Abduction in Art Appreciation

Abstract

Individuals usually go to art museums to enjoy artworks. Generally, in order to appreciate the art in museums, a brief summary of certain information is provided as a caption. Viewers usually read these descriptions to aid their understanding. To provide broader technical support for this activity, several researchers have proposed a protocol for art appreciation. For instance, Leder et al. proposed a stage model for aesthetic processing, which combines aspects of understanding and cognitive mastering with affective and emotional processing. We have also conducted several experiments in order to determine the effect of information during art appreciation. For instance, we conducted an experiment where information about a piece of art was offered gradually and incrementally. In the experiment, the participants seemed to be able to gradually understand the artwork according to the obtained information. Our observations indicate that they tried to create stories for the artworks in order to explain the obtained information. In addition, for the abstract artworks, if they saw the title, they understood the artworks within their own explanation in the context of the title. Our research framework suggests that we can consider this observed framework as a process of abduction, where the incremental presentation of details about art helps a user form a hypothesis about the piece of art. In this paper, we will analyze artwork appreciation and understanding with this framework from the viewpoint of abduction.