Aesthetic Science of Color and Spatial Composition

本研究项目旨在了解人们如何对简单的视觉展示图像的空间构成和色彩构成做出审美反应。尽管审美评价在我们的日常生活中很重要--不仅是当我们参观博物馆时，而且在我们买衣服、选择电影、度假、装饰我们的房子和装饰我们的院子时--令人惊讶的是，人们对科学地了解人们喜欢什么样的色彩组合和空间安排却知之甚少。以前的大多数治疗方法来自哲学家、艺术家和艺术理论家，他们采取了一种说明性的方法，说明一个人应该在审美上偏爱什么。在这个项目中，首席调查者采取了一种科学的、描述性的方法，通过分析人们实际上在审美上更喜欢什么，以及决定这些审美偏好的变量。例如，关于空间构图的早期发现表明，人们更喜欢将对象的对称视图(如脸部的正视图)放置在图像的中心或附近，而将非对称视图(如脸部的侧视图)放置在横向偏离中心的位置，以便使其面向框架。例如，关于色彩构成的早期发现表明，人们通常更喜欢包含相似(而不是对比)颜色的颜色对，但与高对比(而不是相似)的颜色相比，给定的颜色看起来更美观。这项拟议的研究项目在艺术和科学之间架起了一座很有前途的新桥梁。它定义了一种跨学科的研究努力--称为美学科学--使用定义明确的行为方法来理解人类体验的审美维度，这一维度有别于充分研究的认知(基于知识)方面和体验的情感(基于感觉)方面。它还定义了新的研究方法，旨在了解不同审美领域的个人之间不同的审美偏好模式。例如，喜欢不寻常的、高对比度的颜色组合的人是否也喜欢意想不到的空间构图？鉴于拟议中对一个研究不足的主题的研究具有开创性，所有形式的新发现都是可能的，无论是在审美科学领域，还是将其与现有情感和认知科学领域的知识联系起来。

The present research project aims to understand how people respond aesthetically to the spatial composition and color composition of simple, visually displayed images. Despite the importance of aesthetic evaluations in our everyday lives -- not only when we visit museums, but also when we buy clothes, choose movies, take vacations, decorate our homes, and landscape our yards -- surprisingly little is known scientifically about what color combinations and spatial arrangements people prefer. Most previous treatments have come from philosophers, artists, and art theorists, who take a prescriptive approach by stating what one should prefer aesthetically. In this project the principal investigator takes a scientific, descriptive approach by analyzing what people actually do prefer aesthetically and the variables that determine these aesthetic preferences. Early findings on spatial composition show, for example, that people prefer symmetrical views of an object (such as a front-view of a face) to be positioned at or near the center of the image, but asymmetrical views (such as a side-view of a face) to be positioned laterally off center so that it faces into the frame. Early findings on color composition show, for instance, that people generally prefer pairs of colors that contain similar (rather than contrasting) colors, but that a given color looks more aesthetically pleasing against a highly contrasting (rather than a similar) color. The proposed research project provides a promising new bridge between art and science. It defines an interdisciplinary research endeavor -- called aesthetic science -- that uses well-defined behavioral methods to understand an aesthetic dimension of human experience that is distinct from the well-studied cognitive (knowledge-based) aspects and emotional (feeling-based) aspects of experience. It also defines new research methods aimed at understanding different patterns of aesthetic preference between individuals across different aesthetic domains. Do people who prefer unusual, highly contrasting color combinations, for example, also prefer unexpected spatial compositions? Given the pioneering nature of the proposed research on an under-studied topic, all manner of new discoveries are possible, both within the field of aesthetic science and linking it with knowledge in the existing fields of emotion and cognitive science.