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The Aesthetiscope: a Theory of Aesthetic Reading

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The Aesthetiscope: a Theory of Aesthetic Reading The Aesthetiscope: A Theory of Aesthetic Reading Xxxx Xxx and Xxxxxx Xxxx XXX Xxxxx Xxxxxxxxxx XX Xxxx Xxxxxx XXXX Xxxxxxxxx, XX, XXXXX XXX {xxxx, xxxxxx}@xxxxx.xxx.xxx Abstract mately, is subjective for the perceiver. An important ques- We describe a novel computational model for the assess- tion is what form this “truth” about the subject of artistic ment of textual aesthetics personalized to an individual’s depiction should take. Does truth encompass what is de- psychological type. Aesthetic perception of narrative is noted by art, or what is connoted by art? Roland Barthes, viewed as some weighted sum of the deliberations of five a twentieth century literary critic and structuralist, argues modes of semantic analysis: thinking, feeling, sensorializ- that truth is both the denotation and connotation of art, and ing, intuiting, and culturalizing. We have implemented the suggests that all of images, music, and text are interpreted proposed multi-perspectival model of textual aesthetics, and primarily through our culturally dictated vocabulary of integrated it with a computational model of color psychol- signs (1978). ogy; together, they form the nexus of an art installation But art does more than simply reveal the truth (and this called the Aesthetiscope. The Aesthetiscope is exhibited as a wall of colorful squares which modulate to achieve an is what sets it apart from craft), it motivates a perceiver to aesthetic resonance between a textual story and the person find an emotionalized truth hidden within an artwork standing before it. For instance, encountered with a sen- (Collingwood, 1958). And it is more than strictly emotions sory-oriented person, the installation visualizes a “sunset” that is being engaged in art, it is a fully sensorial experi- using dark purple swatches with splashes of warm hues, ence that engages the visual, aural, olfactory, taste, and which come from a remembrance of actual sunsets; but en- tactile. Barthes, for example, suggests that not only is there countered with a feeling and intuition-oriented person, a poetics of reading, but there is also an erotics of reading; warmth, beauty, and serenity are concluded, bringing about and neurophysiologist Semir Zeki suggests that imagery brighter, warmer, more intense colors, constituting an “in- of, inter alia, color, form, motion, faces, and body lan- ner” sunset. guage have an aesthetic primacy in human neurobiology which figures largely into aesthetic experience (2000). On Aesthetic Perception To synthesize together the ideas we have visited so far, What is aesthetic experience? Why do we apply the term aesthetic experience seems to be a very energetic, high- so broadly to characterize events seemingly as different bandwidth event, having been variously described as the and diverse as viewing art, reading fiction, eating food, finding of denotative (rational) truths, connotative (evoca- and listening to music? How does the perceiver interact tive) truths, cultural truths, emotional truths, and sensorial with the perceived during an aesthetic experience? These truths. Exactly what constitutes a truth is a matter of inter- questions are important if we are to design interactive sys- pretation, which is admittedly subjective, as it engages a tems that hope to resonate aesthetically with an experi- perceiver’s unique identity, memory, beliefs, and context. encer. Without trying to answer the art question definitively, as a The aesthetic and the art questions have been thor- starting point into our presentation of the Aesthetiscope, oughly vetted in the literatures of philosophy, psychology, we hope to begin from a pragmatic working definition. critical theory, and more recently, in neurophysiology. Aesthetic experience is the engagement of a subject into a Every account of aesthetic and art first and foremost rec- high-bandwidth experience of recognizing partially hidden ognizes that art is something which engages a perceiver in truths, through various cognitive-perception modalities meaningful interpretation, or as art formalist Clive Bell including thinking, intuiting, culturalizing, feeling, and says, “Art is significant form.” But what is meaningful or sensorializing. Jung in his theory of psychological types significant? In Poetics (350BCE), Aristotle describes art as (1921) postulated a similar ontology of perception. Ac- that which depicts truth, and our pleasure in art deriving cording to Jung, the self-conscious faculty called Ego has from our recognition of the likenesses of art to true things. four fundamental ways of perceiving and interpreting real- By Aristotle’s account, art is significant and meaningful ity: Thinking, Feeling, Sensation, and Intuition. Our work- because it reveals some truth to the perceiver, which ulti- ing definition of aesthetic perception includes an additional culturalizing dimension, which incorporates Barthes’ the- Copyright © 2004 held by the authors. sis that cultural structures like values can also color per- All rights reserved. ception. Having established a foothold in the aesthetic question in his mind what a sunset looks like. Or a sunset makes with this working definition, we use this fruitful discussion him think of other ideas like warmth, fuzzy, beautiful, se- to motivate and inform our presentation of the Aesthetis- renity, relaxation. Perhaps it reminds him of some past cope, a colorful art installation which explores how a event in his life. The contextual sphere of these personal multi-perspectival model of aesthetic perception (thinking, associations form the Aesthetic about the idea. And the feeling, sensorializing, intuiting, and culturalizing) can be experience of that aesthetic is called its pathos. We wanted used to engage a person in aesthetic experience. to choose a medium through which pathos could be con- The rest of this paper is structured as follows. First, we vincingly portrayed, and so we chose colors because they present an overview of the intentions of, and interactions are a complete micro-consciousness of pathos, like taste produced by the Aesthetiscope. Second, we discuss the and smell. novel mechanism of aesthetic textual analysis which inter- The framing of this particular art installation is meant to prets a text by generating its connotations and entailments explore the questions of 1) how the aesthetic of a story can within each of several interpretive frameworks, spanning be captured through semantic analysis; 2) how a computa- the rational, cultural, visual, intuitive, and sentimental. tional model of aesthetic can account for aspects of the Third, we reveal how the aesthetically analyzed text is perceiver using psychological typing; 3) how an abstract mapped into a color display using various psycho- color display can render a certain aesthetic; and 4) how physiological heuristic frameworks for color expression. visualizing the aesthetic of a story using an abstract art We conclude by discussing some redesigns we have made piece can improve the bandwidth of an aesthetic encounter. to the Aesthetiscope and reflecting upon the comments we The rest of this section discusses some of the most impor- have received from those who have visited the installation. tant non-technical aspects of the Aesthetiscope, while the following two sections gives much technical elaboration. The Aesthetiscope Modes of Perceiving the Aesthetic The Aesthetiscope is an interactive art installation whose The Aesthetic is hard to articulate because it is usually wall of color reacts to portray the relationship between experienced it as an undeconstructed gestalt. Any analysis some idea (a word, a poem, a song) and a person standing of Aesthetic needs to be sensitive to its complexity -- the before it (based on her psychological type: a realist, a multi-dimensional nature of connotation. The Aesthetis- dreamer, a neurotic). Figure 1 shows the Aesthetiscope’s cope analyzes each idea through a multi-perspectival lin- rendition of the aesthetic of six different stories, from the guistic analysis of connotation. The realms of analysis are "Think," "Culturalize," "Sensorialize," "Intuit," and "Feel." Each of these realms brings to bear a different perspectival vocabulary to the pathos description of an idea. "Think" generates rational connotations and entailments of the idea. "Culturalize" looks at the cultural entailments of the idea through the lens of a particular culture. "Sensorialize" takes the idea as a source of imagery, bringing to bear our collective visual memory of objects, places, and events. "Intuit" is an exercise in automatic free associations with the idea as a cue. "Feel" takes a sentimental stance toward the idea, connecting it to a word of feelings. The results of these analyses are mapped to a world of colors through psycho-physiological color surveys based on the work of Berlin & Kay (1969), Goethe (1840), and naturalistic sam- pling of color essences from photo collections. Representation of the Perceiver The notion of the aesthetic, of course, is specific to an in- dividual, and a main thesis of the work described in this Figure 1: The Aesthetiscope, set to Intuitive- paper is that aside from the influence of personal memories Sentimental Perceiver, renders the above por- and experiences on the aesthetic (which we have not yet traits of (clockwise from upper left) “Fire and addressed), a person’s psychological type is the greatest Ice” by Robert Frost, “A Song of Despair” by determiner of a person’s aesthetic. The psychological type Pablo Neruda, and the words “God,” “mourn-
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