The the Science of Art reading.

Peak shift principle

This principle felt like the trump card of all other modules. At the end of the day, THIS is the evolutionary principle that I buy the most. As we read about symbols, I am increasingly convinced that any visual object has embedded social context for the viewer. And that contextual meaning has been baked into their brain over and over again. I had never thought to call all art caricature. I wondered if anyone had any examples of art without caricature though.

Binding

I don’t know if the binding principle is a perfect framework. But, I liked the thought exercise of imagining an image as a top-down recursive function of what the brain processes first and groups together. It makes sense to me that humans evolutionarily had limited neural bandwidth, so their optical perception is drawn to the most “important” part of the image first. However, I thought it was a bit of a stretch when the authors claimed artists intentionally “tease” the system of putting these groups together. I don’t think artists are that intentional with teasing our limbic system groupings.

The generic viewpoint and the bayesian logic of perception

I was drawn to this law because it tied back the the Pragnanz Law from the Gestalt readings. I thought it was true that people are abhorred by coincidences in natural landscapes. And I also think it’s funny that we engineer randomness into art to make it feel more real. I think about Minecraft and how they generate worlds with randomness to make it more believable.