Sense, Modality, and Aesthetic Experience

Abstract

Aesthetic experiences are peculiar. On the one hand, artworks often engage mainly one single sense modality and are in this way rather primitive compared to ordinary conscious life. On the other hand, art can be very complicated and might eventually provide the basis for a highly complex experience. In the following chapter I seek to resolve this apparent contradiction. I will do this by analyzing the concept of modality, the relations between modalities and reflection, and finally the connections between narrativity and identity. As part of my argument, I will claim that modern art comprises a psychological experiment with perception.1. Modality and ComplexityClassical textbooks in psychology from ca. 1900-1950 were often structured in a way that started with descriptions of simple psychological functions and then proceeded to the more complex ones. The simple functions were sensations (described as different sense modalities) and motor functions (if described at all), the intermediate functions comprised perception and remembering, while the most complex functions always involved consciousness and self-reflection. Descriptive concepts such as personality, character, or identity were placed at the end of this continuum of increasing complexity.It is no doubt legitimate to arrange many of these functions into a hierarchy of complexity. Mono-modality, such as tactile sensation, is in many ways simpler than self-reflection. Tactile sensation represents only one qualitative sense, while self-reflection involves several modalities. If it were possible to isolate the specific brain tissue involved in tactile sensation and self-reflection, especially the associative relations manifested by the associative neural paths, then self-reflection would certainly involve more activity and brain tissue.The differentiation between single sense modalities such as vision and hearing is clear, but it is just as obvious that you never encounter any single modalities in your daily life. Mono-modal experience is as fictive as the planetary model in particle physics. You are never psychologically engaged through only one modality - it is simply impossible, at least as an adult (the early psyche is an exception from this generalization). A simple reason for this is that no sensation can exist without a movement of the body (as researchers like Alexander Bain [1855] knew), and this movement involves either proprioception or the kinesthetic sense. Mono-modality is never manifest in experience.The early psyche has not developed self-reflection, intersubjectivity, or higher consciousness. It is likely that during this early phase the psyche mainly senses (Goldstein 1980). This state is gradually replaced by different sorts of complexities such as intersubjectivity, role-play, and identifications, which prevent a regression or return to mono-modality. In this context it is interesting to note that art is one of those very few media through which it is possible to recreate and assimilate the mono-modal experience of infancy. Painting and music are obvious examples. Through the lack of narratives the artwork comes to resemble the primeval mono-modality. But figurative art and some vocal music often involve a narrative component because they present some more or less symbolic statement, frequently with affective content. Therefore, both painting and music can be loaded with narratives.In relation to art and art forms, it is obvious that complexity can involve narratives. Indeed, narrative art forms, such as theater and film, are those which engage the greatest number of modalities. Modern psychological theories of identity (e.g., McAdams 1997) have pointed to the narrative as a means for identity-production. By constructing and telling stories about our own selves, we use these narratives to create our identities - the narratives are our identities.2. Art as Psychological ExperimentArtists necessarily presuppose that the perceiver of the work of art is a subject who roughly has the same psychological characteristics as themselves. …