Art looks different – Semantic and syntactic processing of paintings and associated neurophysiological brain responses

Markey, Patrick S.; Jakesch, Martina; Leder, Helmut

doi:10.1016/j.bandc.2019.05.008

Cited by 22 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 41 publications

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“…The authors argue that the N300 component may reflect initial difficulties in perceptual processing and object identification, whereas the N400 may refer to increased post identification processing. Interestingly, a later effect of semantic violations was shown in the case of artworks, where semantic inconsistencies elicited a higher amplitude in the P600 (600-1,000 ms; Markey et al, 2019). Therefore, semantic violations were related to an intense processing, but it occurred later than in real-life scenes.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 90%

“…Moreover, contemporary art introduces disfluency as a method of expression in which various forms of uncertainty, indeterminacy or strangeness are expected and appreciated (Bullot and Rolf, 2013). Art scientists are trying to capture some aspects of this complex phenomenon, appreciating the fact that ambiguity is a broad category, by using terms as semantic instability (Muth and Carbon, 2016), ambiguity (Jakesch et al, 2017), semantic inconsistencies (Markey et al, 2019) or semantic violations (Pietras and Ganczarek, 2018;Ganczarek et al, 2020;Szubielska et al, 2021a) to address the challenge which artworks present to viewers. In the present study we use the latter term, i.e., semantic violations to name a case in which a visual scene contains atypical objects (with no reference to the global meaning of the scene) or there are unusual relationships between objects in the scene.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Therefore, semantic violations were related to an intense processing, but it occurred later than in real-life scenes. This leads to the conclusion that semantic violations in paintings might be perceived differently than in regular life probably due to specific expectations viewers formulate toward art (i.e., people expect rules to be violated; Markey et al, 2019). Moreover, art might create a safe environment to experience ambiguity with positive affect, contrary to real life situations, in which ambiguity is often perceived as more threatening (see Jakesch et al, 2017).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Titles and Semantic Violations Affect Eye Movements When Viewing Contemporary Paintings

Ganczarek

Pietras

Stolińska

et al. 2022

Front. Hum. Neurosci.

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The role of titles in perception of visual art is a topic of interesting discussions that brings together artists, curators, and researchers. Titles provide contextual cues and guide perception. They can be particularly useful when paintings include semantic violations that make them challenging for viewers, especially viewers lacking expert knowledge. The aim of this study is to investigate the effects of titles and semantic violations on eye movements. A total of 127 participants without expertise in visual art viewed 40 paintings with and without semantic violations (20 each) in one of three conditions: untitled, consistent titles and inconsistent titles. After each painting was viewed participants also rated liking and understanding. Our results suggest that titles affect the way paintings are viewed: both titled conditions were associated with shorter first fixation duration, longer saccade durations, and amplitudes and higher dynamic entropy than the untitled conditions. Titles were fixated on more frequently (but only in the time window between 1,200 and 2,800 ms) when presented alongside paintings with semantic violations than paintings without violations, and the percentage of fixations to titles was particularly high in the case of paintings with double inconsistencies (inconsistent titles and semantic violations). Also, we found that semantic violations attracted attention early on (300–900 ms), whereas titles received attention later (average first fixation on title was at 936.28 ms) and inconsistencies in titles were processed even later (after 4,000 ms). Finally, semantic violations were associated with higher dynamic entropy than paintings without violations. Our results demonstrate the importance of titles for processing of artworks, especially artworks that present a challenge for the viewers.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 90%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Titles and Semantic Violations Affect Eye Movements When Viewing Contemporary Paintings

Ganczarek

Pietras

Stolińska

et al. 2022

Front. Hum. Neurosci.

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“…Despite the fact that there is a growing body of research on how viewers experience challenging art (Jakesch & Leder, 2009;Jakesch et al, 2013;Muth & Carbon, 2013;Muth et al, 2015), little is known about how both subjectand object-related cognitive challenge affect eye movement. The question of brain correlates of violations in surrealist paintings has been addressed by Markey, Jakesch, and Leder (2016), although to the best of our knowledge there is no study that has investigated directly the impact of violations in contemporary art on eye movement. Eyemovement recordings afford the observation of several parameters of visual perception, thus allowing study of the impact of cognitive challenge directly on the famously quoted "eye of the beholder" (see Table 1 for an overview).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Perceived cognitive challenge predicts eye movements while viewing contemporary paintings

2020

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Contemporary art is often challenging for the viewer, especially when it violates classic rules of representation. Also, viewers usually have little knowledge about this type of art, making its reception even more difficult. Our main research question was how the cognitive challenge associated with contemporary art affects eye movement. In particular, we aimed to assess the impact on eye movements of (a) object‐related cognitive challenge in terms of image properties (syntactic and semantic violations) and (b) subject‐related cognitive challenge (composite subjective estimate of image inconsistency, ambiguity, and complexity). The eye movements of expert and naive participants were recorded while they freely viewed digital copies of contemporary paintings (four groups of five paintings each, differing in presence of semantic and syntactic violations). We found that neither violations nor art expertise alone predicted eye movements, although perceived, subjectively experienced cognitive challenge did. In particular, subject‐related cognitive challenge was associated with an increase in visual exploration (longer and more numerous fixations, bigger area of exploration, longer viewing time). The roles of object‐related and subject‐related indicators of cognitive challenge in perception of contemporary art are discussed.

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“…The implication of aesthetics is also highly important; besides, aesthetic semantic descriptions have been discussed in the past [56]. Furthermore, semantic and syntactic inconsistencies in artwork have been found to elicit distinct brain activation [57]; thus, the communication attempt is apparent. It is worth mentioning that Johannes Itten himself provided a definition of messages under the concept of art [58], mentioning distinct directions of color-implicated aesthetics, namely Impression (visually), Expression (emotionally) and Construction (symbolically).…”

Section: Information In Lightingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Systematic Design Applied in Outdoor Spatiotemporal Lighting

Papacharalampopoulos

Balafoutis

2021

Designs

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Outdoor lighting design consists of many different objectives, depending on the area that is illuminated. In addition, besides functional lighting, extra messages may be superimposed to a lighting configuration. This adds to the complexity of the lighting design. Furthermore, temporal variations in lighting may be used as an additional tool of expressivity. All the above require some basic training and also some familiarity with expression tools. In this work, a framework is given for seamless communication through lighting, including both spatial and temporal lighting patterns. To this end, two different kinds of time scales are considered, leading to case studies for both seasonal lighting and communication through rapid spatiotemporal differentiations in it. The framework is two-fold, allowing for both diagrammatic and quasi-algebraic elaboration, leading to interesting visual results and providing the first step towards optimization. Different cases of outdoor lighting are considered as case studies, namely façade lighting and glass cases. These are used to illustrate the applicability and the added value of the current framework, that is, the systematization of the lighting procedure taking into account artistic interventions, which can be considered an extension of utilizing semantics.

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Art looks different – Semantic and syntactic processing of paintings and associated neurophysiological brain responses

Cited by 22 publications

References 41 publications

Titles and Semantic Violations Affect Eye Movements When Viewing Contemporary Paintings

Titles and Semantic Violations Affect Eye Movements When Viewing Contemporary Paintings

Perceived cognitive challenge predicts eye movements while viewing contemporary paintings

Systematic Design Applied in Outdoor Spatiotemporal Lighting

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