Enacting Media. An Embodied Account of Enculturation Between Neuromediality and New Cognitive Media Theory

Abstract

This paper argues that the still-emerging paradigm of situated cognition requires a more systematic perspective on media to capture the enculturation of the human mind. By virtue of being media, cultural artifacts present central experiential models of the world for our embodied minds to latch onto. The paper identifies references to external media within embodied, extended, enactive, and predictive approaches to cognition, which remain underdeveloped in terms of the profound impact that media have on our mind. To grasp this impact, I propose an enactive account of media that is based on expansive habits as media-structured, embodied ways of bringing forth meaning and new domains of values. We apply such habits, for instance, when seeing a picture or perceiving a movie. They become established through a process of reciprocal adaptation between media artifacts and organisms and define the range of viable actions within such a media ecology. Within an artifactual habit, we then become attuned to a specific media work (e.g., a TV series, a picture, a text, or even a city) that engages us. Both the plurality of habits and the dynamical adjustments within a habit require a more flexible neural architecture than is addressed by classical cognitive neuroscience. To detail how neural and media processes interlock, I will introduce the concept of neuromediality and discuss radical predictive processing accounts that could contribute to the externalization of the mind by treating media themselves as generative models of the world. After a short primer on general media theory, I discuss media examples in three domains: pictures and moving images; digital media; architecture and the built environment. This discussion demonstrates the need for a new cognitive media theory based on enactive artifactual habits—one that will help us gain perspective on the continuous re-mediation of our mind.

Social reputation influences on liking and willingness-to-pay for artworks: A multimethod design investigating choice behavior along with physiological measures and motivational factors

“…They inform whether we would visit art in a museum, display it on our walls, communicate with our friends about it and how we might cognitively and affectively respond within a given art engagement. At the same time, these factors also raise a number of questions, especially regarding the realization that they do not occur in a vacuum, but rather emerge within a complex context involving backgrounds, motives [ 11 – 13 ], sociocultural habits [ 14 , 15 ], and—in tandem with anecdotal evidence—that they may not always coincide, but may decouple or even contradict [ 16 , 17 ]. Think of the contemporary masterpieces showcased in living rooms of Architectural Digest or the label of wealthy donors affixed in museums, or the works exchanged in the contemporary art auction circuit, signaling one’s social and economic prowess.…”

“…Liking art, although often perceived as more personal or idiosyncratic, is also associated with social reputation [ 9 , 20 , 21 ]. In sociological surveys, spending time viewing art or choosing to visit a museum is often argued to be driven by desires to join or distinguish oneself from certain social groups (e.g., [ 9 , 15 ]). Affiliation with the arts has been connected to higher education, status, and personal wealth [ 9 , 30 , 31 ].…”

“…However, to date, this has not been done. Although again theoretical and empirical investigations have linked art values to socio-cultural training [ 25 , 30 , 31 , 34 ], habits [ 15 ], and corresponding choice behavior and appreciation [ 21 ], and have discussed them as indicative for social reputation effects [e.g., 16 , 36 ], there is no empirical research yet directly investigating the relationship between these factors. There are also very few studies actually empirically exploring willingness-to-pay or relationships with pricing information (see for further reading [ 9 ] and for non/art domains, e.g., [ 53 – 55 ]), and no study has interlinked, empirically, both liking and willingness-to-pay choices with the manipulation of a social reputation context itself.…”

Repeating patterns: Predictive processing suggests an aesthetic learning role of the basal ganglia in repetitive stereotyped behaviors

“…Here, the concept of aesthetic experience falls under the more general concept of experience as meaning-making with respect to environmental sensory stimuli, and could be seen as a specific experience of learning ( Dewey, 1934 ; Wickman, 2006 ). Aesthetic learning and the bringing forth of new meaning can be achieved by engagement, among others, with cultural artifacts ( Fingerhut, 2021 ), artworks (considered as highly salient, attention-amplifying objects, see also Sarasso et al, 2020a , b ), and also natural landscapes ( Menatti and Casado da Rocha, 2016 ; Heras-Escribano and Pinedo-García, 2018 ). Aesthetic learning is associated with dopaminergic modulation of sensorimotor, associative, and limbic basal ganglia circuits (see also Spee et al, 2018 ) and appears to influence action-perception cycles and environmental adaptation ( Sarasso et al, 2020a , b ).…”

“…Finally, we will propose that this framework has implications for occupational and art therapy in neuropsychiatric disorders characterized by RSBs. Specifically, aesthetic learning principles may help to adjust the relative weighting of external signals and internal predictions by guiding the salience and predictability of stimuli and contexts, and by increasing the tolerance for ambiguous stimuli ( Sarasso et al, 2020a , b ; Fingerhut, 2021 ).…”