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Lorna Mills and Sally McKay
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Neurologist Vilayanur S Ramachandran on art (from BBC Reith Lectures 2003 online) (thanks to Marc Ngui):
Let's assume that 90% of the variance you see in art is driven by cultural diversity or - more cynically - by just the auctioneer's hammer, and only 10% by universal laws that are common to all brains. The culturally driven 90% is what most people already study - it's called art history. As a scientist what I am interested in is the 10% that is universal - not in the endless variations imposed by cultures. The advantage that I and other scientists have today is that unlike we can now test our conjectures by directly studying the brain empirically. There's even a new name for this discipline. My colleague Semir Zeki calls it Neuro-aesthetics - just to annoy the philosophers.Ramachandran's 10 universal laws of art:
- Peak shift
- Grouping
- Contrast
- Isolation
- Perception problem solving
- Symmetry
- Abhorrence of coincidence/generic viewpoint
- Repetition, rhythm and orderliness
- Balance
- Metaphor