Luc: Lots of meaning in your post.
Selecting (not necessarily in order of priority): Deciding unconsciously:
some others may have trouble grasping the combination of decision and
unconsciousness. Might you accept that "some artists work with particular
visual areas" avoiding the issue of unconscious decision making?
I would need to do some of your reading to understand how artists produce
works designed to impact particular brain areas. This is not to say that I
don't understand that viewing art, or listening to music tends to impact
differentially on particular aspects of our sensory system (including of
course the brain).
And, having selected some aspect of the brain the artist wishe to impact, do
most/all people value that impact (given that, beyond pathology, our brains
work in similar ways - though often coming to different conclusions
regarding values - in art)?
Are there instances in which an artist intends to impact a particular brain
area but fails? How would he/she know? Would the viewer know?
Geoff C
From: Luc Delannoy <[email protected]>
Reply-To: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Valuing art
Date: Mon, 22 Dec 2008 11:08:23 -0800 (PST)
Geoff and Group,
Some things Ibve learned about valuing art from studying
neuroaesthetics.
Valuing art depends of the different aspects of our sensory
world and how we generate conscious experience of auditory or visual
percept
(subjective awareness of a stimulus).
Corollary questions: how patients with
scotoma in their
visual fields value art? how patients with spinal cord injury
value art?
Valuing depends also on the binding process that underlies
auditory/visual perception.We need an understanding of the parallel
pathways
(streams)
and the binding question.
Analyzing the V1 area in the visual
cortex helps us
understand that valuing is context-sensitive.
It seems some
artists have decided unconsciously to activate
or b work withb specific
visual areas: V4, color area for fauvism; V5, movement
area, see Calder,
etcb& See my post about brain and cubism, aesthetic fatigue
and the element
of surprise in Magritte (will attend that last point in a different post.)
Now, about watching paintings, Gallese and Freedberg
propose that even the
artistbs gestures in producing the artwork induce the empathetic
engagement
of the observer, by activating simulation of the motor program that
corresponds to the gesture implied by the trace.
So our first reactions in
valuing a painting
would be:
- the
feeling of bodily engagement
with the gestures, movements and intentions of
others
- the
identification of the emotions of observed others
- a
feeling
of empathy for bodily sensations
Changeux teached me that seeing visual art
is
like reasoning b first we deconstruct then we reconstruct a painting.
That
involves different prefrontal and frontal regions of our brain (the same
we use
while reasoning).
The same is happening when we listen to music.
What strikes me as fundamental is the asynchrony
in the visual process. Our
visual cortex does not see everything simultaneously
but step by step. There
is a delay of 400-500 milliseconds, itbs like a safety
margin the brain
gives for reviewing the situation we are in.
Valuing art depends also on
different kinds of
working memory. (MRI shows activation of areas of frontal
cortex for face
memory) So valuing could depend on the levels of
neurotransmitters and neuromodulators.
In the case of valuing interactive
art,
auditory input can influence a visual search. See Tannenhaus.
I
understand that the above might represent a short cut to other
fundamental
ideas.
Luc
PS. Michael Gazzaniga wrote an interesting report on art and
cognition.
