I think Mr. Bailey and I have a basic misunderstanding here.
First off, the experiment I described had no intention of exploring the
"aesthetic value" of the two images presented. The hypothesis which was
being tested (this is science, not art) was that pre-presentation would
influence which image a subject preferred, given a fairly quick
presentation and response paradigm. The subjects were not asked to write
a critical essay on why one indecipherable kanji appealed to them at that
moment more than another indecipherable kanji.
I repeat, aesthetics were not the point of the experiment, and I should
point out that this is not my experiment, but one I read. Complex
decision making, such as judging a musical performance was not part of the
paradigm. Mr. Bailey is searching for more in this than either the
experimenters or I meant.
I brought up the paradigm and results because I do think that people
generally need something familliar. Advertisers understand this, because
they know that repetition of images and phrases will succeed where a
single new image will not. If people preferred the entirely new, the
avant guard would sell more discs than the Back Street Boys. Conversely,
if they only liked repetition, a certain Mr. Glass would be on the Top
Forty.
There is a line here, and where it lies depends on whether one is
a culturati or an average Joe. Being a pop music artist (I use the term
artist loosely) with pretensions to integrity, I'm curious as to how that
line can be moved. Who could have guessed that Dave Mathews would be so
popular, or that Fiona Apple's odd (for pop) harmonies and feel changes
could make hits.
For me, the science in my "art" has to do not only with song writing,
but also with final mixes of songs and the tonal pallets used. I have
done some producing (two folk CDs), and in the final mixing sessions paid
close attention to surges in volume, how many instruments were covering
the same frequencies and muddying each other's signals, and where
instruments and voices were placed in the stereo separation.
The engineer I usually work with understands some of the physics of
frequency interactions, but he always looked at me funny for
spending so much time tweaking the stereo imaging, considering that it was
folk music. His disparaging comment was repeatedly, "Well I guess it's
doing something to our brains." That was exactly the point of my efforts.
Other, more credentialed academics can discuss the connections between
science and art, as recently happened at Harvard. And, yes, scientists
can still reduce everything to physics, including the physical chemistry
of the paint an artist uses, and how those characteristics affect the
final product. Dali wrote that he would have given his left arm to know
what was in Vermeer's paints, for he felt he could never reproduce
the luminance.
Again, I brought up the experiment not as an explanation for aesthetic
judgements (good god, no!), but as a point of human unconscious reactions
which might underly a person's unexamined preferences, or inform an
examination thereof.
Peg.
Department of Neuroscience
Tufts Medical School
Boston, MA
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