Article Presentation and Summary: February 27, 2013
Instructions: Select a current article from an academic journal (published 2000 or after) that deals with some aspect of the relationship between aesthetic and visual culture theories. You will read and analyze the article, and present to the class a summary of the overarching thesis, connections to aesthetics and visual culture theories, and suggestions for how it might inform your teaching practice.
Instructions: Select a current article from an academic journal (published 2000 or after) that deals with some aspect of the relationship between aesthetic and visual culture theories. You will read and analyze the article, and present to the class a summary of the overarching thesis, connections to aesthetics and visual culture theories, and suggestions for how it might inform your teaching practice.
beautyofthebody.pdf | |
File Size: | 183 kb |
File Type: |
For my presentation, I chose the article "The Beauty of the Body" by Salvatore M. Aglioti, Ilaria Minio-Paluello, and Marrero Candidi, written for the Golgi Symposium on Perspectives in Neuroaesthetics in 2011.
Key terms:
· Neuroaesthetics- Exploration of the neural processes underlying aesthetic experience and judgment
· Aesthetics- “our ability to perceive, feel and sense objects in the world and assign them positive or negative values along a continuum between beauty and ugliness”
1 – Introduction
· Philosophers and psychologists address the issue of why something is beautiful or ugly according to two main opposing ideas: EITHER beauty exists in the mind that contemplates things (subjectivist - depending on personal preference/experience/taste/….) OR that there exist perfect and universal forms of beauty (objectivist – depending on general qualities like symmetry/balance/…)
· Aesthetic experience is typically human, present in all cultures, defying barriers of race, class, social status, etc.
2 – Brainy aesthetics: the sense of beauty in a neural perspective
· Neuroaesthetics primarily focuses on the neural mechanisms linked to emotional appeal or to the capability of specific objects to disturb or arouse
· One fMRI study: subjects viewed a painting (portrait, landscape, still life, or abstract composition) and classified it as beautiful, neutral, or ugly. Beautiful paintings showed increased activity in the orbito-frontal cortex, an area involved in emotion and reward processing. In contrast, paintings deemed ugly showed increased activity in the motor cortex, as if the brain is preparing the body to escape (!).
· Another fMRI study: subjects viewed classical and renaissance sculptures in their original proportions and then in modified, more life-like proportions. Based on results of this study, it is speculated that the insula (perception, mediates pleasure) is involved in objective observation (immediate response to stimuli, no beautiful/ugly judgment) while the amygdala (memory and emotional reactions) may be involved in subjective beauty experience.
3 – The body in the brain
· Bodies are ‘trivially’ flesh, blood, and bone – but also embody intangible elements like sense of self.
· Movement and posture can convey strong aesthetic information.
· Viewing a real body engages out somatomotor regions – mapping onto ourselves what we see in others – connecting with the figure we see portrayed and connecting with the artist via the marks of their hand
4 - Embodied beauty
· Aesthetic experience has sensorimotor components – shivers down your spine, for example.
· Exposure to artistic stimuli may profoundly influence the viewer’s bodily state via neural activations similar to other sensorimotor states. In other words, perceiving the ineffable properties of art objects may lead to changes in bodily feelings and in one’s own sense of self.
5 – The beauty of the body
· Aesthetic appreciation of physical bodies may enhance (or reduce) the tendency to “feel” and incorporate its visual features into one’s own body and self-representations.
· Studies converge in showing that the perception of others’ emotional states via observing their body postures activates a number of emotion related fronto-parieto-temporal cortical structures that are linked to motor response programming.
6 – A single neural focus for beauty and art?
· Basically, is the way we perceive beauty in people and in art different, neurologically?
· Artworks elicit the same emotional areas as everyday objects important for survival do.
· Pleasant scents or tastes activate brain networks similar to those activated when seeing Caravaggio’s paintings or listening to an opera.
· However, it does seem that visual art has a unique, specific effect on the reward system.
· Medial orbito-frontal cortex: active during beauty appreciation (art and music) and subjective experience of beauty intensity.
VIDEO: Semir Zeki on The Neurobiology of Beauty at TEDxUCL
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlzanAw0RP4
Discussion questions:
1) In your opinion, is neuroaesthetics a valuable topic to explore in our classrooms? Should we as art educators be aware of/care about this kind of information?
2) Will having some (albeit minimal) understanding of what’s going on in your brain during aesthetic experience change how you look at a work of art next time?
Below you will find my Powerpoint presentation on the article.
Key terms:
· Neuroaesthetics- Exploration of the neural processes underlying aesthetic experience and judgment
· Aesthetics- “our ability to perceive, feel and sense objects in the world and assign them positive or negative values along a continuum between beauty and ugliness”
1 – Introduction
· Philosophers and psychologists address the issue of why something is beautiful or ugly according to two main opposing ideas: EITHER beauty exists in the mind that contemplates things (subjectivist - depending on personal preference/experience/taste/….) OR that there exist perfect and universal forms of beauty (objectivist – depending on general qualities like symmetry/balance/…)
· Aesthetic experience is typically human, present in all cultures, defying barriers of race, class, social status, etc.
2 – Brainy aesthetics: the sense of beauty in a neural perspective
· Neuroaesthetics primarily focuses on the neural mechanisms linked to emotional appeal or to the capability of specific objects to disturb or arouse
· One fMRI study: subjects viewed a painting (portrait, landscape, still life, or abstract composition) and classified it as beautiful, neutral, or ugly. Beautiful paintings showed increased activity in the orbito-frontal cortex, an area involved in emotion and reward processing. In contrast, paintings deemed ugly showed increased activity in the motor cortex, as if the brain is preparing the body to escape (!).
· Another fMRI study: subjects viewed classical and renaissance sculptures in their original proportions and then in modified, more life-like proportions. Based on results of this study, it is speculated that the insula (perception, mediates pleasure) is involved in objective observation (immediate response to stimuli, no beautiful/ugly judgment) while the amygdala (memory and emotional reactions) may be involved in subjective beauty experience.
3 – The body in the brain
· Bodies are ‘trivially’ flesh, blood, and bone – but also embody intangible elements like sense of self.
· Movement and posture can convey strong aesthetic information.
· Viewing a real body engages out somatomotor regions – mapping onto ourselves what we see in others – connecting with the figure we see portrayed and connecting with the artist via the marks of their hand
4 - Embodied beauty
· Aesthetic experience has sensorimotor components – shivers down your spine, for example.
· Exposure to artistic stimuli may profoundly influence the viewer’s bodily state via neural activations similar to other sensorimotor states. In other words, perceiving the ineffable properties of art objects may lead to changes in bodily feelings and in one’s own sense of self.
5 – The beauty of the body
· Aesthetic appreciation of physical bodies may enhance (or reduce) the tendency to “feel” and incorporate its visual features into one’s own body and self-representations.
· Studies converge in showing that the perception of others’ emotional states via observing their body postures activates a number of emotion related fronto-parieto-temporal cortical structures that are linked to motor response programming.
6 – A single neural focus for beauty and art?
· Basically, is the way we perceive beauty in people and in art different, neurologically?
· Artworks elicit the same emotional areas as everyday objects important for survival do.
· Pleasant scents or tastes activate brain networks similar to those activated when seeing Caravaggio’s paintings or listening to an opera.
· However, it does seem that visual art has a unique, specific effect on the reward system.
· Medial orbito-frontal cortex: active during beauty appreciation (art and music) and subjective experience of beauty intensity.
VIDEO: Semir Zeki on The Neurobiology of Beauty at TEDxUCL
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlzanAw0RP4
Discussion questions:
1) In your opinion, is neuroaesthetics a valuable topic to explore in our classrooms? Should we as art educators be aware of/care about this kind of information?
2) Will having some (albeit minimal) understanding of what’s going on in your brain during aesthetic experience change how you look at a work of art next time?
Below you will find my Powerpoint presentation on the article.
westerkamparticlepresentation.ppsx | |
File Size: | 917 kb |
File Type: | ppsx |