Search

Nowadays, works of art can be enjoyed in both their original and reproduced format. The aim of this study was to investigate whether the format of a work of art could influence physiological and cognitive responses in beholders. Two abstract works of art and their digital reproductions were selected as experimental stimuli and displayed for 2 min to 60 participants in a museum. HRV, HR, and RMSSD were recorded, while participants observed the works of art. Subsequently, participants provided behavioral ratings of color intensity, emotional intensity, aesthetic evaluation, perceived movement, and desire to touch the works of art. Results demonstrated that the faithful high-quality digital reproduction of works of art could be as arousing as the original works of art, but at the same time, they cannot replace the experience of standing in front of an authentic work of art in terms of explicit hedonic attributed values. Furthermore, specific interactions between individual inclinations to identify with fictional characters and acquired art competences in the context of aesthetic experience were found.

An aesthetic experience with visual art and the resulting perceived ‘beauty’ of it depend on a complex interaction among characteristics of the art object, the observer, and the physical, social, and historical contexts in which the experience takes place. Experimental aesthetics is devoted to the study of forms of behavior that center around observers’ interactions with works of art and other aesthetic phenomena using a variety of research techniques and controlled observation. The purpose of this chapter is to provide the reader with an overview of the diversity of research techniques and procedures employed in the last decade to understand and explain the underlying processes that contribute to an observer’s aesthetic experiences with a variety of visual art forms, including painting, film, photography, sculpture, cuisine, design products, and dance. The chapter is divided into the following sections to achieve its goal: artworks as stimuli, processes underlying an aesthetic experience with different visual art forms, the contribution of viewer characteristics to his or her experience with art, and the art museum as laboratory.

Aesthetics involves judgments of beauty or pleasingness. Narrower discussions focus on fine art and define beauty as pleasingness to the eye or ear. Broader discussions, however, see beauty in the revelation of truth and order not just in art but in any domain. Aesthetic judgments are both subjective and relative. As a result, there is no universal agreement on how observers can recognize beauty when they encounter it. Creativity involves aesthetic properties but goes beyond these to require novelty and effectiveness. Concentration on aesthetic properties of products, especially useful products, expands the definition of creativity and suggests a set of indicators of creativity: Such indicators offer promise of a universal aesthetic of creativity which would not only expand understanding of creativity but would offer perspectives on assessment of creativity, improve communication regarding creativity, and facilitate creativity-oriented teaching and learning activities.

Publisher Summary This chapter reviews research on aesthetic appreciation and demonstrates that preferences or taste judgments obey certain rules or principles. It argues that many of these principles are rooted in human nature and can somehow be explained on the basis of adaptations of our sensory systems and brains to one’s environment. Aesthetics is a very old concept, rooted in the Greek word aisthesis that can be translated as understanding through sensory perception. In the eighteenth century the concept started to be used to refer to sensory pleasure and delight. Although this definition of aesthetics is to some degree limiting, most of the research done in the area of experimental aesthetics since the pioneering work of Fechner (1876) is relevant for this overview. Much of this research focused on finding, mostly visual properties of objects, whether simple patterns, artworks or designed objects, determining aesthetic preference. These properties are generally classified into three classes: psychophysical, organizational, and meaningful properties. The psychophysical properties are the formal qualities of objects, such as their intensity, size, and color (in terms of hue, saturation, brightness), or, generally speaking, properties that can be quantified. Aesthetic effects of these properties are highly relational and contextual. This chapter also discusses the two other classes of properties, organizational and meaningful properties. In this discussion, it confines itself as much as possible to studies involving design objects as stimulus material. Findings from those studies often suggest universal agreement in aesthetic pleasure. It also explains why and under what conditions people of different times and cultures aesthetically prefer the same properties, and not only visually. Furthermore, it presents some implications for designers and the field of design.

Publisher Summary Cognitive processes help to break down a compartmentalization in the investigation of art. Emotional responses have been studied separately from cognitive aspects and social psychological perspectives. Research into cognition and affect, and social cognition promises possibilities for more integrated theories of the perception of art. The chapter demonstrates progress thus far in the new field of the cognitive psychology of art. The pictures, drawings, songs, and pieces of music can be studied directly with methodological rigor and sophistication. Cognitive psychology introduces a broader set of dependent variables into experimental aesthetics: it breaks away from an over-reliance on measures of preference and liking, and judgments of pleasingness and interest. It is not obvious from an examination of art criticism that these traditional measures reflect the most salient constructs with which spectators confront art-works.

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses the affective aspects of aesthetic communication. Aesthetics is a prime example of an area receiving much less attention than it warrants. Experimental aesthetics, the application of experimental psychology to the arts and other aesthetic phenomena, is now a little over 100 years old. Psychological aesthetics presents two main difficulties faced by students studying psychology for the first time. First, they discover themselves to be saddled with presuppositions that must be examined and called in question before they can make progress. These are implicit in the very language used to talk about psychological phenomena, and, more likely than not, they are vestiges of technical psychological theories of bygone eras. Second, students find themselves obliged to work their way through interminable methodological thickets. They come to psychology hoping to receive answers to questions, but, for much of the time, their courses discuss what questions ought to be asked and how the answers should be sought. Experimental aesthetics stirs up with particular sharpness common dissatisfactions with contemporary psychology in general and with other disciplines that investigate human life empirically. Psychologists are often expected to provide penetrating analyses of emotional experience, wisdom to face life's perplexities, and insightful commentaries on the human condition.