Query: aesthetic experience ar art

title: Experiencing flow while viewing art: Development of the Aesthetic Experience Questionnaire.

title: Art training and personality traits as predictors of aesthetic experience of different art styles among Polish students
abstract: Personality, demographics and art experience proved to play an important role in reactions to visual art. Nevertheless, research attempts that take into account all those factors when determining predictors of aesthetic responses to different artistic styles are quite rare. The study presented here investigates predictors of aesthetic experience across figurative, abstract and contemporary paintings in individuals with varying expertise. Students enrolled in Sport, Humanities and the Arts programmes (N 181) declared their art exposure and filled out personality measures (Big Five, alexithymia, need for closure) Next participants evaluated three paintings using a tool constructed by the authors to track various dimensions of aesthetic reactions (i.e. negative/positive affective responses, self references, explicit knowledge and perceived mastery of the artwork) Reactions to figurative painting depended mostly on formal knowledge about arts, not personality traits. Aesthetic perception of abstract art rely not only on art exposure, but also on some individual characteristics (openness to experience, tolerance of ambiguity and ability to identify one's own emotions and track their source) Reception of contemporary art was predicted mostly by art exposure variables and in the case of negative emotionality by ability to identify one's own emotions and track their source. Both formal art education and art experience were stronger predictors of aesthetic responses than personality traits, for all art styles and dimensions of aesthetic experience. Personality predictors were significant mostly for abstract art. Personal interest in the arts seems to be as good predictor of aesthetic reactions as formal expertise.

title: The brain on art: intense aesthetic experience activates the default mode network
abstract: Aesthetic responses to visual art comprise multiple types of experiences, from sensation and perception to emotion and self reflection. Moreover, aesthetic experience is highly individual, with observers varying significantly in their responses to the same artwork. Combining fMRI and behavioral analysis of individual differences in aesthetic response, we identify two distinct patterns of neural activity exhibited by different sub networks. Activity increased linearly with observers' ratings (4 level scale) in sensory (occipito temporal) regions. Activity in the striatum (STR) also varied linearly with ratings, with below baseline activations for low rated artworks. In contrast, a network of frontal regions showed a step like increase only for the most moving artworks "4" ratings) and non differential activity for all others. This included several regions belonging to the "default mode network" (DMN) previously associated with self referential mentation. Our results suggest that aesthetic experience involves the integration of sensory and emotional reactions in a manner linked with their personal relevance.

title: When Art Disrupts Religion: Aesthetic Experience and the Evangelical Mind
abstract: In his book, When Art Disrupts Religion, Francis provides a look into what happens when individuals from some of the more conservative evangelical communities encounter art. This book examines how

title: Art reaches within: aesthetic experience, the self and the default mode network
abstract: In a task of rating images of artworks in an fMRI scanner, regions in the medial prefrontal cortex that are known to be part of the default mode network (DMN) were positively activated on the highest rated trials. This is surprising given the DMN's original characterization as the set of brain regions that show greater fMRI activity during rest periods than during performance of tasks requiring focus on external stimuli. But further research showed that DMN regions could be positively activated also in structured tasks, if those tasks involved self referential thought or self relevant information. How may our findings be understood in this context? Although our task had no explicit self referential aspect and the stimuli had no a priori self relevance to the observers, the experimental design we employed emphasized the personal aspects of aesthetic experience. Observers were told that we were interested in their individual tastes, and asked to base their ratings on how much each artwork "moved" them. Moreover, we used little known artworks that covered a wide range of styles, which led to high individual variability: each artwork was rated highly by some observers and poorly by others. This means that rating specific neural responses cannot be attributed to the features of any particular artworks, but rather to the aesthetic experience itself. The DMN activity therefore suggests that certain artworks, albeit unfamiliar, may be so well matched to an individual's unique makeup that they obtain access to the neural substrates concerned with the self access which other external stimuli normally do not get. This mediates a sense of being "moved," or "touched from within." This account is consistent with the modern notion that individuals' taste in art is linked with their sense of identity, and suggests that DMN activity may serve to signal "self relevance" in a broader sense than has been thought so far.

title: Dynamics of aesthetic experience are reflected in the default mode network
abstract: Neuroaesthetics is a rapidly developing interdisciplinary field of research that aims to understand the neural substrates of aesthetic experience: While understanding aesthetic experience has been an objective of philosophers for centuries, it has only more recently been embraced by neuroscientists. Recent work in neuroaesthetics has revealed that aesthetic experience with static visual art engages visual, reward and default mode networks. Very little is known about the temporal dynamics of these networks during aesthetic appreciation. Previous behavioral and brain imaging research suggests that critical aspects of aesthetic experience have slow dynamics, taking more than a few seconds, making them amenable to study with fMRI. Here, we identified key aspects of the dynamics of aesthetic experience while viewing art for various durations. In the first few seconds following image onset, activity in the DMN (and high level visual and reward regions) was greater for very pleasing images; in the DMN this activity counteracted a suppressive effect that grew longer and deeper with increasing image duration. In addition, for very pleasing art, the DMN response returned to baseline in a manner time locked to image offset. Conversely, for non pleasing art, the timing of this return to baseline was inconsistent. This differential response in the DMN may therefore reflect the internal dynamics of the participant's state: The participant disengages from art related processing and returns to stimulus independent thought. These dynamics suggest that the DMN tracks the internal state of a participant during aesthetic experience.

title: Aesthetic Experience and Global Competence: a museum inspired online course
abstract: This article presents Aesthetic Experience and Global Competence, a graduate level online course for educators in all areas, whose development was rooted in art museum education practices. The article includes details on the course, which was built around a series of group inquiries into works of art and literature related to a broad topic: "movement and displacement." Following these inquiries, students explored their own experiences of movement and displacement through the creation of a digital photomontage and a piece of creative writing. By the end of the course, students came to understand the significance of art experiences to global competence around six interrelated themes: (a) Feeling others' experience, sharing humanity, (b) gaining fluency in and valuing different ways of knowing, (c) considering multiple perspectives, (d) nurturing self awareness about one's situation, (e) dwelling in ambiguity, and (f) motivation to continue to learn about global issues and different ways of life. The implications of students' responses to art museum education are discussed.

title: The Aesthetic Experience, Flow, and Smart Technology: Viewing Art in a Virtual Environment
abstract: The Aesthetic Experience, Flow, and Smart Technology: Viewing Art in a Virtual Environment by Carol Foster Ikard MA, University of Texas at El Paso, 1990 BS, University of Texas at Austin,

title: An evolutionary approach to art and aesthetic experience.
abstract: A comprehensive characterization of the neurobiological underpinnings of artistic activities and aesthetic experience will require understanding of their evolution. Evolutionary approaches to these phenomena have thus far lacked adequate conceptual, archaeological, and neurobiological grounding. Here, after the necessary conceptual clarifications, we review the basic archaeological and neurobiological evidence that should be accounted for by any hypothesis about the evolution of visual art and aesthetic appreciation. We end by arguing that, in order to overcome the limitations of prior interdisciplinary attempts, such scenarios should take the form of gradual and mosaic coevolutionary processes.

title: Drifting into Dangerous Waters: The Separation of Aesthetic Experience from the Work o Art
abstract: The elevation of aesthetic experience in the Enlightenment, most extensively developed in Kant's analysis of disinterested contemplation, to compensate for the loss of putatively objective standards of beauty had several problematic implications. One was the privileging of the subject who had the experience over the object that stimulated it. Another was the potential extension of that experience to objects that were never intended to be works of art, not merely to ones given in nature, but also to political, social and cultural phenomena whose ethical or cognitive dimensions were concomitantly suppressed or marginalized. The aestheticization of the commonplace could thus countenance an inappropriate imperialism of the aesthetic sub system of modernity over alternative sub systems. Although the pragmatist aesthetics of John Dewey, recently revived in the work of Richard Shusterman, has acknowledged a need to revitalize the role of the art object, it may too quickly postulate a notion of aesthetic experience in which the equiprimordiality of subject and object is assumed. It is perhaps better to hold on to a tense constellation between art objects and the experience they generate in subjects in order to avoid a premature sublation of what remains still unreconciled in the larger culture.