SeIns: Semantic Instability in Art

Muth, Claudia; Carbon, Claus-Christian

doi:10.1163/22134913-00002049

Cited by 57 publications

(74 citation statements)

References 62 publications

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“…3A), for example, that dissolves the subject into disparate patches of paint or plaster will certainly impair instant recognition and Gestalt detection (Muth, Pepperell, & Carbon, 2013). Thus, with regard to formal aspects, kitsch prefers conventional realism to any kind of idiosyncratic rendering or even indeterminate display (Muth & Carbon, 2016). Apart from non-figurative works of art, still countless celebrated artworks come to mind that are perfectly compliant with Kulka's first and second preconditions.…”

Section: Anything But Art: What Is Kitsch?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Kitsch and Perception: Towards a New ‘Aesthetic from Below’

Ortlieb

Carbon

2019

Art Percept.

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Although kitsch is one of the most important concepts of twentieth-century art theory, it has gone widely unnoticed by empirical aesthetics. In this article we make a case that the study of kitsch is of considerable heuristic value for both empirical aesthetics and art perception. As a descriptive term, kitsch appears like a perfect example of hedonic fluency. In fact, the frequently invoked opposition of kitsch and art reflects two types of aesthetic experience that can be reliably distinguished in terms of processing dynamics: a disfluent one that promises new insights but requires cognitive elaboration (art), and a fluent one that consists of an immediate, unreflective emotional response but leaves us with what we already know (kitsch). Yet as a derogatory word, kitsch draws our attention to a general disregard for effortless emotional gratification in modern Western aesthetics that can be traced back to eighteenth-century Rationalism. Despite all efforts of Pop Art to embrace kitsch and to question normative values in art, current models of aesthetic liking—including fluency-based ones—still adhere to an elitist notion of Modern art that privileges style over content and thereby excludes what is essential not only for popular taste and Postmodern art but also for premodern artistic production: emotionally rich content. Revisiting Fechner’s (Vorschule der Aesthetik, 1876) criticism of highbrow aesthetics we propose a new aesthetic from below (Aesthetik von Unten) that goes beyond processing characteristics by taking content- and context-related associations into account.

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Section: Anything But Art: What Is Kitsch?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Kitsch and Perception: Towards a New ‘Aesthetic from Below’

Ortlieb

Carbon

2019

Art Percept.

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“…We examined changes in the experience of ambivalence-which besides other forms of SeIns (Muth & Carbon, 2016) is often inherent to aesthetic stimuli-via a manipulation of self-efficacy and affect. Our findings show that feedback about task accomplishment has the potential of influencing the experienced valence of stimuli associated with that task.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…50(3), 307-317 (see Figure 1). The construct of Semantic Instability (SeIns, Muth & Carbon, 2016) refers to different phenomena in art that similarly hinder easy perception of determinacy (like multistability, dichotomy, experience of hidden images or visual indeterminacy). Besides other interesting aspects of the aforementioned photographs, we can focus on their multistability: they allow for several quite clear but mutually exclusive interpretations of the scene (e.g., a man greets someone or bids farewell, respectively).…”

Section: Highlightsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Affect and self-efficacy infuse the experience of ambivalent photographs

2017

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Ambivalent pictures offer several interpretations of different valence-e.g., some photographs by Claudia Otto document scenes which can be perceived as sad or happy, dangerous or sweet, and so on. We show that task experiences influence the experienced valence of these images. Previous work already documented that responses to images are task-dependent and self-created insights heighten pleasure. A resulting positive mood and high self-efficacy might broaden attention to positive valence. In contrast, low self-efficacy leads to the prediction of negative task experiences and strengthens the salience of a positive experience. In our study, participants rated the valence of ambivalent photographs to be more positive after positive feedback regarding the accomplishment of a precedent puzzle. We revealed a trend of positive feedback being more effective when it followed negative experiences. The experience of ambivalent images is strongly linked to mood and self-efficacy and both is influenced by taskexperiences in psycho-aesthetic studies.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The complexity of art experience has recently been approached using the concept of Semantic Instability (Muth & Carbon, 2016;Muth, Hesslinger, & Carbon, 2018). Muth and Carbon (2016) argue that art has the capacity to afford a variety of potential meanings and this is appealing, because it offers opportunity for rewarding insights. Muth et al (2018) empirically studied experiences of artworks and identified four clusters of Semantic Instability: integrative blend, multistability, indeterminacy, and contrast to perceptual habits.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ambivalent Emotional Experiences of Everyday Visual and Musical Objects

2019

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Art brings rich, pleasurable experiences to our daily lives. However, many theories of art and aesthetics focus on specific strong experiences-in the contexts of museums, galleries, and concert halls and the aesthetic perception of canonized arts-disregarding the impact of daily experiences. Furthermore, pleasure is often treated as a simplistic concept of merely positive affective character, yet recent psychological research has revealed the experience of pleasure is far more complicated. This study explored the nature of pleasure evoked by everyday aesthetic objects. A mixture of statistical and qualitative methods was applied in the analysis of the data collected through a semi-structured online survey (N = 464). The result asserts the experience of emotional ambivalence occurred and was composed of a variety of nuanced emotions and related association, rather than just a combination of contradicting emotions. Such paradoxical pleasure is defined as a self-conscious hedonic exposure to negative emotions in art reception. The study also depicted four types of attitudinal ambivalence: loss, diversity, socio-ideology, and distance, reflecting contextual elements intertwined into experience, and the connection between ambivalence and intense emotional experience.

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SeIns: Semantic Instability in Art

Cited by 57 publications

References 62 publications

Kitsch and Perception: Towards a New ‘Aesthetic from Below’

Kitsch and Perception: Towards a New ‘Aesthetic from Below’

Affect and self-efficacy infuse the experience of ambivalent photographs

Ambivalent Emotional Experiences of Everyday Visual and Musical Objects

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