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ART – RECEPTIVE

ART & ORGANISM

RECEPTIVE ART

notes

RECEPTIVE ART …

 

refers to the perception and “appreciation” of art… which necessarily involves the context in which it occure. It is interpretive in that SELECTIVE ATTENTION is involved.  This is moderated by the recipient’s priorities and what is “allowed” through layers on consciousness to deeper levels of assimilation or accommodation.)

(THE analogy to two clinically defined forms of aphasia is deliberate, intended to be provocative: EXPRESSIVE APHASIA (also known as “Broca’s aphasia”–impaired ability to produce spoken or written language, although comprehension is likely intact), and RECEPTIVE APHASIA  (also known as “Wernicke’s aphasia”–impaired understanding of written and spoken language).) (see ENDNOTES, below) (from A&O notes on art) 

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“The temperament to which Art appeals … is the temperament of receptivity. That is all.  …   If a man approaches a work of art with any desire to exercise authority over it and the artist, he approaches it in such a spirit that he cannot receive any artistic impression from it at all. The work of art is to dominate the spectator: the spectator is not to dominate the work of art. The spectator is to be receptive. He is to be the violin on which the master is to play. And the more completely he can suppress his own silly views, his own foolish prejudices, his own absurd ideas of what Art should be, or should not be, the more likely he is to understand and appreciate the work of art in question.” 

(Oscar Wilde 1891 quoted in The Marginalian)

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What might be regarded as ART is obviously perceived in wildly varying contexts, from garbage dumps to fine museums.  The CONTEXT is important, as is the means by which information is conveyed.

For example, Janet Geipel  recently reported in PSYCHE[1], that different modalities such as listening versus reading engages differing proportions of cognitive versus affective thinking:   “ If the way a person thinks about incoming information is based only on the content itself, then it should not matter whether they hear or read it. But in recent experiments, we have found evidence that this seemingly inconsequential choice of modality does have an impact on how people reason.

(When circumstances are novel, we ofte seek a SOCIAL REFEREE.  In a museum, are you listening to a docent or audio guide? reading the artist’s statement or curator’s commentary?  At a concert do you read the program or playbill?)

When people think, they can rely on their intuition, or they can use a more deliberate, analytic thinking process. Intuitions are gut feelings or instincts about something that can swiftly arise in our minds without much effort or reflection. These can be very helpful in situations where people must pass judgment and make decisions quickly. When meeting someone for the first time, people frequently rely on intuition to determine whether they like or can trust that stranger. Analytic thinking, on the other hand, involves mental processes that require more conscious effort. This type of thinking involves carefully evaluating information before reaching a decision. In today’s digital era, it is extremely important for evaluating potentially misleading information.

The difference between these two types of thinking processes is precisely where we focused our research. We have found that the communication modality people use can affect the extent to which they engage one thinking process or the other. We investigated this with the use of problems that are designed to reveal whether someone is thinking intuitively or analytically. For example: ‘Ann’s father has five daughters: Lala, Lele, Lili, and Lolo. What is the name of the fifth daughter?’ The answer that intuitively comes to mind is ‘Lulu’. But a more cautious, analytic approach would reveal that the answer is ‘Ann’. Because each process leads to a different answer, the answer that people give can indicate whether they are relying on their intuition or engaging in more careful analysis. If someone answers ‘Lulu’, then they likely have been thinking more intuitively; if they say ‘Ann’, they likely have been thinking more analytically.

Intuition, driven by the feeling of

the truth of the conclusion, conflicts with the analytic process

In our research, we randomly assigned study participants to either read or listen to problems such as this one. As we expected, people were more likely to solve the problems intuitively – that is, to give the seemingly obvious, but incorrect answer – when they heard the spoken text of the problems than when they read the problems. We found this with other types of problems as well, such as: ‘How many animals per type did Moses take on the ark?’ People intuitively say ‘two’ – unless they analyse the problem in a more careful way and realise that the very question is wrong. It was not Moses in the biblical story, but Noah who built the ark. People were more likely to detect such an anomaly when they read the problem than when they heard it. We further showed that this modality effect extended beyond the English language – it was observed among Mandarin speakers, too.

We also found that people were more likely to solve logic puzzles correctly when they read them than when they heard them. For instance, we asked people if the following argument is logically valid: ‘Some plants are green. All grasses are plants. Therefore, some grasses are green.’ While the conclusion is true, the argument is invalid since it does not logically follow from the two premises. This is another case where intuition, driven by the feeling of the truth of the conclusion, conflicts with the analytic process. When participants heard these logical puzzles rather than reading them, they seemed to be more affected by intuition and, as a result, less likely to identify the flaw in the argument.

Was it really the modality – reading versus listening – that mattered? We considered alternative explanations for our results. For example, perhaps the reason people solve problems more analytically when they read is not because of the modality itself, but rather because of the availability of the information. When people read, they can take their time and, if they want to, they can go back; when they hear a problem, they usually cannot do that. They have to depend on their memory of what they’ve heard.

To evaluate this explanation, we made the presentation of information more consistent across the two modalities. Mimicking the way audible information is conveyed, we presented the written information in small chunks, each of which disappeared once the next chunk appeared. This prevented people from going back to reread. But our results were the same, suggesting that the alternative explanation is wrong.

The results of a poll might differ depending on whether people get the questions in writing or by voice

Why, then, might hearing and reading engage different thought processes? There could be several reasons, but in our opinion the most important one goes back to [development] how people acquire language. Children typically learn to speak their native tongue early, spontaneously and effortlessly. In other words, intuitively. In contrast, learning to read is less spontaneous. It happens later, in a formal setting, and it requires a lot of effort and practice. So, hearing language and reading it engage different mental processes from the very beginning. Because of their experience with learning and practising reading while growing up, people may become conditioned to thinking relatively analytically when they read and get accustomed to putting in a bit more mental effort, compared with when they listen. Later in life, intuition might be especially prominent when people are solving problems that they hear, while analytic tools are more available when solving written problems.”

DIARY.   I heard passages from the movie, Night Train to Lisbon in rich, mellifluous voice-overs by Jeremy Irons and then went to read them from the book by Pascal Mercier on which the movie was based.  The rich voice of the reader was seductive and the quotes when read, while beautiful, were not as compelling. (That could be because it was a second exposure.)  

This raises the additional issue of how different voices affect perception.  For an extreme example how even minute details in some vocal expressions contribute to the effect of the same song when presented by different singers.   One of my favorites is Luciano Pavarotti singing “Nessun Dorma” and the  REACTION & ANALYSIS by Vocal Coach/Opera Singer, Elizabeth Zharoff is particularly interesting.    (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvPVAtCCZL8)

 

 

 

[1] https://psyche.co/ideas/do-you-think-more-clearly-when-reading-or-when-listening? 14 AUGUST 2023 by  Janet Geipel ,  an assistant professor at the University of Exeter Business School in the Department of Management and a visiting scholar at the University of Chicago in the Multilingualism and Decision-Making Lab.

 

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ENDNOTES:

As a heuristic convenience in my seminar Art & Organism, I take the ethologist’s eye to art and begin by describing the hell out of it… or at least parts of it, and I start with the assumption that a complete view of ART must invove the viewer as well as the creator.  To avoid the baggage of famiiar vocabulary, I adopted the clinical vocabuary of the brain-based communications disorders known as APHASIAS,  the terms  EXPRESSIVE and RECEPTIVE.    Expressive aphasia (when you know what you want to say, but you have trouble saying or writing it) is associated with Broca’s area (near the motor cortex in the inferior frontal gyrus).  Receptive aphasia (when you hear what people say or see words on a page, but have trouble making sense of what they mean) is associated with Wernicke’s Area (near the auditory cortex).  …   The question is whether creation and perception of art compares to language, known to be dependent on two distinctive sites in the brain (FYI:  impaired language skills range from subtle to profound and the neurological bases are known mainly from damage seen in specific areas: in the frontal lobe of the dominant hemisphere this includes Broca’s area; in the superior temporal gyrus of the dominant hemisphere it includes Wernicke’s area .  “Dominant hemisphere” is the left hemisphere in about 95% of right-handed individuals and 60% of left-handed individuals.  Also, Broca’s area is not uniform:  Part of it has more general functions and seems “… to be part of a larger network sometimes called the multiple demand network, which is active when the brain is tackling a challenging task that requires a great deal of focus. This network is distributed across frontal and parietal lobes in both hemispheres of the brain, and all of its components appear to communicate with one another. The language-selective section of Broca’s area also appears to be part of a larger network devoted to language processing, spread throughout the brain’s left hemisphere.” [MIT news , PubMed] (from A&O notes on “what is Art”)  

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*PATHOGRAPHY can be considered as “the study of the life of an individual or the history of a community with regard to the influence of a particular disease or psychological disorder.   “pathography is a psychoanalytic approach to the realm of art that depends on detailed knowledge of an artist’s personal life history”  
 
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