Aesthetic experts

2023

Since ancient, if not primordial, times, humans wondered about art: why do we have art? How did we come to have art? What is the value of having art? Why do we experience pleasure in relation to art, and why does some art engender more pleasure than other art, and that only, apparently, for some people and not for all of us? Answering such questions is beyond the scope of a single book. Nor is it appropriate for a course manual to do more than set out the questions, provide informative contexts as well as equip readers and students with a basic set of skills to enable them to at least begin a journey of discovery. Hence, the present textbook aims to offer exactly that. We will begin a marvellous questing journey and walk the sometimes beaten, sometimes arduous, path, together, for a

Neuroaesthetics (M. Skov and O. Vartanian, eds.), 2009

Basic and Clinical Neuroscience, 2011

2014

Neuroaesthetics is a young enough field that there seems to be no established view of its proper subject matter. Morphologically, the term implies the scientific study of neural aspects of the perception of artworks such as paintings, or elements of artworks such as musical intervals. We are concerned, however, that practitioners of this new field may not be aware of the tremendous ambiguities inherent in the terms “aesthetics ” and “art, ” ones that limit a proper understanding of human art behavior. Connotations of these terms are particularly inappropriate and mis-leading when considering the experiences, practices, and functions of the arts in preindustrial, folk, aboriginal, or Pleistocene societies, and even in contemporary popular culture. It is only during the last two centuries that the terms “Art ” (with an implied capital A, connoting an independent realm of prestigious and revelatory works) and “aesthetics ” (as a unique, and even reverential, mode of attention toward su...

W illem de Kooning, the famous Dutch-American abstract expressionist painter, continued to paint for several years a er developing Alzheimer's disease. But his paintings were di erent somehow, more deeply expressing his abstract style, according to some art critics. De Kooning's change in style explicitly makes the case that art can serve as a window into the workings of the human brain, that when the brain changes, so too do artistic expression and perception.

The future of the art/science relationship does not only concern the field of artistic creation, but also the field of aesthetic experience. In fact, whereas aesthetics has existed as a philosophical discipline since the 18th century, more and more scientific experimental works study aesthetic experience. Philosophical aesthetics now shares its object of study with what is often called neuroaesthetics. The aim of this chapter is to shape a common vision enabling philosophical aesthetics and neuroaesthetics to pool their results and their tools so that the research world does not suffer from a regrettable scission in the field of theory of artistic theory. Indeed, aesthetics seems to have a lot to gain from physiological studies dealing, on the one hand, with the capacity of cognitive processes to adapt to non-routine situations and, on the other hand, with the capacity of these adaptations to be felt by individuals.

BioSocieties, 2012

Neuroaesthetics, 2018

Neuroaesthetics is a young enough field that there seems to be no established view of its proper subject matter. Morphologically, the term implies the scientific study of neural aspects of the perception of artworks such as paintings, or elements of artworks such as musical intervals. We are concerned, however, that practitioners of this new field may not be aware of the tremendous ambiguities inherent in the terms "aesthetics" and "art," ones that limit a proper understanding of human art behavior. Connotations of these terms are particularly inappropriate and misleading when considering the experiences, practices, and functions of the arts in preindustrial, folk, aboriginal, or Pleistocene societies, and even in contemporary popular culture. It is only during the last two centuries that the terms "Art" (with an implied capital A, connoting an independent realm of prestigious and revelatory works) and "aesthetics" (as a unique, and even reverential, mode of attention toward such works) have taken on their present elitist meanings and become unavoidably intertwined (Davies, 2006; Shiner, 2001). The word "aesthetic" (from the Greek aiesthesis, having to do with the senses) was first used in 1735 by a German philosopher in a book on poetry (Baumgarten, 1735/1954), and since that time has been employed in two different, but not always distinct, ways. Enlightenment philosophers and their followers gradually developed the now elitist notion of "the aesthetic"-a special form of disinterested knowledge and appreciation-to describe the emotional response elicited by the perception of great works of art (Shiner, 2001). While this meaning of aesthetic has strong historical connections with the arts and with artworks, a second usage has come to refer to any value system having to do with the appreciation of beauty, such as the beauty of nature. In recent decades, for example, some ethologists and evolutionary psychologists have adopted this second, broader notion of aesthetics in a new field, originally called "landscape

Journal of clinical trials, 2020

Objective: NEVArt research aims to study the correlation between a set of neurophysiological/emotional reactions and the level of aesthetic appreciation of around 500 experimental subjects, during the observation of 18 different paintings from the XVI-XVIII century, in a real museum context. Methods: Several bio-signals have been recorded to evaluate the participants' reactions during the observation of paintings. Among them: (a) neurovegetative, motor and emotional biosignals were recorded using wearable tools for EEG (electroencephalogram), ECG (electrocardiogram) and EDA (electrodermal activity); (b) gaze pattern during the observation of art works, while (c) data of the participants (age, gender, education, familiarity with art, etc.) and their explicit judgments about paintings have been obtained. Participants were invited to respond during the observation of paintings, reporting the degree of pleasantness, perceived movement and familiarity with the painted subject. Results: Each recorded bio-signal will be correlated with the explicit evaluations obtained by participants during the museum experience. These results may contribute to enlarge the theoretical framework on the physiological, cognitive and emotional responses of people when viewing pictorial artworks. Conclusion: The NEVArt research, both in term of technical skills and upgrade in neuroscientific awareness, can be the basis to proceed with a set of further research topics in the near future. Groundbreaking and statistically significant observations can be derived from the present research, mainly at the biological, medical and didactical point of view, by paving the way for many other multidisciplinary research developments on art exhibit, architecture, etc.

Quantifying bodies and health. Interdisciplinary approaches, 2021

It is possible today to determine, with some precision (according to the most recent studies in neuroscience and evolutionary psychology), the areas of the brain and the neural networks involved when an individual contemplates art, when feeling pleasure, or when judging about aesthetic experience. However, many questions remain open. First, the philosophical question about the subjective nature of this kind of judgments. Then, what happens in the mind (or should it be said, in the brain?) of the beholder when contemplating art or judging in favor (or not) of the beauty of an object. And the ultimate question, if we have an aesthetic brain. Another issue that must be addressed is if bioart and especially neuroart can contribute to this analysis and if they can be effectively quantified as art. Thus, this brief essay seeks to provide some understanding about this questions but most importantly about the existence of an aesthetic brain, which may ultimately contribute to open doors to other problems of philosophy such as the hard brain-mind problem.