Art as a metaphor of the mind

This paper focuses on the emergent neo-Jamesian perspective concerning the phenomenology of art and aesthetic experience. Starting from the distinction between nucleus and fringe in the stream of thought described by William James, it can be argued that our appreciation of a work of art is guided by a vague and blurred perception of a much more powerful content, of which we are not fully aware. Accordingly, a work of art is seen as a kind of metaphor of our mental life, objectified to be able to reach out to a much larger audience. However, it is a “realistic” theory rooted in evolutionary psychology, which claims that our mind developed within a framework shaped by environmental pressures. The aesthetics illustrated by several novelists develops a paradigm for this theory. The search for the neuronal correlates of stream of consciousness allows to make a comparison with the recent findings of neuroaesthetics and to reject its claim that it is unnecessary to take phenomenology and psychology into account.

梅尔美术判断测验在中国应用的信、效度检验

目的:修订梅尔美术判断测验(Meier Art Judgment Test)并对其信度、效度进行检验。方法:通过对来自6所大学、中专共2270人施测梅尔美术判断测验,采用CTT区分度和IRT的模型拟合检验、区分度筛选项目,以霍兰德艺术分测验、学生艺术创作水平自评与艺术过往经历分量表为效标,以及采用效标组法(美术与非美术专业)检验效标关联效度。结果:保留的61题都拟合IRT的2参数logistic模型,量表得分与各效标得分相关显著,美术与非美术专业学生得分存在显著差异; 但测验信息量分析表明,对高能力被试的测量误差相对较大。结论:修订的量表能测量个体的美术判断能力; 今后改进方向应该是增加更难的试题。     

Space,place, and sculpture: working with Heidegger

Heidegger’s paper ‘Art and Space’ (1969, Man and world 6. Bloomington: Indiana university Press) is the place where he gives his fullest discussion of a major art medium which is somewhat neglected in aesthetics, namely sculpture. The structure of argument in ‘Art and Space’ is cryptic even by Heidegger’s standards. The small amount of literature tends to focus on the paper’s role within Heidegger’s own oeuvre as an expression of changes in his understanding of space. This is ironic; for Heidegger’s main thematic in the essay is the way in which space is overcome in the creation of sculpture. Of course, by virtue of its three-dimensional character, sculpture seems to be a spatial medium, par excellence. The counter-intuitive character of Heidegger’s position requires, accordingly, that his argumentative strategy be scrutinized very closely. In this paper, therefore, I will examine closely the structure of Heidegger’s argument, with the aim of understanding, rectifying, and then developing his most important insights. My ultimate aim is to show the subtle, but radical points which are at issue in Heidegger’s arguments, and to develop them much further in the clarification of sculpture’s key philosophical significance.

Rule-governed activity vs. rule-creating activity

Questioning the usual understanding of Native American religions as supernaturalistic, this study re-examines the ritual system of the Yaqui people of Arizona. First, it evaluates assumptions about the nature of religion—including God, grace, and prayer—which inform the ethnographical interpretation of Yaqui religion. Second, it reconstructs the Yaqui cosmological system and relates their complex cosmos to the traditional religious actors, the Deer Dancer and the Pascola clowns. Third it examines the master symbol, Sewa or Flower, to demonstrate that Yaqui religious logic does not correspond to the grace theory of Catholicism. Fourth, it demonstrates that flower embodies a causal system in which all religious actors, human and transcendent beings alike, achieve ritual efficacy in mutual, reciprocal acts of witnessing. Finally, the essay observes that ‘conversion’ fails to make sense of Yaqui syncretism for two related reasons. In the first place, the Yaqui neither rejected the world nor embraced a monotheism which assigns a privileged, vertical superiority to God. In the second, the Yaqui applied traditional insights deriving from the most basic realm of myth to reach an understanding that Jesus and Deer are alike powerful innocents who sacrifice themselves so that others might live. In all these ways, the essay demonstrates that the concept of the supernatural fails to explain either the traditional or the Christian sides of Yaqui religion and suggests that the same may be true for other Native American religions as well.     

The dirtying of David: Transgression, affect, and the potential space of art

Transgression assumes the crossing of a boundary, a broken line which is either shored-up or redrawn in response; it thus marks an in-between state signalling danger, a pollution of the established order. Calling on the work of Bataille I investigate a two-fold instance of transgression by school students and their art and design teacher in which the sexualisation and violence perpetrated on the human figure through, respectively, drawing and sculpture signals one such breach. I examine the affective states that surround this transgression, in particular the self-censoring mechanism of shame. This is followed by an examination of the dichotomies that transgression may potentially provoke in pedagogic situations, and a consideration of the role of art in mediating the oppositional forces at play. With reference to psychoanalytical, object relations theory (Klein and Winnicott) I argue that the in-between spaces established by transgressive acts, destabilising and disorientating as they may be, should not be categorised as pathological but rather affective territories of potentiality necessary for creative education.     

Personality traits in people with synaesthesia: Do synaesthetes have an atypical personality profile?

People with synaesthesia not only have – by definition – unusual experiences (e.g., numbers triggering colour), they also have a different cognitive profile (e.g., in terms of their memory and perceptual abilities) and a bias towards certain interests and activities (e.g., towards the arts). However, virtually nothing is known about whether synaesthetes have an atypical personality profile. In this study, a standard measure of personality was administered (Big Five Inventory) along with two questionnaire measures of empathy. Synaesthetes, relative to demographically matched controls, reported higher levels of ‘Openness to Experience’ which is known to be related to imagination and artistic tendencies. They also reported higher levels of ‘Fantasizing’ on one of the empathy measures, which is conceptually related to Openness, although their self-reported empathy did not differ in other respects. In addition, synaesthetes reported lower levels of Agreeableness which we did not predict in advance.     

Local processing enhancements associated with superior observational drawing are due to enhanced perceptual functioning,not weak central coherence

Individuals with drawing talent have previously been shown to exhibit enhanced local visual processing ability. The aim of the current study was to assess whether local processing biases associated with drawing ability result from a reduced ability to cohere local stimuli into global forms, or an increased ability to disregard global aspects of an image. Local and global visual processing ability was assessed in art students and controls using the Group Embedded Figures Task, Navon shape stimuli, the Block Design Task and the Autism Spectrum Quotient, whilst controlling for nonverbal IQ and artistic ability. Local processing biases associated with drawing appear to arise from an enhancement of local processing alongside successful filtering of global information, rather than a reduction in global processing. The relationship between local processing and drawing ability is independent of individual differences in nonverbal IQ and artistic ability. These findings have implications for bottom-up and attentional theories of observational drawing, as well as explanations of special skills in autism.     

Touching on Fetish Black Box—A Haptic Performance

Abstract

Touching on the haptic/tactile performance artwork A Haptic Performance, this article unveils the installation Fetish Black Box as the artist’s safe space of possibilities, to explore the field of haptic art. The installation is examined from the perspective of fetish theory as suggested by Hartmut Böhme, which emphasizes the roles of subject and object in recognizing the qualities of desire in order to facilitate coexistence in a future society. Kroneis’ performance-installation challenges the limits of what is possible in socially accepted modes of conduct and puts a more inclusive future way of living together into practice.