Table of Contents Wednesday August 20, 2008 Paper Session: Aesthetic Experience and Structure I Fractal Dimension and Visual Complexity: Predictors of Aesthetic Judgments A. M. Forsythe, M. Nadal,,& N. Sheehy .......................................................................................... 128 Narrative feelings and their cognitive implications David S. Miall..................................................................................................................................... 133 The Influence of Visual Complexity on Aesthetic Preference: An Explanation of the Diverging Results Marcos Nadal, Madeleine N. Besch, Caroline S. Kelley, Kathryn E. Mains & Gisèle Marty...................................................................................................... 137 The Dynamic Aesthetics of Experience Design Patricia Search................................................................................................................................... 142
Paper Session: Art Education Creating Art and Conversing About Art: Effects of an Integrated Curriculum Lisa F. Smith & Jeffrey K. Smith ........................................................................................................ 146 Art Education and the New Media Using Multimedia Process, Through Arts, Sciences, and Technology, for Educators Pierre Pepin ....................................................................................................................................... 150 Aesthetic and Strong Experiences in Music Maria B. Spychiger............................................................................................................................. 153
Paper Session: Creativity II Geometry as an Abstraction Yves Jeanson....................................................................................................................................... 155 The Emergence of Organized Aesthetic Features in Residential Landscapes Mariette Julien .................................................................................................................................. 158 Mental Visualization of Artworks: Ékphrasis Versus Textbook Descriptions Paolo Castelli, Martina D’Ercole, Anna Maria Giannini & Antonella Sbrilli......................................................................................... 161 Psychological Hints About “Lavandare” by Giovanni Pascoli Antonella Vizzaccaro & Rita Matera ................................................................................................. 164
i
Paper Session: Aesthetic Experience and Emotion Effects of Interpretation of Energetic and Emotional Costs of Depicted Actions in Picture Perception William P. Seeley................................................................................................................................ 167 Tears and Recognition: A correlation between “Feeling Like Crying” and Dewey’s Aesthetic Experience Matthew Pelowski & Fuminori Akiba ................................................................................................ 171 Aesthetic Emotions and Consumer Products Pieter M.A. Desmet............................................................................................................................. 177 Investigation On Piero Della Francesca’s Frescoes Paolo Bonaiut, Anna Maria Giannini, & Valeria Biasi ..................................................................... 181 Art and Personal Integrity Bjarne Sode Funch ............................................................................................................................. 185 The Pictorial Depiction of Symbols In Paintings of the “Annunciation” (11th-20th Century) Paolo Bonaiuto,Valeria Biasi, Claudia Cervelli & Maria Teresa Colucci..................................................................................................................... 188
Paper Session: Individual Differences Loss, Trauma, and Literary Reading at the Limits of Expressibility Don Kuiken......................................................................................................................................... 189 The Understanding of Artist Held by a Person Diagnosed With a Mental Illness Karleen Gwinner ................................................................................................................................ 192 Melancholy and Literary Reading: The Influence of Loss on Expressive Enactment in Readers’ Response to Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner Shelley Sikora, Don Kuiken, & David S. Miall ................................................................................... 198 Dynamic Evaluation of High- and Low-Creativity Drawings by Artist and Non-Artist Raters Joanna Serafin & Aaron Kozbelt........................................................................................................ 201 Evidence for Visual Selection as an Explanation for Artists’ Advantages in Drawing Aaron Kozbelt & Angelika Seidel....................................................................................................... 207 Cross-Cultural and Gender Differences in Aesthetic Preferences of Landscapes George Erdos, Joan Harvey & Ludek Kolman............................................................................... 210
ii
Art Exhibit The Metasyntax of Digital Art Installations Patricia Search................................................................................................................................... 212 Technical and Psychological Features of Recent Photographic Images Maria Teresa Colucci......................................................................................................................... 217 Jewelry: Symbolism and Design Annelies van Meel-Jansen .................................................................................................................. 221 Painting as Philosophy Iwona Szmelter ................................................................................................................................... 224 Conversations with My Own Critter To Include: “Hemispheres 94”, “Image (94) #1”, “11 JUN 03”, & “16 NOV 07” Craig A. Lund ..................................................................................................................................... 225 Illusory Contours, Surfaces and Volumes Depending From Apparent Causal Agents, Cast Shadows or Reflections Paolo Bonaiuto................................................................................................................................... 227 The “Noosphere” Sculpture and “The Work of a Lifetime (529 Drawings on One Poster)” Yves Jeanson....................................................................................................................................... 231 Title of Works: Sculpture (bronze) – Metamorphosis of a Woman, Sketch models for sculptures, Princess Mishawaka; St. Francis Sufi W. Ahmad .................................................................................................................................... 235 “Growth and Continuit.”, “Hospitality: The Path Ways of the Kola nu”, “Heaven and Earth”, & “The Mirror Image” Okpara, Chukwuemeka Vincent ......................................................................................................... 237 Portraits of Benjamin Ulysses Kozbelt Aaron Kozbelt..................................................................................................................................... 239 Wiki Art Pedro Andrade ................................................................................................................................... 241 Assemblage Artwork Abstract Steven M. Specht................................................................................................................................. 242 Beneath Appearances and Misty Woods: Understanding Landscape with Multiple Layers of Meaning George K. Shortess............................................................................................................................. 244 Women in Portraiture Photography Joanna Serafin.................................................................................................................................... 246
iii
Symposium II: Wave-Like Processes in Art and Culture Typology of Stylistic Waves: Information Approach Vladimir M. Petrov & Lidia A. Mazhul .............................................................................................. 248 Periodical Waves in the Evolution of Art: Spectral Methods of Study Alexander V. Kharuto......................................................................................................................... 254 Periodicities in Humankind Dynamics: Influence of Perturbations (Theoretical Approach) Vladimir M. Koshkin & Leonid M. Lyubchyk..................................................................................... 259 Cycles of Intensity of Artistic Life: Ways to Leadership (European Music and Theatre, 16TH – 20TH Centuries) T. V. Kovalenko, & P. A. Kulichkin.................................................................................................... 262
Tuesday August 19, 2008 Thursday August 21, 2008 Friday August 22, 2008
iv
Wednesday August 20 Aesthetic Experience and Structure I Fractal Dimension and Visual Complexity: Predictors of Aesthetic Judgments
A. M. Forsythe, John Moores University, M. Nadal, University of the Balearic Islands,& N. Sheehy, John Moores University,, & J. Cela-Conde, University of the Balearic Islands
[email protected] Introduction The relationship between visual complexity (the degree of detail or intricacy in an image) and preference for that image is not linear (Berlyne, 1971); the least preferred images tend to be very simple or very complex. This inverted - U hypothesis (with preferences highest towards the centre of the cusp) has found mixed support, often because of limitations in the range of the complexity in picture sets (see for example Krupinski & Locher, 1988; Martindale et al., 1990). Whilst much previous research has focused on the extent to which visual complexity contributes to judgments of beauty, complexity at its most basic level captures only the numbers of lines or elements within a visual image. Other processes influence the extent to which the human observer is able to accurately determine a ‘complexity number’ to an image (Chipman, 1977; Forsythe et al., 2008). For example, fractal dimension is a measure of self similarity within an image, and this self-similarity is one of the higher level processes that Chipman (1977) argues can reduce the impact of perceived visual complexity. Aesthetic preference has been shown to be related to fractal patterns (Aks, & Sprott, 1996; Pickover, 1995) particularly those that fall into a medium dimension range (Taylor et al., 2001). Here we examine the extent to which self-similarity might account for some proportion of the variance in judgements of perceived beauty. However, fractal dimension captures self-similarity within an image, but not randomness. Taken together, measures of visual complexity and fractal dimension should be able to account for more of the variance in judgments of perceived beauty, than judgements of visual complexity alone. Other factors such as image type and colour are also explored. Method Image Selection: From the pool of 800 images developed by Nadal et al (2006) 94 images were selected by obtaining fractal dimension scores (of normal distribution) for 5 image categories [Abstract Artistic (AA: n=32), Abstract Decorative (AD: n=15), Figurate Artistic (FA: n=21), Figurative Decorative (FD: n=14), Natural Scenes (NAT: n=28)]; See Figure 1 for examples. The fractal-dimension is the measure to which a fractal ‘fills a space’ at increasing magnitudes. It is ranked between 0 and 2, with one dimensional fractals, such as a segmented line, graded between .01 and .09, two dimensional fractals (such as Figure 2) would fall between 1.1 and 1.9, where as three dimensional fractals (such as a mountain) rank between 1.2 and 1.6. The D of each image was calculated using ImageJ, a public domain Java image processing program developed by the National Institute of Mental Health. Using the box-counting method box sizes were set between 1 and 720 (the latter giving a value of 1). The fractal dimension range is limited by the sample of pictures in original 800 set. A fractal D of 1 would be a straight line, a little higher would be a box, a little higher a star and so on, none of these pictures existed within this artistic picture set and would not be or an artistic nature. The simplest image (a zig-zag) was a rather complex pattern. Unequal cases, however Chi square analysis showed no significant difference between the group sizes (X2.05], in general most picture categories were rated similarly beautiful. The reduced variance in the black and white data set suggests a methodological problem in asking observers to rate a picture for beauty when colour has been removed. Participants seem unable to differentiate between pictures. Colourised pictures showed much more variation across picture category [F(1,95) 9.79, P> oriented by three conceptual terms is to present easy and simple activities to use in the classroom for Educators. The purpose of this presentation is to proposed to Educators to develop different approaches and strategies emerging, and converging, while using interactive multimedia through art and help them develop an efficient ‘hybrid’ way of teaching. Than, facilitate and convey the ability using creative problem solving exercises, and also demonstrate the ability to define a concept and objectives, investigate techniques of various media, by various activities, implementing sound images video, animation and performance. The presentation is oriented to demonstrate, and how to develop a multimedia research methodology process. The strategic orientation of the method is based on discovery, as a starting point for beginning a process of research and analysis by mixing art, technology, and science through multimedia process. And also the use of the Pedagogical Visualisation adds to the process an even more dynamic aspect of structuring multimedia messages based on known scientific fundamentals in communications and semiology (Senses: vision, hearing, smell, touch). As an educational technology, this Pedagogical Visualization Procedure reinforces the clarification of the message to be transmitted to students. In this context, the main role of the educator in terms of Cyberspace (Internet) should consist of providing students with an environment that modifies spatial and temporal phenomena of discovery, opening up places beyond the classroom. It is therefore necessary to “contextualize” essential knowledge, which is part of a problem solving solution. Adapting to the demands of information technology also presents an important opportunity for the liberal arts. On the one hand, training within the liberal arts promotes competencies demanded by the hightech world: critical thinking, careful reading and clear writing, effective communication and problemsolving. On the other hand information technology enables Educators to extend their interactions with students beyond the bounds of the traditional classroom, while it gives students new tools to pursue timeless questions. The Technology Across the Curriculum Program represents a programmatic effort by the College of Arts and Sciences to make the most of these two mutually reinforcing tendencies. Adapting to the demands of information technology also presents an important opportunity for the liberal arts. On the one hand, training within the liberal arts promotes competencies demanded by the hightech world: critical thinking, careful reading and clear writing, effective communication and problemsolving. On the other hand information technology enables teachers to extend their interactions with students beyond the bounds of the traditional classroom, while it gives students new tools to pursue timeless questions. The Technology Across the Curriculum Program represents a programmatic effort by the College of Arts and Sciences to make the most of these two mutually reinforcing tendence
151
References Alain Renaud, Nouvelles images, nouvelles cultures. Vers un imaginaire numérique où il faut imaginer un démiurge heureux. Nouvelles images, nouveaux réels, Paris, PUF, 1987, 97 pages, cité dans Guy Millard, De l’image numérique à son imaginaire,Coll. «Un œil, une plume»: IDERIVE, Lausanne : Institut d’étude et de recherche en information visuelle, 1992, 97 pages, p. 10. Philippe Marton, Recueil des notes du cours TEN-61084: «Stratégies de réalisation de messages multimédias interactifs», Québec, Département de la technologie de l’enseignement, faculté des Sciences de l’éducation, Université Laval, 1995 (janvier), 200 p . Schwebel, Raph J. 1976. Piaget à l’école. Libérer la pédagogie. Trad. de l’américain par Henriette Etienne et Danielle Neumann. Coll. «Bibliothèque médiations» no 137. Paris: Denoël & Gonthier, 284 p.
Claude Lévi-Strauss, «Race et culture» (1971), in Le regard éloigné, Paris, Plon, 1983, p. 21-48. Murphy, John W. 2000. Social Science. UK: Edited by Vicente Berdayes, 264 p. Papert, Seymour. 1993. L’enfant et la machine à connaître. Repenser l’école à l’ère de l’ordinateur. Traduction française: 1994. Paris: Dunod, 370 p. Edmond Couchot, «La synthèse numérique de l’image: Vers un ordre visuel», Traverses, no 26.Paris 1983 Rogers, P.L. 2000. «Barriers to Adopting Emerging Technologies in Education». Journal of Educational Computing Research, vol. 22, no 4, p. 455-472. Sherry, L. 1998. «An Integrated Technology Adoption and Diffusion Model». International Journal of Educational Telecommunications, vol. 4, nos 2/3, p. 113-145. [En ligne] 18 octobre 2002. Adresse URL: http://www.aace.org/dl/Search/view.cfm?id=9239. Theall, Donald F. 1992. «Beyond the Orality/Literacy Dichotomy: James Joyce and the Pre-History of Cyberspace», Post Modern Culture, vol. 2, no 3 (May), p. 1-34. Texte disponible sur le site Web http://www.eff.org/Net_culture/joyce_prehistory_of_cyberspace.paper. txt. Sandor, Ellen (dir.). 1983. PHS Colograms. Prod.: Art(n) Laboratory (Chicago) & TV Ontario. Vidéocassette VHS, 120 min, son, couleur. Kroker, Arthur. Professeur en technologies à l’Université Concordia. Rencontre informelle dans son bureau à l’Université Concordia avec Pierre Pepin, à Montréal, le 27 décembre 2003, 1 page transmise ultérieurement par courriel. Cresswell, J. W. 1998. Qualitative Inquiry and Research Design. Choosing Among Five Traditions. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 402 p. Dorn, Charles M. 1999. Mind in Art. Cognitive Foundations in Art Education. Mahwah / New-Jersey / London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Inc., 275 p. Efland, Arthur D. 1995. Change in the Conceptions of Art Teaching. Context, Content and Community in Art Education Beyond Postmodernism. New York: Edited by Ronald W. Neperud. Teachers College Press, 368 p. Elgie, Harris W. 1996. A Qualitative Study of Elementary Teachers Implementing Multicultural Content With Discipline-based Art Education. Michigan: Ann Arbor, 295 p.
152
Aesthetic and Strong Experiences in Music
Maria B. Spychiger, Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst
[email protected] In a paper on the effects of music, published in 1993, German music psychologist Klaus-Ernst Behne tells a number of interesting and also funny stories, summarizes studies carried out on this topic, and explains the methods, scientic and non-scientific ones, used for such investigations. In sum, the impact of music on human feelings and behavior has at all times been enormous, be it scientifically proven, or assumed and experienced in other ways. The author then elaborates on the strange fact that not much of this most obvious and powerful characteristic of music is present in music lessons (as taught in public schools, general and probably also most of private music education). To close his paper, Behne asks the question: “Is there something like the anxiety of the music educator with regards to the sensuality (expressivity) of music? 1 15 years later, the situation has not changed very much. Although there is some indication that music education’s notorious struggle to be a subject of general education (this is observing the German speaking area of Europe) has lessened a bit - that is, the value of musical learning and activity is more acknowledged -, the emotional aspects of it are still not at a central place in the average music lessons. The title of my contribution intertwines the names of two known concepts, both related to the experience of effects of music. The first, “aesthetic experience” (AE), looks back on a long history, is named and taught. Within music education, there is the aesthetic approach, with its didactics and contents, and with its explicit goal of leading students to aesthetic experiences. 2 The second, “strong experiences in music” (SEM), is still new to scientific investigation. 3 The paper aims to look at experiencing effects of music in the classroom, and sets the hypothesis that its potential for learning music, especially with regards to the motivational aspects of it, is not understood and not at all exploited in education. How then could this be reached? The answer relates to, and builds upon, the results of a small explorative empirical study, with the following topic and design: a heterogeneous sample of 22 non-musicians was interviewed on their “musical biography”, and assessed on their involvement with music by using a 10-points scale. 4 Content-analyses of the transcribed interviews brought up 35 categories of music related issues, of which the one labeled as “experienced effects of music” reached the highest saturation (accumulation of statements taken as indicator). The scores on the involvement scale reached AM=8.4, indicating that together with the many other aspects found, all of these interviewed non-musicians do have a musical life. However, most of the reported experiences are quite moderate and “normal” (such as enjoying the relaxation through music when coming home from work); others are more remarkable (such as car driving in order to listen to beloved music), but not really “strong”, nor “aesthetic”. In short, musical experience is part of everybody’s life, but is not often a SEM or an AE. SEMs also rarely occur in the classroom, as recent empirical data on this topic
1
Behne, Klaus-Ernst (1993). Wirkungen von Musik. Musik und Unterricht, 4, Nr.18, 4-9, p. 9.
2
The aesthetic approach to music education has been profoundly worked out by: Reimer, Bennett (1970). A Philosophy of Music Education. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall. Reimer defines aesthetic experience as „…the experience of the vitality of life, through perceiving and reacting to qualities (of a musical work, M.B.S.) which are expressive of the vitality of life“. 3
The concept was first introduced to the psychology of music by: Gabrielsson, Alf (1991). Experiencing Music. Canadian Journal of Research in Music Education, 33, Special ISME Research Edition, 21-26. Strong, or intense experiences in music are felt as impacts on the physical level (i.e., increase of heartbeat or breathing rate, chills, change of body temperature, tears, etc., up to out-of-body experience), emotional (feelings such as happiness, sadness, anxiety etc.), social (i.e., feelings of interconnectedness, togetherness, group identity, etc.) cognitive (such as strong memories, experience of meaning, or transcendence, this latter pointing to spiritual implications).
4
Wysser, Christoph; Hofer Thomas & Spychiger, Maria (2005). Musikalische Biografie. Zur Bedeutung des Musikalischen und dessen Entwicklung im Lebenslauf, unter besonderer Berücksichtigung des schulischen Musikunterrichtes und der pädagogischen Beziehungen. Schlussbericht an die Forschungskommission der Lehrerinnen- und Lehrerbildung Bern (Forschungsprojekt Nr. 0002S02). - Musical Biography: Investigating the Impact of Public School Music education on Lifelong Musical Development. (Research report).
153
indicate. 5 Probably, AEs are not frequent events there as well, although, as mentioned above, AE is the declared goal within the philosophy of music education as aesthetic education. Conclusions from this with regards to the question asked at the end of the second paragraph can be drawn on two levels: First, and general, everyday experience of music effects can be assumed to be a shared experience, and is therefore a potential from which music teachers could benefit in order to go with their students to further dimensions of musical experiences. Second, in order to access them, the musical basis and understanding of what music is, has to be broad and non-elitarian, so that it is open to all children of a classroom. SEMs then can be initiated in the classroom as a continuation of “everyday” musical experience, or effects of music and musical activity. Given an explicit base and a shared concept of musical experience, the step to art related AE can be taken. 6 If it is true that the postmodern age has much affinity to physicality, strong experiences in music, with their obvious physical, social and emotional components, may well get their place in the classroom. While AE in current music curricula does no longer appear as an educational goal, a strong plea is made to keep this term and goal. Other characteristics – the centeredness in the musical work, and the focus on listening to these – have been, probably rightfully, replaced to a certain extent by the focus on student’s own activity and the goal of the development of their active musical skills, such as playing an instrument, improvising, singing, and music-related movement. Within this action- and student-orientation, 7 and for a future development, teachers who have overcome their “anxiety of the power of music” may well give space to SEM in their teaching, and in doing so, bring more emotion to the music classroom. SEM may peacefully join with AE to be one of the goals of music education.
5
Ray, Johanna (in press). Das (un)mögliche Vorkommen von Starken Musikerlebnissen in der Schule. In: M. Spychiger & H. Badertscher (in press): Rhythmisches und musikalisches Lernen. Didaktische Analysen und Synthesen. Bern: Huber. – The (im)possible appearance of strong experiences in music in school. In: M. Spychiger & H. Badertscher (eds.): Rhythmical and musical learning. Didactical analyses and syntheses. 6
As especially John Dewey has depicted is. S. Dewey, John (1980). Art as Experience. New York: Perigee Books.
7
As designed by many contemporary music educators. For North America most prominent: Elliott, David (1994). Music Matters: A New Philosophy of Music Education. New York: Oxford University Press. (and further publications).
154
Creativity II Geometry as an Abstraction Yves Jeanson
[email protected]
This presentation on geometry as an abstraction, wants to be an introduction in the aesthetic work of late Zanis Waldheims (Riga 1909-Montreal 1993), who has through his life experience, came to the conclusion that people believe to much in the power of words, and that a structural language that interconnects the visual and the intellectual is a necessity for a better understanding and the future of civilization. For him and in order to achieve this, one must have a tool similar to a compass to orient in the immense and forest like world of words that are used to name things and to express ideas. Being a survivor of the two great world wars of the past century (1914-1918) (1939-1945), and escaping Latvia from the invading Russian communists in 1944, he found himself in a refugee camp in Bamberg Germany in 1945, then went to Paris France in 1949, and finally emigrated to Canada in 1952. Why? Because the great occidental powers had let go to the communists a great chunk of Eastern Europe, of which his country Latvia in the Baltic in 1945. Devastated by those post war events and to find an answer to his despair about politics, ideologies, religions and civilization at large, he will find refuge in books and came across an idea of Maine de Biran in creating a map for human intellectual orientation. With this idea in mind, he will venture in domains he had only touched superficially before such as history, science, philosophy and psychology, and it is through exploring deeper and deeper those domains that he will develop – beginning with schemes and schemas in the 1950’s - a structural language that tends to illustrate visually ideas and concepts that were previously only expressed in words. Those schemes and schemas will evolve and simplify in time into a structural language having meaning, and in a great art production in the 1960’s, 70’s and 80’s, where drawings and sculptures overlap in an effort to explain his vision of the human mind and its underlying linkages. His quest for sense and meaning was purely in letting go his intuition in the beginning and the aesthetic experience was heuristic as he had no ideas whatsoever in the beginning of his quest that it would end in the domain of an empirical art. Why? Because his original intention had been to write a novel about the low morality of his contemporaries. For Waldheims, it is not by deforming nature that art becomes explicit and more “modern”, but by creating abstractions that are susceptible to symbolize more and more the real structures of nature, structures that are comprehensible for the human mind. As an introduction, the opening slide of the presentation is the illustration of one drawing in two different renderings. Visually, one is immediately capable to interpret the meaning. Those two drawings illustrates how Waldheims sees in an organic pyramidal structure, the general idea one can make when thinking about the conscious, the subconscious and the unconscious concepts, as for Waldheims his art wants to be structural and architectural. I then explain how a red cup on which one can read Frank Lloyd Wright’s Organic Commandments will initiate in me a questioning to find out if FLW had developed reasons to add to words geometrical figures in a process similar to what Waldheims was exactly doing to orient in the abstract world of ideas expressed in words by all authors that tend to explain their ideas on a subject where the human being is the object of study. n the following slides, I explain the basic concept Waldheims has used in –the dimensioning- of words to explore ideas expressed in books. This dimensioning or abstracting action of words, is an idea that links Euclidian geometry (surface and volume) to words that are in this perspective or extensive or intensive, that is to say extensive is large and wide as a delimitation of an abstract surface similar to a square; intensive could be compared to an abstract summit or similar to a dot or point, because we are here in a 3D world of abstraction instead of the linear and the one-dimensional domain of words. For Waldheims, it is in this abstract 3D world that the –psychophysical nature of the human being- orients best. It is as if we would be in a topographic terrain of the mind. One understand better his perspective when one can visually see the subordinate and the coordinate orders of a same idea on a drawing, as if we would have in front of us architectural prints for the construction of a great edifice. But Waldheims edifices are not the expression of space in construction materials for a building, but in drawings illustrating spaces and volumes within our minds, and those spaces and volumes are then transformed into sculptures as most of his drawings can be reproduced in three
155
dimensional forms. His creative process follows a path similar to this: from words in the linear, to dimensioning words with geometrical figures, to sketches in the second dimension, to symmetrical sculpture in three dimensions. Many new forms have come to be discovered through Waldheims forty some years of research in the making of a cartography of the mind. As one can follow in his sketch-books, this drawing is inspired by this set of thinking from Cantor the mathematician (pe: the division of a circle that leads to the infinitesimal); that drawing is inspired by that set of thinking inspired by Gaston Bachelar (geometrization), but the common and underlying elements or lines of force in each drawing are such that the extensive and intensive; the ordinate and subordinate orders, time and space; matter and energy; sensibility and intelligibility are present. Those elements are interpreted in drawings where the straight line is dominant in the creation of a square or rectangular symmetrical drawing, the lines that also built by projection on the X and Y axis apparent and hidden circular forms. But there are not only lines and projection points used in the composition of the figure, there is also color, gradation and contrast to add to the signification and elucidation. In a drawing the extensive is characterized by dark colors and intensity by light colors. One can follow his artistic evolution through his sketch-books. As per example, one of the slides presented show two different pyramids. The great Egyptian pyramid we are so familiar with its great base expanding as the pyramid wins in altitude; and the organic pyramid that bears the name the Noosphère, a word taken from the works of Pierrre Teilhard de Chardin the great French paleontologist. In this organic pyramid, contrary to the Egyptian pyramid, the Noosphère's base gets smaller and smaller as it picks up in altitude. This pyramid has a limit and another set of meaning. It also has four sides, but it is elongated and egg shaped. That is food for thought. It would be arduous to explain here in this short text the numerous sources of Waldheims ideas in the making of this intellectual map for intellectual orientation. But one thing is for sure, when one consults his archives dating back to 1952, the sources of his inspiration lie in the books of the great libraries he used to visit and in his own bookcase. All his diaries and sketch-books are full of annotations taken at one time from Emmanuel Kant, Edmund Husserl or Ernst Cassirer in phenomenology; at another time from Bertrand Russell, Cantor, or Henri Poincaré in mathematics; or from William James, Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Alfred Adler in psychology or Henri Laborit in neurosciences and many others thinkers such as Locke and Hume; also from philosophers of antiquity and contemporary ages. One can notice although, that the words that are recurrent in those annotations relate to: extensive and intensive, and it is in those terms that Waldheims has developed in forms and colors all of his art work. The presentation continues with the drawing of a spinning top of which I made a sculpture also shown on the same slide. While going through his sketch book, one can notice that this drawing has been inspired to Waldheims while he was reading Ernst Cassirer’s book “Substance and Function.” This is the type of metaphysics one can see and feel in Waldheims art production. The following slide in the presentation is a drawing of a spire that I named “What About Nine!” and it is next to a cacti I photographed in Arizona purposely to demonstrate the organicism behind Waldheims idea about human nature, as if “Mother Nature” is geometric in essence and that within our minds there is such an organization that seeks structure and clarity, contrary to chaos and obscurity. One can see that the cacti has also nine segments spiralling counter-clockwise from a centre, as if there is a centripetal twisting moment of force acting on the cacti in the shaping of its final form. I conclude by giving the two texts that inspired Zanis Waldheims in the making of this great masterpiece the Noosphère on which most of his artistic metaphysics is build upon the three top levels. Interestingly enough, one of the inspiring texts is from Rudolf Arnheim’s introduction in his book Toward a Psychology of Art: “A pyramid of science is under construction. The ambition of the builder is …….» Here is a few short sentences taken from Waldheims archives and sketch-books that he had identified as being most inspiring in the development of his art and the development of his ideas. “It is a must that all that is spiritual or comprehensible, be visible or susceptible to be exposed on a surface.” Leonardo da Vinci. “One should draw more and more, write less and less.” Goethe. “We have been able to create forms long before knowing to create concepts.” Nietzsche. “Concepts and figures are synonymous; their sense converge in the signification of the term Eidos (form) that assures them a coincidence with no fault” Ernst Cassirer, (Substance & Fonction, Le concept d’espace et la géométrie, pg 88).
156
"To rephrase Kant’s pronouncement: “Vision without abstraction is blind; abstraction without vision is empty.” R.Arnheim, (Visual Thinking, p.188) “We are pleased to find in the cosmos geometrical forms that exists in our consciousness.” Alexis Carrel, (L’Homme, cet inconnu, pg 66) “Aesthetic, the science of structures, is the science of the human prospective behaviour” Henri Laborit, (Biologie et Structure pg 31.)
157
The Emergence of Organized Aesthetic Features in Residential Landscapes
Mariette Julien, Université du Québec à Montréal, Montréal (Québec) Canada
[email protected] In previous work on 17 residential street sections in Montreal (Zmyslony & Gagnon, 2000), it was shown that landscape elements of front yards, rather than being distributed randomly, form spatial patterns. Four spatial landscape patterns are found: first, landscape clustering due to contagious spread; second, landscape similarity related to similarity in environmental factors; third, landscape avoidance occurring for opposite front yards; and fourth, landscape originality. In order to explain these four spatial regularities of front-yard landscapes in street section, we propose a theoretical model based upon logics of thinking. The Objective Thinking of the Residents In order to grasp the objective thinking of the residents, we will concentrate not on people’s actions but on the thinking that accounts for their actions. Therefore to do so, the theory of interpretation of Charles Sanders Peirce which proposes a logical model of analysis of relations has been adopted. Every front yard of a street section will be seen as (1) the result of an interpretation of the environment by the resident, and (2) a place that can trigger new interpretations, allowing residents to acquire additional knowledge about the surrounding landscape. In the present communication, we will not describe the entire categorisation system of Peirce, which is quite complex. Instead, we will focus on the three basic categories capable of illustrating human experience: firstness, secondness and thirdness. Briefly, firtness corresponds to the emotional life; secondness to the practical life; and thirdness to the intellectual life (Everaert-Desmedt, 1990). With appropriate examples, let us see how the same piece of landscape can be interpreted in three different ways by a resident. For instance, every spring in the urban street sections of our corpus, the air is fragrant with the scent of mimosa. If a resident scents this fragrance but is unaware that it emanates from the flowers of the common locusts planted in a row on the street, he will live an experience of the first level. Thus, this stored information has the potential to influence future choices and actions in his own garden, even if he is not conscious of it. On the other hand, if a resident is aware of what is happening – for example if he associates the perfume of mimosa with the small white flowers on the locust trees – then he reaches a higher level of consciousness that modifies the status of the perceived object or percept, the tree. The interpretation of the resident leads to accumulated knowledge, since he can now establish a link between the fragrance and the locust. This is an experience of the second level. Finally, if a resident knows that the common locust is related to the mimosa tree, that their fragrances are alike and that the scent of locust hangs heavy in the air every year in May, the interpretation of what is perceived will be of the third level, because it was inspired by a rule already known. The relation with the tree is therefore symbolical, in that it is linked to an organised thought within a language. Peirce’s categorisation corresponds to a conceptual classification of phenomena. It is not what is outside of the resident (the object) that we define, but rather the way of interpreting it (the relation). The landscape is real and does exist, but the representation of the landscape takes place only in the presence of the resident. We must therefore distinguish the mental representation from the percept, the object of perception. This implies that a particular landscape element, for example a locust tree in a front yard, can be interpreted differently not only by different residents, but also by the same resident because his own knowledge will evolve throughout his life. Umberto Eco (1985), who supports Peirce’s theory, gave the name “encyclopaedia” to all of the primary, secondary and tertiary interpretations recorded since birth by a human being. The notion of encyclopaedia is very important because all three logics of thinking described further rely on it. Every resident will interpret according to his own encyclopaedia (Eco, 1988). The encyclopaedia is not describable in its entirety because it remains personal and it grows richer with time. In spite of this, we can presume the existence of the knowledge used by the residents of a street section. Zmyslony (1997) has demonstrated that landscape clusters are present in the 17 street sections sampled in Montreal, and he observed that the replicated elements seemed to differ from one street section to another. Every street section has its own specific feature. This suggests that the horticultural encyclopaedia of a resident is fed more by the landscape of his own street section, than by the landscape of other street sections of the district.
158
The Three Logics of Thinking After seeing briefly how knowledge is acquired, let us examine how a logic of thinking functions. There are three logics of thinking: deduction, induction and abduction. Deduction consists of applying a general rule to a particular case. This is exactly what happens when a resident interprets the neighbour’s front-yard landscape as a model to follow for his own garden. After analysing what is found in the lot environment, the resident comes to a conclusion: copy the landscape concept. By doing so, the resident does not take any risk. This type of reasoning generates similar landscapes at the scale of a street section (second spatial regularity). As can be noticed, the deductive logic of thinking is analytical; it therefore belongs to thirdness because it applies a rule. With induction, the opposite occurs. The resident begins with a case and turns it into a general point. In fact, he must experiment, analyse a certain number of cases to bring out common characteristics susceptible to generalisation to a rule. For example, if the resident’s logic was inductive, he would consider a neighbour front-yard landscape as an interesting model to imitate. He would landscape his own front yard in a similar fashion, but would change certain characteristics. Perhaps, he would modify the colours of the flowers or the location of the shrubs, or the species of the tree. In such a situation, the resident must put in some mental effort and take some risks because the landscape model is not entirely “approved”, is not followed as a rule. An inductive logic does not originate from a rule, but from a case which brings the resident to propose a rule. Induction belongs to secondness in the sense that its starting point is an individual case, a particular realisation (Fisette, 1990). Contrary to what many believe, induction is not a creative process in the true sense. What is truly creative springs from an abductive logic. Let us consider the example of a resident with a front-yard garden located in a flat and uninteresting street section. Motivated by the uncomfortable sense of inhabiting an unattractive street section, the resident feels obliged to formulate a hypothesis in order to correct the situation. This feeling of discomfort is then transformed into a thought, a thought that cannot be inspired by the surrounding gardens of the street section. The resident therefore puts forward a hypothesis knowing very well that it constitutes a new landscape, a new arrangement of plant, which is part of an aesthetic that only he finds interesting. Abduction requires a mental effort because we must go beyond known knowledge. To abduct, we must free ourselves from the habitual schemes and draw upon the limits of our stock of knowledge. Abduction is fundamentally a creative process and belongs to firstness, the domain of possibility, of emotion. As described above, the process of abduction was initiated by a feeling of discomfort. Abduction does not suppose a rule to copy nor a case to imitate. Therefore the landscape which results is unique at the scale of the street section (fourth spatial regularity). The Genesis of Landscape Replication Landscape replication emerges from a street section when a singular landscape element of a front yard, originating most probably from an abductive logic, is perceived and interpreted as a case or a rule by other residents of the street section. Although identical replication of one or more landscape elements may result from a deductive reasoning, deduction does not always bring up identical replication. The deductive reasoning can rest on erroneous premises that can bring up “modified replication”. For instance, a resident may want to plant the same tree as a neighbour, believing it to be a fir, while it is in fact a spruce. Induction also brings up identical or modified replication when it is triggered by a landscape element from which a resident will try to make a rule. A resident who has been gardening for many years will possess a larger encyclopaedia, permitting him eventually to interpret a front-yard landscape with more competence. Interpretation will nevertheless remain a bet, a hypothesis. In point of fact, it is the level of conjecture of the bet which varies according to the situation (Eco, 1988). For instance, a resident having two magnificent apple trees will risk very little by planting a third one. The risk of a resident landscaper will be based on two factors: (1) the resident’s capacity to interpret his surroundings and (2) the capacity of the surroundings to ratify the resident’s landscape choices. For these reasons, a resident will tend to adopt more easily a proven and contextualized landscape concept. The risk of planting a pear tree will seem much smaller if one has been seen in a neighbour’s yard than if one has been seen in a public botanical garden. This tendency to be more inspired by the surrounding landscape also comes from exposure: neighbouring front yards are constantly being seen, and are therefore more susceptible to being memorised by residents. It is thus quite “natural” for a resident to be more influenced by the surrounding front yards (first spatial regularity) than by those seen only one or twice, and to replicate elements seen in the street section rather than in other street sections of the district.
159
How quickly a landscape element spreads out contagiously depends on two factors: the encyclopaedia of the resident and the environment shaping it. A resident who possesses a rich encyclopaedia in landscaping will be much more open minded to different landscape concepts than one with very limited knowledge. Also, a person exposed regularly to a new landscape will take less time to accept it than a person who never previously confronted it. The more often information is recorded in our memory, the faster it will become a rule for our mind. Conclusion We propose that clusters of landscape will be found in other anthropogenic environments. Differences will appear in the composition of clusters, reflecting the values of each human population. Landscape replication being a fundamental human process, it will take place irrespective of cultural context. Our explanation of landscape regularities emerging from the three logics of thinking allows us to propose a generalizable theoretical model to characterise the relationship between people and their environments. References Eco, U. (1985) Lector in Fabula. Paris: Les éditions Bernard Grasset. Eco, U. (1988) Sémiotique et Philosophie du Langage. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Everaert-Desmedt, N. (1990) Le processus interprétatif, introduction à la sémiotique de C.S. Peirce. Liège: Mardaga Ed. Fisette, J. (1990) Introduction à la sémiotique de C.S. Peirce. Montreal: Les editions SYZ, Collection Etudes et documents. Peirce, C.S. (1931-1935). Collected papers. Vol. I-VI: 2 by C. Hartshorne, P. Weiss, Vol. VII-VIII: (1958) by W. Burks, Harvard: Harvard University Press. Zmyslony, J. & Gagnon, D. (2000) Path analysis of spatial predictors of front yard vegetation in an anthropogenic environment, Landscape Ecology, 15: 357-371. Zmyslony, J. (1997) La contagion du paysage des jardins-façades urbains: démonstration, modélisation et théorisation, Ph.D. thesis, University of Quebec, Montreal.
160
Mental Visualization of Artworks: Ékphrasis Versus Textbook Descriptions
Paolo Castelli, Martina D’Ercole, Anna Maria Giannini, & Antonella Sbrilli, Sapienza First University of Rome, Rome ITA
[email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] Introduction The relationship between images and words, and particularly the possibility to turn a visual image into a verbal description is a key theme in the history of art, given the constant need in this discipline to turn objects and representations into words. The way an image is created starting from a description has been considerably dealt with over the last few decades also in psychology. In particular, the proposals put forward by Allan Paivio (1971, 1986) on the nature of memory conservation of visual and verbal information – the well-known “dual-code theory” – and the more recent experimental analyses made by Stephen Kosslyn (1980), concerning processes for the mental visualisation of evoked perceptual contents or of products of the imagination, have paved the way to an interesting and fertile array of experimentations. In the present work, we tried to assess the applicability of Kosslyn and Pavio’s theories to the formation of mental images within a narrower sphere of images with an artistic content and, specifically, to the mental reconstruction of art images starting from a text. To this end, we deemed it useful to focus on two particular types of text containing descriptions of art works: a literary description, a.k.a. ékphrasis, and the one produced within a more specifically artistic-historical context, which we call a “textbook” one. Èkphrasis may be defined as a rhetorical procedure employed to describe an image in the absence of its real reference, arriving at making it almost visible. On the other hand, the textbook description, generally accompanying the reproduction of the work, constitutes its complement. Therefore, by meeting different aims, it is logical to hypothesise that the two kinds of description involve variations not so much as regards the characteristics of the image generation process, but as regards the frequency of triggering this process or in some important qualities of the images formed. The considerations made so far underlie the comparison of the two kinds of “text” types. One of the key hypotheses is that the literary description offers a competitive advantage compared to the textbook one in terms of the evocative capacity of mental images – a capacity that Pavio called imagery (Paivio & Begg, 1971). This added value is generally connected to the fact that, unlike with textbook description, ékphrasis must make up for the lack of a real object referred to. Method Once the constructs of interest were established, such as the value of imagery and the process, structural and spatial aspects of mental image, it became necessary to proceed to their transposition at a quantitative research level. In particular, the construction of a questionnaire that can highlight the presence/absence of mental image and its constitutive qualities, as well as the generation process itself, was a crucial moment for us in starting up the more strictly operational phase. We selected 4 pairs of descriptions of the works of different artists (Antonello da Messina, Edvard Munch, Henry Matisse and Rembrandt Van Rijn), for a total of 8 descriptions chosen from a significant sample of descriptions – the database known as Gallerie della Letteratura (Sbrilli, 2003). The two descriptions – a literary and a textbook one – of the same work that went to make up the 4 pairs were carefully selected in order to maintain a certain homogeneity: the same number of words (“extension”) and reference to similar details (“specificity”). Eighty subjects, balanced out for gender and education levels (young university undergraduates or graduates), and with a mean age of 25 years, were randomly assigned to one of the 8 experimental groups. After reading the description, the subjects were asked to perform a triple task. Firstly, they had to fill in a questionnaire containing closed-answer items on the number of readings made, their prior knowledge of the art work, image visualisation, and the imagery value they attributed to the text, to then proceed with a bipolar scale of opposite adjectives (semantic differential) in order to evaluate the characteristics of the image generation process. They were later asked to draw what they had visualised in the first part of the experiment in order to assess the qualitative features of their mental image through their graphic expression. In their final task, consisting of recognition with regard to a set of 4 images of similar content, the subjects were asked to identify the exact art work the text referred to.
161
Results and Discussion We shall now discuss the analyses made and the results obtained for each of the three aforesaid phases: the questionnaire answers; drawing test and recognition test. As regards the first part of the questionnaire, mainly consisting of items with a closed answer structure, a first result concerned the effects of the type of description and the number of readings made of the text (χ2=3.516; df=1; p=0.061); although not reaching significance, it suggests a greater number of readings made for subjects with the literary description. In our view, this finding must be interpreted, albeit with caution, in terms of the greater pleasantness of ékphrasis as compared to descriptions devised more for learning than for enjoyment. As regards visualisation after reading, we had hypothesised three outcomes: the subject visualises the work described; the subject visualises something that has nothing to do with the work described; the subject does not visualise anything. Pearson’s chi-square test (χ2=6.664; df=2; p=0.036) showed that the subjects with an ékphrasis more frequently visualised the work described in the text, while the subjects with a textbook description tended to more frequently visualise other irrelevant images or nothing at all. With respect to prior knowledge of the work, 27.5% of the subjects said they already knew it. No direct relation was found between prior knowledge of an art work and the frequency of its visualisation, while an effect between the two variables emerged as regards the type of description (χ2=7.663; df=1; p=0.006): while the subjects who already knew the work tended to visualise it regardless of the type of description used, the subjects who did not know the work previously showed a facilitation factor in visualising the work only with the literary description. With regard to the analysis of factor variance, we observed that prior knowledge of the work seemed to influence imagery (F=4.7875; p=0.031782) so that subjects who already knew the work appeared to ascribe greater image-evoking capacity to the text. It is reasonable to hypothesise that the information provided by the text acted as a trigger for the information contained in the subject’s memory which in turn acted as a “facilitator” for retrieval and for mental image formation. We found a similar main effect for the “typology of description” variable on imagery (F=9.4892; p=0.002889): the literary descriptions seemed to have a greater image-evoking capacity. As regards the elements contained in the images formed from texts, the frequencies observed indicated a clear prevalence of elements deduced from the passage (35%) followed by memories of elements concerning the art work if already known (16.2%). This purely qualitative finding is in line with what we observed as regards the relations between imagery and prior knowledge. Item 7 of the questionnaire examined the problem from the subject’s perspective. The three options, “as if the work were in front of you”, “as if you were seeing the work within a context” and “as if you were seeing the work without a context and through the author’s eyes”, were distributed differently depending on the “typology of description” variable (χ2=18.708; df=2; p
