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I think that in principle this test could produce interesting and useful results. Having researched in the field of computational aesthetics, I speak with some

by Daub 5y ago

I think that in principle this test could produce interesting and useful results. Having researched in the field of computational aesthetics, I speak with some experience. Much of the aesthetic value an artwork 'lives' in such abstracts as its 2D geometry, its 3D geometry, its color contrast etc. I would have preferred that this test be designed to test just one of these attributes. However, even on the currently small response rate, there seems to be some valid patterns emerging... In the Overlapping Drops results, the red/green images is the clear favorite. This is no surprise, as this antagonist pair is the most favored in art. Around 90% of the paintings in any national collection are painted along the red/green axis. Neither am I surprised that the most popular Nested Squares results is the one that features the greatest contrast. 'Higher than nature' contrast is a core requirement of art. This is as true in Korean soap opera as it is in visual art. I believe that the experiment could have been better designed. A better intro to the experiment would have been a good idea. Also, (in my opinion) I believe that the images should have been presented as pairwise comparisons (Thurstone, L.L.: A Law of Comparative Judgment) with a few repeats shown in. The preference choice should be restricted to three from five. This would have made it easier to get more responses from each user. Perhaps it would have been better to have kept the images in their family groups. In that way, it would be more clear what is being tested.

frereubu 5y ago
I don't want to be too harsh, but in my view this is mostly tosh. For example: > 'Higher than nature' contrast is a core requirement of art There are so many counter-examples I don't know where to start. Turner's watercolours. Hiroshi Sugimoto's seascapes. Do So Huh's installations. I mean come on, what about Rauschenberg's White Painting? I suppose if you don't consider anything after the 18th century you might be right, but it feels like you're deliberately narrowing down what you call "art" so you can make confident statements like that.
- Daub 5y ago
  Sure... to those counter examples, I could add more: Gwen John's muted pallet, Joseph Albers' same-hue combinations, It is a trivial task to find exceptions to any principle in art. However, as a general rule, it is true that artists exaggerate. My own work examined 100 American paintings all painted at approximately the same time, of similar subject matter. These were compared to the same number of snap-shot style photographs of similar subject matter. The results showed us that artists exaggerate the strong color differences of nature, yet bring weak differences closer together. Hence an artwork is (in general) an exaggeration in two dimensions: contrast and affinity. This is done differently in the hue, saturation and lightness channels, with (as you might expect) lightness featuring the strongest. However, there were interesting exception in the hue treatment of particular subject matter. > I suppose if you don't consider anything after the 18th century you might be right. You have a point, if you only consider fine art, and your examples show that you know your businesses in this domain. But I would say it is even more true of such applied arts as game level design, high vfx fantasy movies, Deviant art style fan art and such like.
  - hparadiz 5y ago
    I used to run a DA like website in 2005 and at one point had to categorize all uploadable art. The truth is art is in the eye of the beholder. There is no way to actually say something isn't art if someone sees anything as such.
    - beardyw 5y ago
      100% agree. I think "the beholder" is what is often overlooked. Marcel Duchamp submitted a urinal as a piece of art (an act of provocation). > When explaining the purpose of his Readymade sculpture, Duchamp stated they are "everyday objects raised to the dignity of a work of art by the artist's act of choice." The important point is the involvement of a person. Computer generated art can't be art unless someone thinks it is.
      - hparadiz 5y ago
        I actually think that if the intention of the original programmer is to say "anything created from this code is art no matter what it is" then it's basically impossible to say otherwise.
        cush 5y ago
        I feel like this discussion devolved into "what is art?", while completely missing my original thesis. Of course every image this app produces is art. But that's the point... art is infinitely broad, and the art that this app produces is trivially narrow. So this isn't an argument about art, but instead well-designed surveys. The only possible conclusion one can draw from this app isn't "what are people's art preferences?", but instead "what are people's drawn-in-ten-seconds-in-mspaint preferences?" The app would just as accurately gague people's art preferences if it presented only photos of shoes.
  - frereubu 5y ago
    I also have a degree in experimental psychology and a masters in neuroscience, and to be honest, I think you're just describing the neurobiology of vision. Newborns prefer high-contrast images, but I presume you wouldn't consider them to have an understanding of art. And the "red/green" axis just makes me think of the red/green cones in the retina. It sounds like a very naive view of "art". The comment "if you only consider fine art" also feels like you're moving the goalposts, where you're saying "within these works of visual art people prefer high-contrast images", but the categorisation of those images is that they're a subset of visual art within which people prefer high-contrast images.

by Daub 5y ago

frereubu 5y ago

I don't want to be too harsh, but in my view this is mostly tosh. For example: > 'Higher than nature' contrast is a core requirement of art There are so many counter-examples I don't know where to start. Turner's watercolours. Hiroshi Sugimoto's seascapes. Do So Huh's installations. I mean come on, what about Rauschenberg's White Painting? I suppose if you don't consider anything after the 18th century you might be right, but it feels like you're deliberately narrowing down what you call "art" so you can make confident statements like that.

Daub 5y ago
Sure... to those counter examples, I could add more: Gwen John's muted pallet, Joseph Albers' same-hue combinations, It is a trivial task to find exceptions to any principle in art. However, as a general rule, it is true that artists exaggerate. My own work examined 100 American paintings all painted at approximately the same time, of similar subject matter. These were compared to the same number of snap-shot style photographs of similar subject matter. The results showed us that artists exaggerate the strong color differences of nature, yet bring weak differences closer together. Hence an artwork is (in general) an exaggeration in two dimensions: contrast and affinity. This is done differently in the hue, saturation and lightness channels, with (as you might expect) lightness featuring the strongest. However, there were interesting exception in the hue treatment of particular subject matter. > I suppose if you don't consider anything after the 18th century you might be right. You have a point, if you only consider fine art, and your examples show that you know your businesses in this domain. But I would say it is even more true of such applied arts as game level design, high vfx fantasy movies, Deviant art style fan art and such like.
- hparadiz 5y ago
  I used to run a DA like website in 2005 and at one point had to categorize all uploadable art. The truth is art is in the eye of the beholder. There is no way to actually say something isn't art if someone sees anything as such.
  - beardyw 5y ago
    100% agree. I think "the beholder" is what is often overlooked. Marcel Duchamp submitted a urinal as a piece of art (an act of provocation). > When explaining the purpose of his Readymade sculpture, Duchamp stated they are "everyday objects raised to the dignity of a work of art by the artist's act of choice." The important point is the involvement of a person. Computer generated art can't be art unless someone thinks it is.
    - hparadiz 5y ago
      I actually think that if the intention of the original programmer is to say "anything created from this code is art no matter what it is" then it's basically impossible to say otherwise.
      - cush 5y ago
        I feel like this discussion devolved into "what is art?", while completely missing my original thesis. Of course every image this app produces is art. But that's the point... art is infinitely broad, and the art that this app produces is trivially narrow. So this isn't an argument about art, but instead well-designed surveys. The only possible conclusion one can draw from this app isn't "what are people's art preferences?", but instead "what are people's drawn-in-ten-seconds-in-mspaint preferences?" The app would just as accurately gague people's art preferences if it presented only photos of shoes.
- frereubu 5y ago
  I also have a degree in experimental psychology and a masters in neuroscience, and to be honest, I think you're just describing the neurobiology of vision. Newborns prefer high-contrast images, but I presume you wouldn't consider them to have an understanding of art. And the "red/green" axis just makes me think of the red/green cones in the retina. It sounds like a very naive view of "art". The comment "if you only consider fine art" also feels like you're moving the goalposts, where you're saying "within these works of visual art people prefer high-contrast images", but the categorisation of those images is that they're a subset of visual art within which people prefer high-contrast images.