, expertise, personality, culture…)

Difficult research