Being alive to the world: an artist's perspective on predictive processing

Abstract

I consider predictive processing (PP) from the perspective of an artist who also conducts scientific research into art and perception. This paper presents artworks I have made and statements from other artists that exemplify some of PP's core principles. But it also raises questions about the extent to which current applications of PP theory provide a comprehensive account of art experience. Prediction error minimization, a key mechanism of PP, has been proposed as a cause of positive aesthetic affect because artworks offer opportunities for reward through disambiguation and learning. However, there are many cases where prediction errors proliferate in art experiences in a way that enhances aesthetic affect. Here I suggest the inability of our perceptual systems to minimize prediction errors when beholding certain artworks can evoke heightened states of fascination and exhilaration. Moreover, powerful artworks provide opportunities for maximizing prediction errors, within certain bounds, by evoking states of paradox, contradiction and illogicality. I conclude that beholding such artworks can intensify our sense of being by making us more alive to the world. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Art, aesthetics and predictive processing: theoretical and empirical perspectives’.

Aesthetics and predictive processing: grounds and prospects of a fruitful encounter

“…The three parts that follow—devoted to “Visual Art” [ 63 , 123 ], “Music” [ 102 , 132 , 133 ] and “Literature, Narrative and Cinema” [ 56 , 95 , 96 , 125 ] respectively—offer an articulate picture of the insights that PP can provide when applied to different art forms (including some that have so far been little or never explored from a PP perspective), and what in turn these art forms, when considered from a PP perspective, can tell us about our mental functioning. The last part, entitled “Responses and Critical Perspectives” contains papers that compare the PP picture of our aesthetic encounters with other leading proposals in the field and provide useful criticisms and indications for future research [ 64 , 107 , 108 ].…”

“…The second thing to note is that, far from encouraging a reductionistic attitude that collapses historical/philosophical and neuroscientific levels of description, the PP picture has so far allowed philosophers, art historians and artists to enter into meaningful dialogue with psychologists and neuroscientists, a dialogue that includes informed disagreement (see e.g. [ 63 , 64 ]). Indeed, for this encounter between aesthetics and cognitive science to keep growing in complexity and explanatory potential, a certain productive friction between the two sides should be nourished and encouraged, so that both can bring the other into focus with benefits for the overall enterprise.…”

“…[ 93 , 123 ] for some preliminary suggestions about visual art, [ 53 , 94 ] about literature and [ 55 , 56 , 96 ] about cinema) and even beyond exteroceptive inference to embrace proprioceptive and interoceptive inference as well. By revealing systematic connections between aspects of our phenomenology and facts about neural dynamics, this line of research might well contribute to research in ‘neurophenomenology' [ 124 ] and even inform theoretical discussions about consciousness from a PP perspective (see [ 64 , 125 ] for preliminary suggestions in this direction).…”

Predicting instabilities: an embodied perspective on unstable experiences with art and design

“…Several accounts in the field of art theory highlight the capacity of artistic practices to induce such ambiguity, perceptual indeterminacy or delayed recognition. Some even claim that prediction violation might strengthen the effect of and fascination for art [29]. The art theorist Konrad Fiedler believed that a 'new' way of seeing was possible through art-one that would circumvent automatic recognition [30].…”

“…Meanwhile, some artworks play with the dichotomy of images and make it accessible by implicating an (impossible) relationship between the layers of material and depiction (figure 4). c) Perceptual indeterminacy/potentiality [33,46] describes the experience of objects that suggest regularities but never allow for a substantial PEM: for instance, cubist artworks often suggest but do not grant any stable identification [47] and Robert Pepperell's painting 'Paradox 1' is evocative of a Gestalt or even a familiar scene but prevents the identification of any such Gestalt or scene on closer inspection (figure 5 and [29]). From a PP view, we can assume this perceptual process to be marked by ongoing attempts of PEM causing ever-new PEs.…”