Raphael Rosenberg

Art in time and space: context modulates the relation between art experience and viewing time.

The experience of art emerges from the interaction of various cognitive and affective processes. The unfolding of these processes in time and their relation with viewing behavior, however, is still poorly understood. Here we examined the effect of context on the relation between the experience of art and viewing time, the most basic indicator of viewing behavior. Two groups of participants viewed an art exhibition in one of two contexts: one in the museum, the other in the laboratory. In both cases viewing time was recorded with a mobile eye tracking system. After freely viewing the exhibition, participants rated each artwork on liking, interest, understanding, and ambiguity scales. Our results show that participants in the museum context liked artworks more, found them more interesting, and viewed them longer than those in the laboratory. Analyses with mixed effects models revealed that aesthetic appreciation (compounding liking and interest), understanding, and ambiguity predicted viewing time for artworks and for their corresponding labels. The effect of aesthetic appreciation and ambiguity on viewing time was modulated by context: Whereas art appreciation tended to predict viewing time better in the laboratory than in museum context, the relation between ambiguity and viewing time was positive in the museum and negative in the laboratory context. Our results suggest that art museums foster an enduring and focused aesthetic experience and demonstrate that context modulates the relation between art experience and viewing behavior.

Electrophysiological correlates of looking at paintings and its association with art expertise

This study investigated the electrocortical correlates of art expertise, as defined by a newly developed, content-valid and internally consistent 23-item art expertise questionnaire in N=27 participants that varied in their degree of art expertise. Participants viewed each 50 paintings, filtering-distorted versions of these paintings and plain colour stimuli under free-viewing conditions whilst the EEG was recorded from 64 channels. Results revealed P3b-/LPC-like bilateral posterior event-related potentials (ERP) that were larger over the right hemisphere than over the left hemisphere. Art expertise correlated negatively with the amplitude of the ERP responses to paintings and control stimuli. We conclude that art expertise is associated with reduced ERP responses to visual stimuli in general that can be considered to reflect increased neural efficiency due to extensive practice in the contemplation of visual art.

ABSTRACT ART AS A UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE

The concept of abstract art as “world language” became famous after documenta II (1959). Abstract art was considered as universally comprehensible and independent of cultural, political or historical contexts. However, this was never explicitly tested empirically. If these assumptions were true, there should be higher intersubjective coherence in perceiving abstract paintings compared to representational art. In order to test this hypothesis, the authors recorded the eye-movements of 38 participants and collected information on their cognitive and emotional evaluations. The results suggest that the concept of abstract art as a universal language was not confirmed and needs to be revised.

Describing Art - An Interdisciplinary Approach to the Effects of Speaking on Gaze Movements during the Beholding of Paintings.

Ever since the Renaissance speaking about paintings has been a fundamental approach for beholders, especially experts. However, it is unclear whether and how speaking about art modifies the way we look at it and this was not yet empirically tested. The present study investigated to the best of our knowledge for the first time in what way speaking modifies the patterns of fixations and gaze movements while looking at paintings. Ninety nine university students looked at four paintings selected to cover different art historical typologies for periods of 15 minutes each while gaze movement data were recorded. After 10 minutes, the participants of the experimental group were asked open questions about the painting. Speaking dramatically reduced the duration of fixations and painting area covered by fixations while at the same time increasing the frequencies of fixations, gaze length and the amount of repeated transitions between fixation clusters. These results suggest that the production of texts as well-organised sequences of information, structures the gazes of art beholders by making them quicker, more focused and better connected.

Region of interest generation algorithms for eye tracking data

Using human fixation behavior, we can interfere regions that require to be processed at high resolution and where stronger compression can be favored. Analyzing the visual scan path solely based on a predefined set of regions of interest (ROIs) limits the exploration room of the analysis. Insights can only be gained for those regions that the data analyst considered worthy of labeling. Furthermore, visual exploration is naturally time-dependent: A short initial overview phase may be followed by an in-depth analysis of regions that attracted the most attention. Therefore, the shape and size of regions of interest may change over time. Automatic ROI generation can help in automatically reshaping the ROIs to the data of a time slice. We developed three novel methods for automatic ROI generation and show their applicability to different eye tracking data sets. The methods are publicly available as part of the EyeTrace software at http://www.ti.uni-tuebingen.de/Eyetrace.175L0.html

Symmetry Is Not a Universal Law of Beauty

Scientific disciplines as diverse as biology, physics, and psychological aesthetics regard symmetry as one of the most important principles in nature and one of the most powerful determinants of beauty. However, symmetry has a low standing in the arts and humanities. This difference in the valuation of symmetry is a remarkable illustration of the gap between the two cultures. To close this gap, we conducted an interdisciplinary, empirical study to directly demonstrate the effects of art expertise on symmetry appreciation. Two groups of art experts—artists and art historians—and a group of non-experts provided spontaneous beauty ratings of visual stimuli that varied in symmetry and complexity. In complete contrast to responses typically found in non-art experts, art experts found asymmetrical and simple stimuli as most beautiful. This is evidence of the effects of specific education and training on aesthetic appreciation and a direct challenge to the universality of symmetry.

The universal and automatic association between brightness and positivity

The present study investigates the hypothesis that brightness of colors is associated with positivity, postulating that this is an automatic and universal effect. The Implicit Association Test (IAT; Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998) was used in all studies. Study 1 used color patches varying on brightness, Study 2 used achromatic stimuli to eliminate the potential confounding effects of hue and saturation. Study 3 replicated Study 2 in a different cultural context (Japan vs. Austria), both studies also included a measure of explicit association. All studies confirmed the hypothesis that brightness is associated with positivity, at a significance level of p < .001 and Cohens D varying from 0.90 to 3.99. Study 1-3 provided support for the notion that this is an automatic effect. Additionally, Study 2 and Study 3 showed that people also have an explicit association of brightness with positivity. However, as expected, our results also show that the implicit association was stronger than the explicit association. Study 3 shows clear support for the universality of our effects. In sum, our results support the idea that brightness is associated with positivity and that these associations are automatic and universal.

Novel Methods for Analysis and Visualization of Saccade Trajectories

Visualization of eye-tracking data is mainly based on fixations. However, saccade trajectories and their characteristics might contain more information than sole fixation positions. Artists, for example, can influence the way our eyes traverse a picture by employing composition methods. Repetitive saccade trajectories and the sequence of eye movements seem to correlate with this composition. In this work, we propose two novel methods to visualize saccade patterns during static stimulus viewing. The first approach, so-called saccade heatmap, utilizes a modified Gaussian density distribution to highlight frequent gaze paths. The second approach is based on clustering and assigns identical labels to similar saccades to thus filter for the most relevant gaze paths. We demonstrate and discuss the strengths and weaknesses of both approaches by examples of free-viewing paintings and compare them to other state-of-the-art visualization techniques.

Eyetrace2014 - Eyetracking Data Analysis Tool

Over the last years eye tracking became more and more popular. A variety of new eye-tracker models and algorithms for eye tracking data processing emerged. On the one hand this multitude of hardand software brought many advantages, on the other hand the diversity of devices and measures impedes the comparability and repeatability of eye-tracking studies. While supply of eye tracking software is high, the functioning of the algorithms, e.g. how fixations are identified, is often intransparent and unflexible. The Eyetrace software bundle approaches these problems by providing a variety of different evaluation methods compatible with many

Architekturen des „Dritten Reiches“

Bauten, die im Auftrag von Herrschern oder von offentlichen Korperschaften errichtet werden, verfolgen immer auch politische Zwecke. Die Bauherren wollen ein bestimmtes Bild von sich und ihrer Herrschaftsauffassung vermitteln, sie wollen beeindrucken, gelegentlich auch manipulieren. Politische Zwecke konnen beilaufig geausert werden, oder aber so deutlich im Vordergrund der Architektur stehen, dass die praktische Nutzung zur Nebensache wird.