This is Your Brain on Art...
article posted Jan 6, 18:56
I found myself smirking (almost giggling at some points) as I read through this piece on neuroaesthetics this evening.
It seems like a sort of pointless exercise in some ways to worry about the mechanics of art’s effect… aside from the interest of the knowledge as knowledge, I guess. Assuming one accepts the notion of absolute values of that sort.
Does it matter where the blood and/or impulses are in the brain when we look at Leonardo’s St. John, for example, or hear the Eroica (or Coil, or Dusty, or whatever…)? Isn’t the experience the point… not the mechanics? It’s kind of like assuming we’ll have more appreciation of Versailles if we know its longitude and latitude.
But whatever… it may help some academic researcher’s career, and that’s not invalid.
Enjoy the reading!