Towards a New Kind of Experimental Psycho-Aesthetics? Reflections on the Parallellepipeda Project

Abstract

Experimental psycho-aesthetics—the science aimed at understanding the factors that determine aesthetic experience—is reviewed briefly as background to describe the Parallellepipeda project, a cross-over project between artists and scientists in Leuven. In particular, I sketch how it started and developed further, with close interactions between the participating artists and scientists. A few examples of specific research projects are mentioned to illustrate the kind of research questions we address and the methodological approach we have taken. We often found an effect of providing participants with additional information, a difference between novice and expert participants, and a shift with increasing experience with an artwork, in the direction of tolerating more complexity and acquiring more order from it. By establishing more connections between parts of an artwork and more associations to the artwork, it becomes a stronger Gestalt, which is more easily mastered by the viewer and leads to increased appreciation. In the final part of the paper, I extract some general lessons from the project regarding a possible new way of doing psycho-aesthetics research, which is able to solve some of the problems of traditional experimental psycho-aesthetics (eg, trade-off between experimental control and ecological validity).

Beauty in the blink of an eye: The time course of aesthetic experiences

“…What do the current results imply for our understanding of art perception? As already mentioned above, it is beyond question that in order to experience an artwork in all its flavour one needs time, freedom, an adequate setting (e.g., museum), and, possibly, mindset (Leder et al, 2004;Wagemans, 2011). In a real-life museum, setting viewing times will probably always exceed 10, 50, and also 500 ms (for a study on viewing times in the museum, see Smith & Smith, 2001).…”

Order, complexity, and aesthetic appreciation.

“…Predictive coding account of visual art. Van de Cruys and Wagemans (2011) proposed to look at aesthetic appreciation from a predictive coding perspective. From this perspective, individuals constantly make predictions about what to expect in the (visual) environment.…”

“…Research in experimental psycho-aesthetics often struggles with the challenge of balancing the needs for ecological validity and experimental control. In studies investigating the influence of order and complexity on aesthetic appreciation, maximizing experimental control by using simple stimuli has long been the dominant approach (Wagemans, 2011). This approach gives researchers the possibility to precisely control which factor is manipulated and it thereby enables them to determine which factor is responsible for the difference in aesthetic appreciation.…”

Vision, High-Level Theory of

“…) and of all the factors known to influence these processes (in addition to stimulus factors, also the person's background, interest, knowledge, expertise, etc.). In this way, experimental psychoaesthetics -the science of understanding art appreciationis a fascinating microcosmos and test bed for psychology as a whole (Wagemans, 2011). In spite of these complexities, here as well recent research has made good progress in relating these very high-level processes to known midlevel visual processes.…”

“…Perhaps such a piece of visual art, which provides just enough cues to induce particular percepts, while still leaving enough to the perceiver's imagination, is appreciated so much because it imposes the optimal degree of constraints on our perceptual awareness (Van de Cruys and Wagemans, 2011). Such a view on the rewarding aspects of art is compatible with one of the new theoretical frameworks replacing the traditional view on the hierarchy of low-, mid-, and high-level visions.…”