Aesthetic Theory Research Articles

Sparsity in an artificial neural network predicts beauty: Towards a model of processing-based aesthetics.

Generations of scientists have pursued the goal of defining beauty. While early scientists initially focused on objective criteria of beauty ('feature-based aesthetics'), philosophers and artists alike have since proposed that beauty arises from the interaction between the object and the individual who perceives it. The aesthetic theory of fluency formalizes this idea of interaction by proposing that beauty is determined by the efficiency of information processing in the perceiver's brain ('processing-based aesthetics'), and that efficient processing induces a positive aesthetic experience. The theory is supported by numerous psychological results, however, to date there is no quantitative predictive model to test it on a large scale. In this work, we propose to leverage the capacity of deep convolutional neural networks (DCNN) to model the processing of information in the brain by studying the link between beauty and neuronal sparsity, a measure of information processing efficiency. Whether analyzing pictures of faces, figurative or abstract art paintings, neuronal sparsity explains up to 28% of variance in beauty scores, and up to 47% when combined with a feature-based metric. However, we also found that sparsity is either positively or negatively correlated with beauty across the multiple layers of the DCNN. Our quantitative model stresses the importance of considering how information is processed, in addition to the content of that information, when predicting beauty, but also suggests an unexpectedly complex relationship between fluency and beauty.

Tactile Perception in Aesthetic Evaluation: A Systematic Review

Abstract The haptic sense is an essential component of aesthetic evaluation that is often overlooked in today's mobile internet age. Unlike hearing and vision, the sense of touch is less widely transmitted. Unfortunately, most aesthetic theories and explanations have focused solely on the visual and auditory senses, with minimal attention given to tactile evaluation. To address this gap in knowledge, we have collected studies on tactile aesthetics within the framework of experimental aesthetics from 2000 to 2022. After statistical generalization, our findings suggest the following: The criteria for evaluating tactile aesthetics were mostly dichotomous, that is, positive (like/appreciation/pleasure) and negative (dislike/disgust/unpleasant). Tactile aesthetics predominantly involved the toucher dimension (synesthesia/need for touch/touch pattern) and the touch sample dimension (shape/type/texture), with the commonly overlooked factors of “need for touch” and “touch pattern.” Some studies did not restrict the shape and material of the touch samples. Based on our findings, we have systematically summarized and concluded what tactile factors influence aesthetic evaluation and have analyzed future research trends.

Image Aesthetics Assessment With Attribute-Assisted Multimodal Memory Network

Image aesthetics assessment (IAA) has attracted growing interest in recent years but is still challenging due to its highly abstract nature. Nowadays, more and more people tend to comment images shared on the social networks, which can provide rich aesthetics-aware semantic information from different aspects. Therefore, user comments of an image can be exploited as supplementary information for enhancing aesthetic representation learning. Previous researches have demonstrated that aesthetic attributes make significant effect on image aesthetic quality and humans’ aesthetic perception. Typically, people are used to give comments on an image from the perspective of aesthetic attributes, based on which the aesthetic quality of images can be inferred. Motivated by this, this paper presents an Attribute-assisted Multimodal Memory Network (AMM-Net) for image aesthetics assessment, which utilizes aesthetic attributes to model the interactions between visual and textual modalities. Specifically, we design two memory networks to capture the attribute-aware information most related to the image and associated comments respectively. Further, with multiple memory hops, attribute semantics shared by the two modalities are refined and cross-modal interactions are enhanced progressively. Finally, more discriminative aesthetic representations can be obtained for IAA. The experimental results and comparisons on two public multimodal IAA datasets demonstrate the superiority of the proposed model over the state-of-the-art methods. The source code is available at https://github.com/zhutong0219/AMM-Net.

Review of Art in the After-Culture: Capitalist Crisis ' Cultural Strategy by Ben Davis (Haymarket Books)

The eight essays in Ben Davis’ Art in the After-Culture are centered on the interchanges between cultural production and economic development in contemporary society. Largely told through the lens of leftist aesthetic theory, the book pushes against exploitative notions of capitalist systems and ambitions towards decentralization. Davis likens art to a “survival kit” and advocates for creative practitioners to strategically influence the direction of society.

Contemporary techniques of graphic art and its representations

The research tagged (Representations of Contemporary Technologies in Graphic Art) deals with the dialectical relationship between the diversifications of technologies within their temporal developments and the structure of graphic work, especially in our current era and the huge openness of digital technologies and their cultural influences in thought and their functional deliberations in life and their aesthetic representations in art. This faces a cognitive tangle and questions represented in: 1. What is the cognitive space of graphic techniques between the primitive and contemporary edges? 2. How did reproduction replace the original in contemporary circulation? The importance of the research is represented in the following points: 1. The research deals with one of the forms of arts whose historical presence has indicated through time and space. 2. The research seeks to seriously explore the roots of an artistic phenomenon seeking to innovate manifestations of the beautiful always. 3. The research monitors and analyzes the phenomenon of archaeological transition from immanent to transcendental. The boundaries of the research receded between the early days of the spread of digital technologies in the visual arts, including graphics, and the researcher chose the year 1970 to the year 2023 to contain the research problem from its beginnings to its conclusions. Therefore, to the basic indicators reported in the third chapter, which dealt with three distinct models as a research sample, and concluded from its analysis to the results of the research that were discussed in the fourth chapter, and the researcher drew conclusions from them and identified recommendations and proposals.

Reflections on Music in Fiction: Rose Tremain’sMusic and Silence(1999), Julian Barnes’sThe Noise of Time(2016) and Roger Scruton’sPerictione in Colophon(2000)

AbstractMusic and literature are sister arts whose affinities and intertwinement over time have been explored from musicological and literary studies perspectives. Music holds great fascination with both scholars and lay persons because it manages to move us deeply even if we do not know much about it in a technical or theoretical sense. Aesthetic theories of music have time and again assigned this art form a special, sometimes even a divine, status. This article explores some ways in which contemporary novels reflect on music as an art form and cultural practice, its personal as well as political significance. It investigates how such reflection about music is embedded in the narrative texts, either as narratorial comments which momentarily suspend the action or as thoughts and opinions expressed by characters. In each case, readers are invited to follow the often deeply philosophical lines of reasoning presented in the text and to form their own ideas. Musical ekphrasis is used to convey at least a fleeting impression of the ephemeral ‘texture’ of the respective music and its lasting effects on the novels’ characters.

Sensing Medieval Violence: Two Literary Case Studies

ABSTRACT Modern discourses surrounding the aesthetic representation of violence and the ethics of witnessing have often focused on visual perception. Yet, the intrusive and percussive nature of sound’s transmission has linked it intimately with the perception of violence in both medieval and modern representations. This article presents two case studies from medieval literature in which issues of sensation consistently mediate aesthetic and ethical dimensions of the violence that the texts contain. This emphasis on sensation foregrounds the role of the body in observing and witnessing representations of violence.

Translation of Children's Literature from the Perspective of Reception Aesthetics

Children's literature, as the name suggests, is a literary work created for children and teenagers, and it plays an important role in their growth process, accompanied by the functions of education, entertainment and cognitive formation. In recent years, China's translation research has been greatly improved, but the research on children's literature translation is still lacking. The translators of children's literature are mostly adults, but the audience is children. Under the guidance of aesthetic theory, the author, from the perspective of children's readers, puts children at the center, aiming to meet their reading needs. so, this paper explores the translation of children's literature on the basis of acceptance aesthetics from the original text-centered to reader-centered, and take the Su Nong's translation of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone and the original version as an example to explore the vocabulary, rhetoric and translation of magic spells. In terms of rhetoric, the author skillfully uses metaphors, rhymes, and parallelism techniques to make the translation reflect the stylistic style of the original text as much as possible, simultaneously increasing literary talent and bringing pleasant artistic enjoyment to children. This paper aims to popularize different perspectives and interpretations of children's literature translation for the general public, and better enable children to appreciate the aesthetics and charm of Chinese and English texts so that they can grow up healthily and develop comprehensively.

Literature Review on the Study of Modernity in Tragic Aesthetics

Tragic aesthetics, a field of study encompassing profound explorations of human suffering and volition, has played a crucial role in the development of human artistic and cultural expressions from ancient Greek times to the present day. With the continuous evolution and advancement of modern society, the concept of modernity has gradually intertwined with the ideal and aesthetics of tragedy. Modernity introduces new ideas, values, and aesthetic perspectives that have progressively influenced the realm of tragic art and aesthetics. This paper focuses on the manifestations of modernity in the evolution of Tragic Aesthetics theory. Employing a literature research approach, it microscopically summarizes the research related to the modernity of Tragic Aesthetics and macroscopically traces the historical development of modern Tragic theory. After summarizing and analyzing relevant works and literature, the paper concludes that research on the modernity of Tragic Aesthetics is relatively scarce, and the understanding of the relationship between modernity and Tragic Aesthetics in the available literature often remains superficial and preliminary. Therefore, there is still significant research space in this area.

Exploring the New Aesthetic Significance of Chinese Film Art under the Influence of Digital Technology

Film, rooted in technology, possesses unique aesthetic characteristics that are intertwined with technological advancements. Since the beginning of the new century, the integration of digital technology has facilitated a seamless transition of film art from production to distribution, ushering in a new era of digital film aesthetics. This paper focuses on investigating the relationship between digital technology and film art, clarifying the developmental origins of both, and using the degree of digital technologys integration into film art as a starting point. By examining classic digital film texts, the paper explores the reshaping of various aspects of film production through the application of digital technology. Based on film aesthetic theories, this paper aims to deconstruct traditional film aesthetics through the lens of digital film, making meaningful attempts to establish the aesthetic framework for Chinese digital film art.

The golden ratio in baseball: the influence of historical eras on winning percentages in major league baseball.

The golden section or golden ratio (61.8% or 0.618) is a mathematical phenomenon that appears in art, literature, music and nature with such ubiquity that it is thought to be a fundamental principle of aesthetic organisation. The golden ratio also manifests in sport, particularly as the proportion of wins to losses required to win a Major League Baseball championship. This study extends early work on the golden ratio in baseball by incorporating more than three decades of additional data. This study involved a historically contextualized examination of how winning percentages have changed across the seven historical eras of modern baseball, including analyses of the relative contribution of offensive and defensive statistics to championship winning teams. Data was extracted from Baseball Reference and included statistics for 398 championship winning teams from both the American and National Leagues between 1901 and 2019. Pearson correlation coefficients were computed for winning percentage with indicators of offensive and defensive performance during each era. Main and interaction effects of Era and League on winning percentage were examined using factorial ANOVA, with follow-up analyses examining whether the golden ratio was included in each factor's 95% confidence interval. Our findings suggest that winning percentages for championship teams were closest to the golden ratio during eras where the relative contribution of offense and defense was most closely balanced: the Integration Era (1942-1960) and the Expansion Era (1961-1976). Previous scholarship theorizes that the golden ratio represents an aesthetic ideal or a Gestalt archetype. If this aesthetic theory is applied to sporting competition, these results suggest that baseball may be most aesthetically appealing to fans when offense and defense is balanced in such a way as to ensure that championship teams win 61.8% of their games.

Проблема атмосферы у Г. Беме и ее отношение к цифровой культуре

This article is devoted to a relatively new aesthetic concept, the concept of atmosphere. In the second half of the 20th century, due to the overcoming of the understanding of the aesthetic as a field of art and the emergence of the tendency to appeal to sensual experience, the idea that aesthetic perception and aesthetic experience are possible not only in the context of art events, but also in the space of everyday life is becoming increasingly relevant. The aesthetics of atmosphere arises from the aesthetics of everyday life. The first to declare the concept of atmosphere as a separate aesthetic theory was H. Böhme (1937–2022). The immediate predecessors of the concept of atmospheres are the theoretical positions of G. Schmitz and W. Benjamin. The aesthetics of atmospheres explores the states that arise in the process of the relationship between the subjective and the objective factors and in their material, emotional interaction. This article analyzes H. Beme’s concept of atmosphere, as presented by him in his works: “‘Atmosphere’ as a fundamental concept of the new aesthetics”, “Atmospheric Architectures: The Aesthetics of Felt Spaces”, “Architektur und Atmosphäre”. A special place in H. Beme’s aesthetic theory of atmospheres is occupied, first, by the concept of “ecstasy of things” introduced by him, which allows us to speak of the relatively objective nature of atmospheres, and, second, by the problem of the production of artificial atmospheres. Most studies of atmosphere as an aesthetic category consider atmosphere in the context of architecture, urban environment, design, etc. This article attempts to explore the atmosphere in digital space. At present, digital space has already lost its representational and in principle auxiliary position in relation to the human being, and has become a space for the realization of possibilities, the functioning of which was not represented in the human being’s being. The specific possibilities of the digital require a special analysis of the aesthetic, capable of exploring the digital space in its entirety. The article suggests that the concept of atmospheres is a productive way to work with digital space, which is shown on the example of such digital space phenomena as metavelves and ASMR-video. The study showed that the concept of atmospheres is convenient for working with digital space, especially due to the fact that with its help it is possible to carry out successful analysis not only of visual and auditory components (characteristic for classical aesthetics), but also of other ways of aesthetic perception.

Aesthetic Representation levels in Mosques: Insights from the Great State Mosque Competition in Baghdad, Iraq

Aesthetic Representation levels in Mosques: Insights from the Great State Mosque Competition in Baghdad, Iraq

Opaque Aesthetics of Freedom: Romaine la Prophètesse, the Haitian Revolution, and Black Diasporic Possibilities

The Haitian Revolution—the famed historical event that redefined the liberatory possibilities of modernity and altered Black diasporic subjectivities—offers a wealth of knowledge that has yet to be fully analyzed. This article explores the diasporic and queered possibilities embedded in the story and aesthetic representation of the revolutionary actor, Romaine la Prophètesse. This liminal figure of the early revolutionary era galvanized thousands of formerly enslaved people to fight against the French colonial apparatus while embodying a feminine, creative, and spiritual gendered subjectivity, diverting from the overdetermined masculinist and militaristic ethos of the time. Nonetheless, most accounts of Romaine are tangentially mentioned and do not explore the rebellious possibilities of this historical figure’s imaginative gendered presentation. To counter the analytical impasse imposed by Western and authoritative archives and methodologies, the author employs a “radical interdisciplinarity”—a crucial Black studies approach—to unearth the potential of creative genders and their role in upholding Black diasporic epistemes of freedom and resistance. Paying attention to Haitian abstract art, and particularly the work of Haiti-born, Montreal-based multidisciplinary artist Manuel Mathieu, the author explores how his pieces blur temporal, spatial and ontological registers offering a glimpse into undecipherable, yet affective, genealogies of “freedom dreams.” Indeed, through the use of a conceptual frameworks that honours the “right to opacity,” the author suggests that the obscured mythology and the abstracted aesthetics of Romaine la Prophètesse allow for a genealogical reading of queer spiritual ontologies that are part of larger Black diasporic freedom epistemes and that are demonstrated through contemporary Haitian queer designations and advocacy work.

The Reshaping of the Aesthetic Concept of Music—Commenting on Hailin Luo Xiaoping's "General Theory of Music Aesthetics" has a Feeling

The Reshaping of the Aesthetic Concept of Music—Commenting on Hailin Luo Xiaoping's "General Theory of Music Aesthetics" has a Feeling

Analysis of the Development and Direction of Contemporary Exhibitions

With the advancement of civilization and the passage of time, art has steadily merged into everyday life. The quantity and variety of art exhibitions held have significantly expanded, becoming a daily activity for the majority of the public as the social process and the pace of peoples lives continue to quicken. The public is given a strong sense of connection to the art institution and the exhibition space as a result of the modern exhibitions progressive evolution and subsequent innovation and improvement. This paper looks at the potential and direction of contemporary art exhibitions, analyzes the shortcomings of contemporary art exhibitions, and looks at the current situation and development prospects of contemporary art exhibitions as well as the background of academic research at home and abroad. It examines and provides examples from four perspectives, including participatory exhibition, interactive art, and high technology, Nicholas Berriods relational aesthetic theory, and online exhibition. It also examines and thinks from the perspective of traditional Chinese context theory, reflecting various methods of presenting contemporary exhibitions and new ideas in the hopes of assisting artists and curators.

조지 엘리엇의 리얼리즘에서 관습과 스테레오타입의 문제

This paper examines the issue of stereotypes and conventions as constitutive elements of the realist form, focusing on chapter 17 of Adam Bede, which is most often cited when discussing the realist aesthetic of 19th-century English writer George Eliot. The emphasis on stereotypes and conventions is centered on Eliot’s observation of the still life. I argue that Eliot’s fiction aims for moral truth rather than mechanical objectivity in its representations in order to elicit reader’s sympathy. As such, Eliot’s realism emphasizes empirical observation while simultaneously embracing idealism. In addressing the often-debated “question of objectivity in the aesthetic representation of reality” in realism, the focus then needs to be on the word “aesthetic” as much as on “objectivity,” and this paper argues that Eliot’s aesthetic achievement is not sufficiently free from the constraints of convention and stereotype.

ESTETIKA KARYA SENI ILUSTRASI DOODLE ART KOTA MAKASSAR

Art is a work or human action that has a point of beauty that makes the human heart moved. In other words, art is an element of culture which aims to fulfill the needs of humans or community groups for aesthetic values. Doodle Art is a work of art that uses a lot of imagination and truth in processing and setting images on a medium. The purpose of this analysis is to find out the aesthetics of Makassar City Doodle Art Illustration Art works. For this reason, the target of the analysis is directed at the Makassar Doodle Art community, namely the millennial community of young people in Makassar City. This type of research is interpretive qualitative research and uses Monroe Breadsley's aesthetic theory approach which emphasizes elements of unity, complexity and seriousness. The population in this research is the Makassar Doodle Art community, totaling 50 people and the research sample is the Makassar Doodle Art Community, totaling 10 people. The data analysis techniques used are literature, video and photo documentation from existing samples, namely the Makassar Doodle Art community, Makassa city. The conclusion that can be presented in this article is that apart from the aesthetic concept, it is also about the process of creating illustrations (doodles) in the Makassar DoodleArt community. The process of creating Doodles using simple, improvised equipment can produce good work that can be analyzed.

Code biology and aesthetics

This paper lays the foundations for an investigation of aesthetics in the light of the theories proposed in the field of Code Biology. Starting from the research objectives that aesthetics has set since its origins, a comparison is made with those aesthetic theories that have been most concerned with the sensory approach to the environment, with the attempt to unite human sciences and the main biological discoveries. Thanks to the scientifically grounded insights offered by Code Biology, we will first outline the field of interest of aesthetics and its foundations, and then delineate certain boundaries – such as those between sensations and perceptions, the aesthetic process and the work of art – that characterise such a field of research. Particular attention will be paid to locating the aesthetic process within the more general cognitive processes, i.e. the three cognitive macrosystems that enable the modelling of the world.

“Edible Aesthetics”: Blurring Boundaries between Pastry and Art

The inquiry into whether food can be classified as “art” has long been a subject of debate. From its roots tracing back to Plato, this question has attracted the attention of both artistic movements and philosophers, especially throughout the twentieth century. In this paper, I aim to revisit this contentious issue by exploring the realm of pastry making as a form of art. Within the broader discourse on this topic, pastry emerges as a distinctive medium. Since sweets have historically transcended their mere nutritive functions, pastry may establish an immediate connection between art and food. Simultaneously, it reiterates the persistent challenges of encompassing the edible domain within conventional aesthetic theories. Throughout various contexts and periods, confectionery has evolved through the reproduction or imitation of visual arts, often reflecting the prevailing artistic climate of its flourishing periods. Moreover, due to its intimate association with rituals and celebratory occasions, pastry carries a profound cognitive and metaphorical framework that enhances its expressive potential, capturing the attention of many artists. By exploring the intersection of pastry and various artistic genres, drawing on illustrative examples ranging from modern European pièce montées to American cake design and Japanese wagashi, I critically examine the possibility and potential aesthetic qualities of this marginal genre, thereby opening up broader inquiries into the loose categorizations and fluctuations within the intricate domain of art.