This paper describes a dialogue between contemporary artists and experimental psychologists who collaborated on the perception and experience of higher-dimensional spatial structures and related issues. In this dialogue, we first reflected on our experiences with the connection between art and psychology. We then address specific topics such as higher-dimensional perception, gravity, and meditation, and we discuss how the different perspectives of psychology and art interact to update our views on these topics. Finally, we argue the benefits of psychologists sharing interdisciplinary and collaborative activities, based on our experiences. Our dialogue and arguments will inspire psychologists in various fields who are interested in interdisciplinary collaboration.
The history of art is a repetition of moves away from Mannerism. A tool used in this movement is illusion. Illusion is a state in which a discrepancy exists between what is happening physically in real space and the real-space model in the brain in unconscious information processing from sensory stimulation to perception and cognition. When the discrepancy is noticed, attention is strongly aroused and a strong impression is obtained, which is very effective as an artwork. This paper introduces some of the conventional works of art related to illusions and discusses the artistic concepts behind the individual works. The author, an engineering researcher, will then introduce his intentions by discussing the process that led to his expressive activities in the art field and the relationship between his research and his creations for each sensory modality.
When individuals listen to music, they often feel the urge to move their bodies such as stomping their feet and bobbing their heads in synchronization to the rhythm of the music. The pleasurable sensation of wanting to move the body along with the music is called “groove.” Groove has long been the focus of researchers’ interest with studies conducted primarily from the perspective of musicology in the 1980s and 1990s. Since the 2000s, related studies have progressed, primarily from the perspective of experimental psychology. A main aim of psychological groove research is to clarify the musical features related to groove. Microtiming, a slight timing deviation that is not expressed in musical notations, has especially been discussed in relation to groove. In this paper, we review psychological groove research that has focused on microtiming, and we provide an overview of how microtiming affects groove and body movements. Finally, we will provide perspectives for future groove research focusing on microtiming.
Psychology has long been deeply intertwined with the arts and with food, but food itself as art remains unexplored. One important reason for this oversight is that food has never been regarded as art. Recent experimental research on the multisensory perception of food, which is known as gastrophysics, has begun to attract the attention of chefs and consumers and to influence creativity in fine dining. Furthermore, food shares common factors, including multisensory experiences, with many of the arts and these factors are being used to elevate food itself to an art. The factors have been examined in the psychology of eating, and they are contributing to the creation of new eating experiences. However, psychology must develop new methodologies to elucidate the experience of fine dining as art. For insight into this challenge, we present a dialogue between a chef, a food journalist and a psychologist on fine cuisine as a form of art.
This article discusses the experience of sorrowful beauty (i.e., aesthetic sadness), which is negatively emotionally valenced, from the empirical perspective of neuroaesthetics. It reviews theories and findings from a wide range of research fields, which includes art and aesthetics, experimental aesthetics, psychophysiology, neuroimaging, and data-driven research. Finally, by considering the relationship between “imaginary emotion,” eudaimonia, and negative capability, the aim of this article is to provide a neuroaesthetics perspective on sorrowful beauty derived from the appreciation of tragic art.
In this paper, we first discuss the characteristics of contemporary art and argue that the concept is a key factor of contemporary art. This paper begins with Duchamp’s “Fountain,” which can be regarded as the retrospective origin of contemporary art and emphasizes the importance of the impact of visual materials and the historical background of the artworks. We then discussed the concept of “date painting” by On Kawara as a typical example of conceptual art. In this concept, the unexchangeable unique date and the proper name as On Kawara are connected to human race as a collective of proper names through the activity of making date paintings under the rules of date painting production. Furthermore, by using Rei Naito’s “Matrix,” we discuss how this artwork deeply appeals to the viewer’s emotions through the concept of “water,” which represents the Teshima island where this artwork is placed, and the key word of the “earth,” which Naito has consistently advocated. In the final section, we applied the method presented by Gregory Bateson in the analysis of Bali paintings to Kawara’s and Naito’s works. We discuss that all artworks, including contemporary art, are the presentation of the correspondence between the material of the work and the world outside of the material. We conclude that these correspondences constitute the communication structure between the artist and the viewer.