Bob Johnson on mon 27 aug 07
Some of you may be interested, as I was, in a paper entitled "The Science of=
Art," written by the neuroscientist V. S. Ramachandran in 1999. I=
downloaded an electronic copy and would be happy to send it to anyone who=
contacts me off the list. I would also be interested in your reactions.
There is some technical jargon, but I think you can get the big ideas---even=
if you don't know your brain anatomy. To give you a flavor of his argument,=
here is the abstract of the article: =20
We present a theory of human artistic experience and the neural mechanisms=
that mediate=20
it. Any theory of art (or, indeed, any aspect of human nature) has to=
ideally have three=20
components. (a) The logic of art: whether there are universal rules or=
principles; (b) The=20
evolutionary rationale: why did these rules evolve and why do they have the=
form that they=20
do; (c) What is the brain circuitry involved? Our paper begins with a quest=
for artistic universals=20
and proposes a list of =91Eight laws of artistic experience=92 =97 a set of=
heuristics that=20
artists either consciously or unconsciously deploy to optimally titillate=
the visual areas of=20
the brain. One of these principles is a psychological phenomenon called the=
peak shift=20
effect: If a rat is rewarded for discriminating a rectangle from a square,=
it will respond=20
even more vigorously to a rectangle that is longer and skinnier that the=
prototype.We suggest=20
that this principle explains not only caricatures, but many other aspects of=
art. Example:=20
An evocative sketch of a female nude may be one which selectively=
accentuates those=20
feminine form-attributes that allow one to discriminate it from a male=
figure; a Boucher, a=20
Van Gogh, or a Monet may be a caricature in =91colour space=92 rather than=
form space. Even=20
abstract art may employ =91supernormal=92 stimuli to excite form areas in=
the brain more=20
strongly than natural stimuli. Second, we suggest that grouping is a very=
basic principle.=20
The different extrastriate visual areas may have evolved specifically to=
extract correlations=20
in different domains (e.g. form, depth, colour), and discovering and linking=
multiple=20
features (=91grouping=92) into unitary clusters =97 objects =97 is=
facilitated and reinforced by=20
direct connections from these areas to limbic structures. In general, when=
object-like entities=20
are partially discerned at any stage in the visual hierarchy, messages are=
sent back to=20
earlier stages to alert them to certain locations or features in order to=
look for additional=20
evidence for the object (and these processes may be facilitated by direct=
limbic activation).=20
Finally, given constraints on allocation of attentional resources, art is=
most appealing=20
if it produces heightened activity in a single dimension (e.g. through the=
peak shift=20
principle or through grouping) rather than redundant activation of multiple=
modules.=20
This idea may help explain the effectiveness of outline drawings and=
sketches, the savant=20
syndrome in autists, and the sudden emergence of artistic talent in=
fronto-temporal=20
dementia. In addition to these three basic principles we propose five=
others, constituting a=20
total of =91eight laws of aesthetic experience=92 (analogous to the Buddha=
=92s eightfold path to=20
wisdom).
Bob Johnson
bjohnson@dcwisp.net=20
Jeanie Silver on tue 28 aug 07
Dear Bob Johnson
I would be very interested in this paper. I have hear of peak shift and
would love to learn the other seven concepts. I can't justify my interest
as being a professional one(except, in that we all have a brain). It just
sounds fascinating
Jeanie in Pa.
Gordon Ward on wed 29 aug 07
I have read through "The Science of Art" and found that it is in some
areas interesting. Some of it is Psych 101. I think that if the
author had a knowledge of Japanese art, the discussion of symmetry
would have been quite different. In fact a preference for asymmetry
may be stronger in Japanese art than for symmetry, which can be seen
as static and even boring.
The Japanese have words for many concepts that revolve around
esthetics: shibui, wabi, sabi, kanso, fukinsei, mujo, ma, medatsu,
mushin, muga, yuga, yugen, kibun, kenkyo, miekakure, and many more.
There is a little book entitled "Elements of Japanese Design" by Boye
De Mente which has brief definitions many of these concepts for those
who might be inclined toward Japanese esthetics.
Gordon
pdp1@EARTHLINK.NET on wed 29 aug 07
Hi Bob, all...
Interesting...fascinating even...
Below...amid...
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Bob Johnson"
> Some of you may be interested, as I was, in a paper entitled "The Science
> of Art," written by the neuroscientist V. S. Ramachandran in 1999. I
> downloaded an electronic copy and would be happy to send it to anyone who
> contacts me off the list. I would also be interested in your reactions.
Thank you..I would be interested to read it
A Swede is he?
Actually, ironically, the Old Hindoos had likely figured things in this
regard, about as well as anyone could ever hope to.
Someday I hope to return to their old Writings, and to form a better
acquaintance.
If this guy is from India, he would do well to acquaint himself with his own
potential Legacy, unless he is not a Hindoo, but still, he could see about
looking into it anyway.
> There is some technical jargon, but I think you can get the big
> ideas---even if you don't know your brain anatomy. To give you a flavor of
> his argument, here is the abstract of the article:
> We present a theory of human artistic experience and the neural mechanisms
> that mediate
> it. Any theory of art (or, indeed, any aspect of human nature) has to
> ideally have three
> components. (a) The logic of art: whether there are universal rules or
> principles; (b) The
> evolutionary rationale: why did these rules evolve and why do they have
> the form that they
> do; (c) What is the brain circuitry involved?
I think it is more a matter of his supposing that the habits of himself or
others, or, their habituated or normatised use of only some Neural circuits,
"had' to have
these
criteria...rather than that the subject, in other terms, had to...or that
one's interests,
in other terms, had to...
Too, there is not enough here to his assertions to be called a 'Theory'...he
is merely timidly rehashing some old ground which was better detailed fourty
or
fifty years ago or more.
See some of the writings of T. Leary, as, say, "Neurologique", or
others...which are about fourty years old now...as one example...
The little copy I have here somewhere lost amid the clutter, was one he made
as a
little 'bootleg' while in Folsom, furtively, on the Prison Library Xerox
Machine...one sided, small as a pack of Lucky Strikes...charming...a friend
of a friend gave it to me
in 1972.
I sure wish I could have known him...
> Our paper begins with a quest for artistic universals
> and proposes a list of 'Eight laws of artistic experience' - a set of
> heuristics that
> artists either consciously or unconsciously deploy to optimally titillate
> the visual areas of
> the brain.
Hmmmmm...
This sounding already like there will be some problems...or, are problems
already, which likely will not get better.
That is my off the cuff prognosis anyway...
But we shall see...
> One of these principles is a psychological phenomenon called the peak
> shift
> effect: If a rat is rewarded for discriminating a rectangle from a square,
> it will respond
> even more vigorously to a rectangle that is longer and skinnier that the
> prototype.We suggest
> that this principle explains not only caricatures, but many other aspects
> of art.
Probably it explains also the immodest proliferation of Scientists as
perfunctorates of an 'Industry', and
also, of all those 'grants' and Institutions and so on...as well as
'advertising' in media, or, media AS advertising...suburbs, Baby Seals
getting 'clubbed' 'nutrisweet', electronic voting machines, nein-eleven, and
a lot else...
Too, Werner Erhard ( nee John Rosenburg), founder of "EST" some decades
ago...once observed ( if in my paraphrase to retell it, that...) -
The difference between a man, and a 'Rat', was that a Rat, once having
learned the maze, at whose end some Cheese awaits, will cease bothering with
the Maze, once the Cheese is no longer there.
I guess for a lot of Science, and other occupations or impulses of people,
the 'cheese
is long since ( become ) rubbed on the 'maze' ( or onto their Neural
Circuits, )...even when the Cheese as
such,
otherwise, has long since ceased to be there.
The scent remains, as it were, though the substance from which it arose, has
long since ceased to be there, or findable.
"Here's a little ditty...'bout Jack and Diane...two 'merican kids, doin' the
bess-they-can...oh yeahhhhh...life goes on...long after the thrill, of
livin'
is gone..."
You know, like that...
> Example:
> An evocative sketch of a female nude may be one which selectively
> accentuates those
> feminine form-attributes that allow one to discriminate it from a male
> figure;
When I was 12 (or at times since) , all one had to do was 'sketch' the most
vague allusion TO a ( or an, operatively correct inference or abstract of
the operatively correct aesthetic OF, a ) female nude, and I would find
amazing effects going
on in my experience...
Real female nudes were of course potentially even more compelling, one way
or another, or, depending on
particulars anyway, the rare and carefuly elected one could be amazingly
so.
Something one ( or this one anyway, ) does well to know in advance, in
electing prospective adventures...
Thank God all that simmered down to a nice quiet background humm,
instead...sort of like the ambient 60 cycle emf interferences, for which any
sensitive or important electronic equipment, is provided with suitable
'shields'...or even a Superhetrodyne Tuner, as well...which allows quite
succinct elections of those signals one actually wants, and an eschewing of
the vast ponderance of signals ( "noise" ) one would much rather do without,
thank you.
Noise to Signal ratio is far too neglected in these matters of
psychological - dash - neural operations, or, one's conjecture respecting
them...
Or, rather, many receiving systems are quite satisfied with any noise at
all, animating their circuits...so long as it is within some broad Hertz
rage of their receiver's capacity.
This is the standard of nothing, or, of nothing else, than that...far as I
can tell...
> a Boucher, a
> Van Gogh, or a Monet may be a caricature in 'colour space' rather than
> form space. Even
> abstract art may employ 'supernormal' stimuli to excite form areas in the
> brain more
> strongly than natural stimuli.
"Show me the Monet" is an old saying, well worth remembering I think...even
if I just made it up.
But then too...
This guy needs to be reminded that sex circuitry, while overlapping or even
occulating construences of Art ( or other things, ) for many people, are not
per-se, themselves any definer of
Art ( or of anything else than bad judgement and indescernment or contempt
of either ) ...unless his
definition of "Art", are the accommodations and sublimations of interest in
sex, and the less discerning or particular, the better.
Overall, even at 12, it puzzled my why anyone would care so much about
drawings or paintings of things or of people, when the things or people
themselves could be experiences actually, and vividly, with joy or regret,
satisfaction or revulsion, ebulance or remourse,
and as present palpable and self actualized,
interesting features of existance.
Picasso's "Boy with Pipe" or whatever it was, sells for $104,000,000.00
Meanwhile, real boys are valued by society only as just more indifferent
fodder and sacrificial victims to maintain normative levels of stupidity and
inurnment.
I guess this still puzzles me, why the 'real' is spurned or sacrificed for
the symbolic,
allusional, or, the more easily managed in effigy...
Maybe it doesn't puzzle me, afterall...
> Second, we suggest that grouping is a very basic principle.
> The different extrastriate visual areas may have evolved specifically to
> extract correlations
> in different domains (e.g. form, depth, colour), and discovering and
> linking multiple
> features ('grouping') into unitary clusters - objects - is facilitated and
> reinforced by
> direct connections from these areas to limbic structures.
Yes...
And?
So what?
If you stick your finger into an otherwise flat Net, and pull...the wrinkles
can then be described as if they were somehting in themselves which
characterize what the Net is doing...when it is not the Net doing anything,
it is the pulling finger making the Net wrinkle or have folds high peaks and
so on...which is 'doing' something.
> In general, when object-like entities
> are partially discerned at any stage in the visual hierarchy, messages are
> sent back to
> earlier stages to alert them to certain locations or features in order to
> look for additional
> evidence for the object (and these processes may be facilitated by direct
> limbic activation).
I think this means one arrives at interpretations of evaluations of import
or meaning,
political or as may be, by
referring to various emotionally invested details arranged in gestalts or
constellated
associations, or represented in internalized others or introjections or
however so, of
decisions-past,
or however one has organized these things...to refer about them and the
features or attributes or expectations one may then gather, as may be
applicable in more or less
present-time...which is to say, we
experience the edited press-releases and abstracts of processed
information-products, as
arise from
processes which operate on and mediate our experience, and we do not
experience our experience itself...which I guess this fellow knew, sort of,
in his own way...but not quite.
> Finally, given constraints on allocation of attentional resources, art is
> most appealing
> if it produces heightened activity in a single dimension (e.g. through the
> peak shift
> principle or through grouping) rather than redundant activation of
> multiple modules.
Maybe to him...but not to me...
To me 'Art' is most 'appealing' when dimensionally holistic, and, or when it
embodys or
evokes
more
than one dimension of actuality/reference/depth...or, when it at least
implies them, in some way eloquently.
> This idea may help explain the effectiveness of outline drawings and
> sketches,
The outline or allusional references of abbreviate line, I would suppose,
are compelling
because their suggestion is so clean and undemanding of further processing
or references,
to experience them as something ( more )...they can be economical,
eloquent...elegant, or are when they are...
> the savant
> syndrome in autists,
...is something else again...
> and the sudden emergence of artistic talent in
> fronto-temporal
> dementia.
It may suggest a tentative co-relation, or an association...but I do not
find what one would call an 'explaination' to have occurred...
> In addition to these three basic principles we propose five others,
> constituting a
> total of 'eight laws of aesthetic experience' (analogous to the Buddha's
> eightfold path to
> wisdom).
Certainly interesting, potentially very important, and a direction deserving
of further and careful
consideration...
>
> Bob Johnson
> bjohnson@dcwisp.net
Thanks for the fun Bob...!
I enjoy this area of wondering...
Phil
l v
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