The Logic of Disorder: A Dynamic View of Cognitive Aesthetics

Presentation by:

Samantha SchartmanCase Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio USA

July 25th

2010

Research

• A pattern of organization has been observed that can be characterized as the force-dynamic opposition between order and disorder.

• The tension created by this dynamic opposition results in an aesthetically dynamic state.

• This opposition is reflective of human embodiment and defines a discreet character of the underpinnings of the aesthetic experience.

Rudolf Arnheim

• Distinguished psychologist and art theorist

• Studied with two of the founders of Gestalt psychology; Max Wertheimer and Wolfgang Köhler

• Wrote the seminal book: Art and Visual Perception: A Psychology of the Creative Eye in 1954

• Wrote the article: Entropy and Art in 1971

Entropy

• The 2nd law of thermodynamics, states that in any closed system, there exists a tendency towards the dissipation of useful energy. This tendency is called “Entropy”.

Crude Diagram of Entropy

Criticism

• Peter Landsberg, an established physiciststates:– A bridge from science to literature may be accomplished

via science fiction. As you might expect from metaphors, the use of the entropy concept here is only suggestive and often superficial. Its normal use is as a hint at ultimate chaos and at a general tendency to decay, be it of objects, people or social organizations (Landsberg, 90).

A Response to Criticism

• Metaphors are not merely suggestive and superficial, but are productive products of conceptual domains which may correspond to neural mappings in the brain.

• Using entropy theory to examine closed systems will, in fact, lead one to nihilistic conclusions of ultimate decay, but applying the framework to open systems such as human cognition, perception and experience, disposes one to much more productive analogues that allow for the exchange of forces moving towards and away from disorder.

What Arnheim thinks

• But it is hard, perhaps impossible to find examples in which the order of a given object or event is limited to what is directly apparent in perception. (Arnheim,2)– Outer order reflects inner order

• If there were independent evidence to make it likely that a similar tendency towards orderly structure exists in these brain processes also, one might want to think of perceptual order as the conscious manifestation of a more universal physiological and indeed physical phenomenon (Arnheim, 3).– Cognitive human embodiment might be able to be defined as a neurological

tendency towards the application of ordering principals to perceptible phenomena.

• Disorder is not the absence of all order but rather the clash of uncoordinated orders (Arnheim,7).– A tension-creating force dynamic opposition does not indicate a lack or

order but rather two competing systems of organization that lead to a sort of volatility

Arnheim’s language

• Order – all perceptible order is implicative of internal cognitive processes.

• Disorder – is the clashing of multiple internal cognitive systems of organization.

• Entropy – tendency towards disorder • Catabolic Effect - “shape destroying” the process of entropy • Neg-entropy – tendency towards order• Anabolic Tendency – perceptible process of increasing

order• Tension Reduction – a shift from an ordered state to a state

of equilibrium (not stated how this is different from entropy)

Arnheim’s Diagram

Problems to be solved

1. Language is unclear and not well defined.

2. Diagram is not explained.

3. All art is assumed to be a closed system.

4. Examples are not given.

5. A methodology is not defined.

Solutions

1. Simplify the language by using only the terms “disorder” and “order” and “entropy” and “neg-entropy”.

2. Explore alternate methods to graph the dynamics within a specific network.

3. All art is not an instance of a closed system.

4. Use lots of examples.

5. Define a methodology.

Step 1: Scalar Oppositions

• “The beautiful is always strange. I do not mean that it is coldly, deliberately strange. For in that case, it would be a monstrosity that had jumped the rails of life. I mean that it always contains a touch of strangeness, and that it is this touch of strangeness that gives it its particular quality as beauty.” Charles Baudelaire, 1855

Step 2: Force Dynamic Oppositions

• The central theme of “The Unknown Masterpiece is the painting’s drive/progression towards an entropic state (disorder) opposing the objectification of Gilette representing a neg-entropic drive towards a fixed state (order).

The significance of self-reflexivity

• Since the Post-Modern era, reflexivity has sought to remove the intentionality of the artist as a redundant instance of nature.– This however would serve to communicate that

cognition, emotion, creativity, and so on are not special or important –since nature is just uniformly causal and mentally blind

• Returning to the ideas set forth by Arnheim, I assert that perceptible dynamics reflect internal cognitive processes.– This is supported by the symbiotic relationship between Frenhofer and

his painting that Balzac describes in “The Unknown Masterpiece”.

A Cyclical Ontology

Step 3: The Actantial Model (Gombrich)

• For Gombrich, art is the transposition of nature to an audience by an artist through the use of technique and in spite of the chosen medium.

Step 3: The Actantial Model (my version)

• Instead of nature being the contained objective for art’s delivery to an audience, I instead submit that the motivating idea behind Monet’s Rouen Cathedral is Monet’s perception of light in time. Whereas Gombrich focuses on technique, Monet places his focus on the phenomenological.

Step 4: Semiotic Blending

Step 5: The Semiotic Square

Algirdas J. Greimas’ Model illustrating the dynamics inherent in any semantic structure

The Semiotic Square in Stevens

The theme is described by desire circulating though a system defined as the conflict between the essential self as duality (e.g. body and spirit) and theexistential self embodied (“evilly compounded, vital I”), instantiated in either a simple (order) or complex (disorder) state of being.

The Purpose of the Semiotic Square in Blending

In each layer of the blending cascade, the “relevance schema” consists of, among other things, the dynamics represented by the semiotic square.

Brandtian Ontology and Blending

Art often represents a shift from the phenomenological layer, where perception takes place, to the semiotic layer where perception is expressed through symbolic systems resulting in discourse (culture).

Reversibility vs. Irreversibility

Step 6: Diegesis

Solving the Entropy Problem

• The differing functions of the semiotic square and diegesis models, seem to implicate the original difficulty that Arnheim had in reconciling his theory of art with that of his understanding of the physics of entropy.

• the semiotic square model as illustrative of an open system - one that continuously oscillates between states, and the diegesis model as representative of a closed system – one that moves from one static state to that of an end state.

Conclusion

“All art is self-portraiture.”

Further research

• How does embodiment relate to abstraction as it is referred to by neurologist SemirZeki, in his article entitled Neural Concept Formation & Art: Dante, Michelangelo, Wagner (Zeki, 2002)?

• Are force dynamics recognized in the same way as spatial relationships (like the notion of verticality)? – If the brain constantly processes information by first looking for

general consistencies as Zeki suggests, and all art is built upon a structure defined by human embodiment, it is conceivable that there could be a neurological basis for aesthetics.

• If we are to understand the aesthetic experience as the force dynamic opposition of order and disorder, and that experience is distributed in time; how then, is the dynamic process of perception situated in time in relation to a time-based (temporal) work?