Abstract
In its emphasis on the feedback loops of top-down and bottom-up signal processing in the brain, and the exquisitely muddy area where they meet, the last century of psychology and neuroscience supports a model of aesthetic engagement wherein we meet the world halfway. In its unavoidable mustering of the totality of a person’s taste, expectation, and memory, as well as the social and political forces of the world around them, aesthetic engagement is thus far from a passive act. Yet too often the dialogue between art and neuroscience pulls the analysis of aesthetic engagement into the apolitical, sanitized, averaging language of science—treating art as an exotic stimulus and the brain as a universalized end-domain for us to plant our flag of understanding. From the pitfalls of neuroaesthetic inquiry to a real-world case study of interdisciplinary dialogue run amok, this chapter examines critical stumbling blocks and possibilities for future engagements.
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Notes
- 1.
More information and video recordings available at http://aon.neurobureau.org/venice-symposium-2013/.
- 2.
I rely here on an unpublished transcript of the event provided to me by the Association for Neuroaesthetics.
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Hutton, N. (2019). Art and Neuroscience: A State of the Union. In: Contreras-Vidal, J., Robleto, D., Cruz-Garza, J., Azorín, J., Nam, C. (eds) Mobile Brain-Body Imaging and the Neuroscience of Art, Innovation and Creativity. Springer Series on Bio- and Neurosystems, vol 10. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24326-5_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24326-5_3
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