Week 7: Neuroscience + Art

As we learned from the reading talking about neuroculture, “neuroaesthetics” exists nowadays as a new field of research, which considers subjective aspect of aesthetic experiences in the creation and appreciation of art works to be superimposed upon common and universal neural circuits. (Giovanni Frazzetto) The study of relation between neuroscience and art seems to offer me some scientific explanation of art’s attractiveness, and my research focuses on the significant neural functions on visualizing art works.

Like Picasso said, “Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth, at least the truth that is given us to understand.” If we do not believe in the lie, what is the meaning of art or things in the medium of art? I really agree “if we didn't buy in to the "lie" of art, there would obviously be no galleries or exhibitions, no art history textbooks or curators; there would not have been cave paintings or Egyptian statues or Picasso himself.” (Elizabeth) the article, what the brain draws from: Art and neuroscience, starting from art, discusses the fantasy effect of the integration of it with neuroscience. I begin to reflect what I noticed when I enjoyed some artistic works such as a painting. Actually, my brain can understand lines, colors, shapes or even some artificial visual illusion. Human nerves can explain all of these basic elements of art works.

In different cultures, even infant and monkeys can recognize the meaning of lines. People of Anthropolithic age started drawing in lines. Ancient Egyptian also used lines to outlines objects. The neural “edge detection” works for the recognizing of these lines. The cells reacting on bound of light and shadow in human’s visual system can also reacts to lines.

Much research indicates human’s preference to recognizing face. Mark H. Johnson’s meaningful question in his famous paper, Functional brain development in humans, “how does the physical growth of the brain relate to the emergence of new behavioral abilities during infancy and childhood,”(Mark) drives the discussion into a evolutionary level. From the theory of evolution, the origin of human beings is from what we now call animals. Obviously, the better an individual can find out the hidden predators or the potential dangers, differentiating enemy from themselves, more easier they can survive in the nature and inherit their genes. The different tissue structures in our brain can help us recognize different “faces” such as paintings of fine quality and rough quality. The conclusion is if we analyze details less, then we put more emotional feelings on the works.

Leonardo Da Vinci took advantage of the differences in the human central and

peripheral visual system to create a dynamic smile in the "Mona Lisa"  

Color and luminance are certainly playful in artists’ hands. The mechanism of colorful visual effect is mainly illustrated by GGB color model and opponent process. The RGB color model is an additive color model in which red, green, and blue lights are added together in various ways to reproduce a broad array of colors. The choice of primary colors is related to the physiology of the human eye; good primaries are stimuli that maximize the difference between the responses of the cone cells of the human retina to light of different wavelengths, and that thereby make a large color triangle. (Hunt) The color opponent process is a color theory that states that the human visual system interprets information about color by processing signals from cones and rods in an antagonistic manner. (Wikipedia.com) With these neural science, people can better understand that artist works such as Impression, Sun Rise by Monet will deceive people with a lighter orange sun of same luminance as background color actually.

In "Impression Sunrise" by Claude Monet, circa 1873, the artist makes the sun look

unusually bright by choosing an orange with the same luminance as the background

Reference:

Frazzetto, G., & Anker, S. “Neuroculture.” Perspective. November 2009. Print.

Landau, Elizabeth. "What the Brain Draws From: Art and Neuroscience." CNN. 15 Sept. 2012. Web. <http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/15/health/art-brain-mind/>.

Johnson, Mark H. "Functional Brain Development In Humans." July 2011. Print.

R. W. G. Hunt. The Reproduction of Colour (6th ed.). Chichester UK: Wiley–IS&T Series in Imaging Science and Technology. Print.

"Opponent Process." Wikipedia.com. Web.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opponent_process>.