Seminar: Empirically investigating the complexity of aesthetics
17 02 2024
Category: Our seminar, seminar
We cordially invite you to the upcoming talk on Center for Systemic Risk Analysis Seminar. Our guest speaker will be Dr. Yoed N. Kenett, from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology.
Photo: Ian Wagers, CC BY 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Abstract
Aesthetic experience is a complex experience, arising from bodily, emotional, and cognitive signals. How
can we study the complex cognitive and neural processes and dynamics that give rise to aesthetics? An
increasingly popular approach to studying the complexity of neural and cognitive systems is via network
science methodologies. Network science is based on mathematical graph theory, and offers quantitative
methods to represent complex systems as graphs, or networks. Although cognitive theories in different
domains are strongly based on a network perspective, the application of network science methodologies
to quantitatively study cognition has so far been limited in scope. The application of network science in
cognitive science provides a powerful quantitative approach to represent cognitive systems (such as
memory and language); enables a deeper understanding of cognition by capturing how the structure and
processes operating on a network structure interact to produce behavioral phenomena; and provides a
quantitative framework to model the dynamics of cognitive systems. Here, I will present a few examples
to demonstrate the feasibility and potential of applying network science methodologies in aesthetics
research. These examples relate to architectural preferences, appreciation of abstract art, conceptual
representation of beauty and wellness across different age generations, and aesthetic emotions.