Inner Vision: An Exploration of Art and the Brain

"A couple of reasons. Zeki is a very well known vision neuroscientist. There is a way in which aesthetics is considered soft and not a proper domain of inquiry for a neuroscientist. So here in the late 1990s was a well known neuroscientist saying that aesthetics is worth studying. He also coined the term ‘neuroaesthetics’. The book is what I refer to as an example of ‘descriptive neuroaesthetics.’ By that term, I mean that someone who knows a lot about the brain applies this knowledge to aesthetic experiences. His initial focus, which is not surprising given his background, was how the visual system is engaged when people look at various kinds of paintings, whether they’re by Rembrandt or Malevich or various abstract expressionists. His focus was on how our visual system processes shape and colour and form and how the hardware of our brain constrains how we view artwork and probably how people make artwork. It was the first time an experienced and reputable neuroscientist took art seriously and proposed that neuroscience was relevant to conversations about art. I don’t know the answer to that question. When I say his initial book was ‘descriptive’, that’s to contrast it with experimental neuroaesthetics. Experimental neuroaesthetics is where you’re designing experiments to test hypotheses. For instance, we’re conducting work in the aesthetic experience of architectural spaces. We ask the question, ‘are there elemental features of interiors?’ and we’re looking at whether interiors have high or low ceilings, whether they’re curvilinear or rectilinear, and whether they feel open or closed, and what the psychological responses to those kinds of spaces are. Then, trying to see how consistent those responses are, and whether those responses cluster in certain ways. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter The goal is to identify elemental features that apply to architectural spaces and identify elemental responses that most people have to those features in islotation or in combination. One can imagine that information becoming part of the toolkit of an architect to say: ‘ If you want to create this type of environment, these elements will be part of the design of that space. ’ It’s not prescribing exactly what they should do, but, by analogy, if you’re going to make a winter soup, these are the kinds of root vegetables you might consider using."