A&O – ELEMENTS of ART and AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE

ART & ORGANISM

Elements of Art and Aesthetic Experience

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ATTRIBUTES of ART

 

 

The investment of energy in DEFINING ART  pays off as its connections are harvested.  And connecting it to biological functions and needs that likely energize motivational systems are especially potent.  But as we work from the perspective of art as it manifests in the traditional culture into which we were born, what are some of the key elements?

 

AESTHETICS

ARTISTIC and SCIENTIFIC approaches to understanding the production of a  representation of a phenomenon of interest as well as its reception share at least the deep need to pursue insight into its nature:  “All men by nature desire to know. An indication of this is the delight we take in our senses; for even apart from their usefulness they are loved for themselves; and above all others the sense of sight. For not only with a view to action, but even when we are not going to do anything, we prefer sight to almost everything else. The reason is that this, most of all the senses, makes us know and brings to light many differences between things.”(Aristotle, Metaphysics,  Book I, 980a.21).

 

Organisms need a sense of causes and consequences to maximize biological fitness, and most ferociously in the species with the huge prefrontal cortex. 

[We appear to have a powerful intuitive disposition to minimize friction, so a working sense of how the organism processes information would affect how we present it.  We try to “go with the flow” of the evolutionary and ecological terrain in which we find ourselves—like our WEIRD culture, a kind of silo from which we reach out tentatively to different cultures]

 

All phenomena exist within a complex network of connections and are known best by virtue of how they are represented by the signs that are themselves composed of multiple perspectives, each involving a chain of circumstances involving sensation, perception, and conception.  And the more perspectives that can be intentionally brought to bear, the more fully we might be able to describe and eventually accommodate our need for estimating the causes and consequences of the phenomenon, a prerequisite for acting in accordance with the outcomes of actions.  About descriptions, the richer they are, the greater the likelihood of developing effective explanatory hypotheses. More easily said than done, of course since we must carefully navigate the narrow path “between a pseudoexplanatory reductionist atomism and stultifying nonexplanatory holism” (E. Mayr 1983:329)]

Of course the processes of descriptive will eventually exhaust our resources and competence.  In metaphoric accord with vision or hearing, what can be directly known is a very narrow range of what is knowable. ARTISTIC or SCIENTIFIC motives seen amongst us reflect slight differences in the balance of congenital as well as acquired interests, sensitivities, perceptual and expressive skills –but all these traits, albeit in varying proportions, are needed in all the disciplines through which an individual pursues arete. [I like the old Greek word to represent the maximizing of our individual potential]  In lockstep with achieving arete is SELF-KNOWLEDGE (“know thyself”).

In ART & ORGANISM I understand ART as an ensemble of related traits that are expressed or experienced as both processes and products of cognition.  Typically the experience of creating art (“expressive”) and of perceiving art (“receptive”) is co-constituted by the processes of SENTIENCE and of SAPIENCE.  

• These function in ways unlike those used in most moment-to-moment, day-to-day processes of identifying and dealing with biologically relevant needs.  (Our consideration of NEEDS begins with Maslow’s hierarchy: see these now.) In other words, ART appears to “go beyond” immediate needs by exercising skills and combinations of skills (of perception, integration, and expression).  In practice this results in “making special” (Dissanyake).  That is the stimulus “stands out” and recruits more attention than it would routinely.

 

 In “going beyond,” ART has much in common with PLAY.   Both ART and PLAY were once considered “autotelic” in that they were done for their own sake and not to meet some other external need.  We are now aware that they meet important biological needs and are important parts of development that enables the fullest expression of a human’s potential–self-actualization.

• All of this is in light of the belief that we are motivated to “know and be known” –that is, closely integrated into a society in which we develop and must meet our needs. [this is discussed at the context of the perpetual tension between “individuation and socialization”–two process in dynamic relationship to each other.

 

Ethology—the study of behavior in developmental, evolutionary, ecological, and physiological context (“DEEP ETHOLOGY”)—integrates these disciplinary perspectives at every accessible level of organization from the cellular to the social in order to cultivate a holistic sense of art that will not neglect the fine-grain details on which it is built while simultaneously allowing the emergence of unique possibilities of one’s self and of humanity.  The tools of traditional empirical science paradoxically reveal mystery that seems to go beyond the simply “undiscovered” and evoke a deep spiritual sensitivity. There is a dynamic dialectical relationship between what we feel is known and unknown, real and ideal, that manifests in thought processes and feelings, often manifest in art.   

     

Both the expression and perception of ART are often found to be enlightening—a part of our growth, our continuing development as individuals—but like most traits these aspects of art exist along a continuum, a spectrum of more-or-less power at different ages and according to our intellectual and emotional needs.

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A&O ELEMENTS of ART.  These few elements roughly are enacted with varying amounts of energy and in different combinations to meet some basic biological needs (including the needs “to know and be known”).  They correspond roughly to sender, medium, and receiver as they might be represented in ethologically viewed communications theory.  They directly or indirectly serve essential biological needs by consciously or unconsciously representing your self to yourself (self-knowledge), representing yourself to others (communication), and representation of others to you.     

1. PRODUCTIVE/EXPRESSIVE (“creating art” … acting on one’s self or environment; meeting the artist’s needs to create … involves actions (or their suppression) and projecting or representing the state of the artist) 

2. INTERACTIVE (organisms require feedback—most fundamentally to know the outcomes of upon one’s self of actions—intentional or otherwise.)

3. PERCEPTIVE/RECEPTIVE (“appreciating art”…attending to one’s self or environment; meeting the “recipient’s” needs) is interpretive in that SELECTIVE ATTENTION is involved (involves what the recipient perceives)

 

REPRESENTATION necessarily involves perceptual and conceptual processes that reflect AROUSAL of ATTENTION, and SELECTIVE ATTENTION–foregrounding of specific elements of stimuli, Ellen Dissanayake has emphasized a ubiquitous element of art she terms “making special.”  read her chapter. )  What is perceived as “special” is also related to the selective evolution of sensitivities to specific stimuli that are (or have been) important to survival—our competencies guide us in a relative predictable environment and with a relatively normal development. (read about “sensory bias and exploitation” –taking advantage of evolved selective responsiveness.)  

• An example of going deeper: into the CNS: Habitual versus goal-driven attention : “The visual world is complex; not all input can be perceived or acted upon at once. Spatial attention allows one to prioritize locations that are most relevant or significant. Extensive research has examined factors that drive spatial attention, leading to the theoretical development of an attentional “priority map”” (Read on: Jiang 2018)

SELECTIVE ATTENTION “By the artist’s seizing any one object from nature, that object no longer is part of nature. One can go so far as to say that the artist creates the object in that very moment by emphasizing its significant, characteristic, and interesting aspects or, rather, by adding the higher values.” – (Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe, Propylaea, introduction, 1798), This sounds like “selective attention” and perhaps it is selected because it is, like beauty (as Pascal says) “… a harmonious relation between something in our nature and the quality of the object which delights us.”(Pascal)

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BELOW are listed a few of the many schemes that outline what various scholars have—based on disposition or experience—found to characterize “good” (effective, adaptive…) ART.

IN terms of RAW Geometrical and structural STIMULI read Wikipedia on elements of art, some parts of which are annotated below.

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REPRESENTATION:  recalling always the epigraph of A&O-2014: “Cesi n’est pas une pipe” (the words Rene Magritte placed beneath the pipe in his painting “La Trahison des images” (1929) forcing us to appreciate the distance between things and representations of things such as pictures or words​)​.  see the painting

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The QUALITIES OF REPRESENTATION, whether to explore our own knowledge, to communicate our knowledge to others (to extend or test or corroborate our own senses), or to teach, are often identified in art as a discipline. The scholar of art and organism examines first the hypothesis that these qualities are more or less congenital (in-born, genetic, an evolutionary question) or acquired (learned intentionally or not, a developmental question)

• ABSTRACTION and SIMPLICITY.  Representations reflect selective emphasis on components of a mental model that are most relevant to the artist  (A&O notes on abstraction and simplicity).  They reflect the artist’s understanding of the concept or the artist’s judgement about how it can be most effectively communicated to his audience. 
• HARMONY. The concord that derives from the manner in which elements “fit together” in ways that provides mutual support.  In music, one discordant note can destroy otherwise carefully crafted composition.  In cerebral functions, “harmony” may be a necessary condition for higher levels of consciousness (see A&O notes on consciousness) — In parts of the brain rich in mu-opioid receptors a harmonious convergence of multiple streams of information is intrinsically pleasurable (Biederman & Vessel 2006)
• MOVEMENT.  The mind attends to available stimuli in FRAGMENTS.   Perception is necessarily fragmentary and phenomena are “assembled” from a flow of perceptual attention, typically so fast that we are unaware of the process.  The order in which the fragments are attended can be important in the feeling about the entire experience.   An artist is by intuition or intention likely to guide the viewer’s senses –leading them down a path to converge on the phenomenon being represented by means of arranging the elements that will catch and guide the eye or ear (or touch or scent, or taste). 
  • “Techniques such as scale and proportion can be used to create an effect of movement in a visual artwork. For instance, an element that is further into the background is smaller in scale and lighter in value. The same element repeated in different places within the same image can also demonstrate the passing of time or movement.^[3]”)
  • Visual hierarchy ‘is the order in which the human eye perceives what it sees.” (Wikipedia on Visual Hierarchy) The most prominent visual characteristics are color (hue, saturation, value), texture, size, alignment, and character (rectilinearity and curvilinearity of forms).
• UNITY.  The connectedness of the elements of the work; often presumed to work together because of an underlying concept.  Consider the gesamtkunstwerk, an ideal of all senses integrated in the cause of the artwork)
  • [but consider the tensions in apparently conflicting attrbutes: INDIVIDUATION versus SOCIALIZATION or COMPETITION versus COOPERATION).   Great pleasure derives from the detection of UNITY from disparate fragments or threads (the bias towards the Theory of Everything? And seen Biederman and Vessel (2006) about a neurological bias toward the pleasure of the convergences that serve problem solving)
• VARIETY.  Diversity of elements which may act to keep sensory processes alert but nevertheless (hopefully) maintain the underlying unity. (sensory satiation).  When a new element is perceived it may be immediately categorized as a member of a population of similar percepts and easily assimilated.  IF the new element is sufficiently different from predecessors that it resembles, that is may be a significant variation on the theme, it may require consolidation into one’s mental model and the resolution of incongruity can be highly pleasurable. (see A&O notes on “getting it”) 
  • Theme and Variation (“unity in variety”): the balance between unity and diversity is crucial … relates to Creative and Mundane: too creative and it won’t be recognized (Stent, Prematurity and Uniqueness) … the “baby steps” when pointed out, contextualize it  (allow it to be accommodated with minimal change)  How are things the same and different: “compare and contrast”   [look into the sonata]  
• BALANCE.  The symmetrical, asymmetrical, or radial patterns of presentation of the elements of the work  (symmetry as an attribute of a prospective reproductive partner in important in sexual selection –see Møller and Thornhill (1998) in The American Naturalist.151(2):174-192)
• CONTRAST. “conflicting” elements emphasize other qualities of representation and maintain attention
• PROPORTION. The relative size and density of elements with respect to each other (the “Golden ratio”); can support the illusion of relative distance or importance.
• Is the Golden Ratio a significant biologically grounded proportion?  Not always: see more about the Golden Ratio:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oyyXC5IzEE ; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmaVqkR0ZXg  
• does MATHEMATICS describe the quantitative and relative significance of the elements of art?  see: notes on art & mathematics/  Probability about the validity of beliefs derives from an apparently inborn ability.[9] 
• PATTERN.  The way the elements are organized with respect to each other.   (Science is organized knowledge. –Herbert Spencer (1861:ch. 2)
• ANALOGY.  Things may resemble each other and invite cognitive efforts to confirm or deny their common ground.  Not just what a perceptual element of “ART” summons to mind, but arguably the CORE – the “fuel and fire”–  of human thinking. (see review of Hofstadter & Sander book  — “long distance” analogies reach beyond familiar boundaries and even into other modalities and domains — but does art have poetic license to reach further? … As with “theme and variation”, reaching too far may break the thread for some people, disabling connections that otherwise be illuminating.
• How do artistic representations promote INFERENCE.   Much (possibly all) of what we understand is “inference” (“deriving logical conclusions from premises known or assumed to be true.”)  Conclusion derived from “circumstantial evidence.”[5]
  • To mix metaphors, “Standing on the shoulders of giants” we can “extrapolate”[6]  from the more-or-less solid ground on which we stand to the adjacent unknown ground…

    Filling in gaps is the business of “interpolation”[7] … Coherence often assumes the existence of intermediaries that can in principle maintain an unbroken chain of causation.

    “Filling in”[8] is an important concept in neuroscience of perception such as in vision, where the phenomenon is prominent, particularly by providing probable “information across the physiological blind spot, and across natural and artificial scotomata.”  

     

  • NEGATIVE SPACE … corresponds to the Japanese concept of MA in which beauty is sought in the speces between things (e.g., the You Tube comments on ma) 

ANY attribute of the mind-web of memory: a detail amidst the flood of stimuli in which we are immersed, in which we swim through—color, sound, smell—a   fragment or  juxtaposition of fragments emergent from the integration of percepts, or a thread of the output of mind into action. Resemblances, connections, processes… things seen from a perspective a hair’s breadth differently [Thoreau It is only necessary to behold the least fact or phenomenon, however familiar, from a point a hair’s breadth aside from our habitual path or routine, to be overcome, enchanted by its beauty and significance … To perceive freshly, with fresh senses is to be inspired. (Thoreau, Journal Dec 11 1855 8:44), Whitman “Do I contradict myself? / Very well then I contradict myself, /(I am large, I contain multitudes.) (Whitman, Song of Myself)  ]

In anthropomorphism, we indicate our disposition to understand the little-known in terms of the slightly-better known. —  we reason about areas of ignorance by reference to areas of less-ignorance.  We—our experiences—become the measure of the unknown, we may even validate ourselves by projecting into that void, seeking the peace of corroboration …

 

QUALITIES of REPRESENTATION are embodied in the Asian tradition’s “Six principles” (Six principles of Chinese painting)

The “Six principles of Chinese painting” were established by Xie He, a writer, art historian and critic in 5th century China, in “Six points to consider when judging a painting” (繪畫六法, Pinyin: Huìhuà Liùfǎ), taken from the preface to his book “The Record of the Classification of Old Painters” (古畫品錄; Pinyin: Gǔhuà Pǐnlù). Keep in mind that this was written circa 550 CE and refers to “old” and “ancient” practices. The six elements that define a painting are:

1. “Spirit Resonance”, or vitality, which refers to the flow of energy that encompasses theme, work, and artist. Xie He said that without Spirit Resonance, there was no need to look further.
2. “Bone Method”, or the way of using the brush, refers not only to texture and brush stroke, but to the close link between handwriting and personality. In his day, the art of calligraphy was inseparable from painting.
3. “Correspondence to the Object”, or the depicting of form, which would include shape and line.
4. “Suitability to Type”, or the application of color, including layers, value, and tone.
5. “Division and Planning”, or placing and arrangement, corresponding to composition, space, and depth.
6. “Transmission by Copying”, or the copying of models, not from life only but also from the works of antiquity.  [NOTE: but beginning in the Tang Dynasty (c. 600) emphasis shifted from nature (en plein air) to the emotion associated with the scene in the mind of the painter & memory & feeling became more important than accurate rendition) and then after 900, & especially associated with the Song Dynasty (c. 960), philosophical principles of Tao (humans were only fragments of the greater cosmos) and Confucianism (the same themes recurred at different levels of organization)]  

Six General Principles of Aesthetic Experience and Presentation (Morris. 1962:158;  THE ETHOLOGIST, Desmond Morris studied the biological principles of picture making and confirmed that several points apply from Leonardo da Vinci to his research chimpanzee, Congo): 

• “Autotelic” (“Self Rewarding”) Activation (painting can be a rewarding activity) (does this serve the goals “to know and to be known:”  BUT adaptive functions CAN be postulated

• “Compositional Control”

• “Calligraphic Differentiation” (advancement from scribbles to circles to representation [and see Howard Gardner’s “Artful Scribbles” and “Reflections on Artful Scribbles” published several decades later)

• “Thematic Variation” (vastly important in the theories of aesthetics) (See VARIETY/Theme and Variation)

• “Optimum Heterogeneity” (– when is a composition completed? Does it depend on individual’s mood, culture? (might include relative degrees of abstraction: ambiguity)

• “Universal Imagery” – intrinsic elements (… externalized projections of some factor of biology (such as phosphenes?) … gratification in certain movements, optically pleasing (golden mean), psychological factors.)

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Desmond Morris also cites Nicholas Humphrey who had investigated visual preferences of primates. (He defines “preference” as a “combination of aesthetic pleasure and curiosity (or novelty)”.   Ideas that emerged;

 1.Curiosity (interest) trumps pleasure [is this a conflict of NEEDS?) (“we are infovores”)  the curiosity implicit in making art making has no obvious survival value (therefore it is considered “autotelic”—“self-reinforcing,” not connected  to meeting “needs”). Alternatively, it may be a collateral expression of clearly adaptive behavioral pattern that reflects selection pressures that were adaptive in ancestry—in an unknown “environment of evolutionary adaptedness.”   Although closely associated with non-conscious processes, could it be a kind of “mental model making” that is more effective for being externalized (“the Corporealization of the Psyche”) … does giving pure idea a sensuous form aid in understanding or integrating the idea?

2. Some examples of innate dispositions that may be expressed in art:

• preference for blue/green colours [jump to safety],
• bright light [desire to see things],

3. The ability to compose pictures [represents a capacity to handle notions about complex spatial relationships; monkeys showed remarkably little individual variation in their preferences]

 

Neuroaesthetics.   “I’ve always loved art, but now I’m in awe of it,” said neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran,[10] quoted by Jonah Leher in a short essay, ”Unlocking the Secrets of the Artistic Mind,” 2009.  “…All I’m trying to do,” Ramachandran said, “is figure out what artists figured out a long time ago.”  Leher (2009) outlined “10 Perceptual Principles of Great Art,” corresponding & enlarging upon “eight laws of artistic experience” described by Ramachandran & Hirstein (1999)[11]:

• Peak Shift: exaggerated responses to exaggerated stimuli: supernormal, caricature, selectively emphasized key elements of stimulus.

• Grouping:  the law of “grouping” discovered by the Gestalt psychologists around the turn of the century….after several seconds you start grouping elements together, and if successful in evoking a specific meaning, an “internal “Aha!” sensation as if you have just solved a problem. In short, the grouping feels good.”  A signal extracted from the noise. 
• Balance: Successful art makes use of its entire representational space, and spreads its information across the entire canvas.

• Contrast: because of how the visual cortex works, it’s particularly pleasing for the brain to gaze at images rich in contrast, like thick black outlines or sharp angles—or, as in the geometric art of Mondrian, both at once. “… the extraction of features prior to grouping — which involves discarding redundant information and extracting contrast—is also ‘reinforcing’. Cells in the retina, lateral geniculate body (a relay station in the brain) and in the visual cortex respond mainly to edges (step changes in luminance) but not to homogeneous surface colours; so a line drawing or cartoon stimulates these cells as effectively as a ‘half tone’ photograph. What is frequently overlooked though is that such contrast extractions — as with grouping — may be intrinsically pleasing to the eye (hence the efficacy of line drawings). Again, though, if contrast is extracted autonomously by cells in the very earliest stages of processing, why should the process be rewarding in itself?  We suggest that the answer once again has to do with the allocation of attention. Information (in the Shannon sense) exists mainly in regions of change—e.g. edges—and it makes sense that such regions would, therefore, be more attention grabbing — more ‘interesting’ — than homogeneous areas. So it may not be coincidental that what the cells find interesting is also what the organism as a whole finds interesting and perhaps in some circumstances ‘interesting’ translates into ‘pleasing’.”

• Isolation: Sometimes less is more. By reducing reality to its most essential features—think a Matisse that’s all bright color and sharp silhouettes—artists amplify the sensory signals we normally have to search for.

• Perceptual Problem Solving: Just as we love solving crossword puzzles, we love to “solve” abstract paintings such as cubist still lifes or Cézanne landscapes.

• Symmetry: Symmetrical things, from human faces to Roman arches, are more attractive than asymmetrical ones.

• Repetition, Rhythm, Orderliness: Beauty is inseparable from the appearance of order. Consider the garden paintings of Monet. Pictures filled with patterns, be it subtle color repetitions or formal rhythms, appear more elegant and composed.

• Generic Perspective: We prefer things that can be observed from multiple viewpoints, such as still lifes and pastoral landscapes, to the fragmentary perspective of a single person. They contain more information, making it easier for the brain to deduce what’s going on.
• Metaphor: Metaphor encourages us to see the world in a new way: Two unrelated objects are directly compared, giving birth to a new idea. Picasso did this all the time—he portrayed the bombing of Guernica, for example, with the imagery of a bull, a horse, and a lightbulb.

 

 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

                                                                                                                                                        

 

The neurological basis of artistic universals Vilayanur S. Ramachandran (2004)

 

CONNECTIONS INSPIRED by RESEARCH on PRIMATE “ART” by Desmond Morris

 

 

http://www.lehman.cuny.edu/courses/arh141/links.html Glossary of terms in A&O

[note] “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. 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).”

Last updated Monday, October 08, 2018

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