Art Wired: The Science Behind Art
Edition: 1
Copyright: 2021
Edition: 1
Copyright: 2021
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Art Wired: The science behind art covers the evolution of art and why it was important to human survival. Using scientific studies and principles for attraction as a guide, the author attempts to break away from conventional definitions for art. At its heart, May contends that all humans evolved with ‘art wiring’ and sets to prove it by analyzing its roots and its use today.
The author analyzes how visual expression has become the refuge of well-intentioned but misinformed practitioners and educators. Calling into question many of the accepted tropes of the art community, the author re-explores art using neuroscience and evolution to explain human preference. He chronicles art’s contributions to science, economics, politics, and culture to determine its value to humanity and to ascertain objective measurement devices to define and quantify it.
The publication is packaged access to KHQ, a student quizzing app available through Apple iTunes & Google Play. Based on the book' content, KHQ provides students with:
- Customized Study Sections
- Flash Cards
- Quizzes
- Explanations of Incorrect Answers
- Categories for Struggling Terms and Questions
- Overview of Personal Performance
Part 1: Rationale
Intro: The reasons for writing the book.
Chapter 1: Objectivity in Art
The reasoning behind the necessity to abandon the philosophy of post modernism is covered along with a new approach for assessing art.
Part 2: Evolution and History
Chapter 2: Wild Eyed Hairy Men and Lesser Creatures:
Quantifying art, along with its purpose, are briefly covered using the arguments of Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Hume, Greenberg, and Derrida to determine why there is so much confusion surrounding art’s visual form and purpose.
Chapter 3: Getting in the Lifeboat:
Examining Measurement devices. The exploration of art in detail with one particular piece of art to analyze its properties. The purpose is to determine if there are inherent qualities in a work that can be objectively identified to qualify an individual piece as art and save the term ‘art.’
Chapter 4: How to Kill an Ism:
Looking back at the tumultuous period of the 1960s, the authors offer reasons for the rise of Postmodernism.
Chapter 5: Arguing Science:
Using evolution and behavioral research to identify universal traits that are attractive to humans, the author begins to use scientific data to identify what could be used to determine artistic qualities in a piece of work.
Chapter 6: Changing Lanes:
Are there heritable traits and adaptations to determine if art wiring is evident in our Paleolithic past?
Chapter 7: Out of the Dark:
Using a variety of scientific studies to support the contention, is art wiring is universal in all humans. Is there confirmation bias in the academic community.
Chapter 8: Apple to Apples:
Using contemporary studies as a basis for re-imagining the possible purposes and reasons behind cave art, the theory of sympathetic magic as the primary communicative purpose is dispelled.
Chapter 9: Desire:
Prehistoric ‘Venus’ statues are examined in an effort to tie down their purpose and when human cognition developed.
Chapter 10: Recorded Expression:
Evidence that the desire to create art and communicate through it, using images and abstract signs likely predated the ‘cognitive explosion’ by hundreds of thousands of years. Symbolism prevails to this day in movies.
Chapter 11: Hunting for Universals:
Tying down universal traits for preference.
Chapter 12: Eden Was a Slaughterhouse:
Using the term visual expression instead of the term art, as it is poorly defined by art educators, historians, philosophers, and critics, two ancient civilizations and their use of sculpture and architecture as a propaganda tool for creating empire are compared.
Chapter 13: and the gods were made from…
Civilizations of early Sumeria, Egypt, and Akkadia are investigated in order to determine the quality of the expression across cultures.
Chapter 14: and the Church Brought Forth
Illumination Using the Middle Ages as a backdrop, the guild world is examined along with how art, craft, and science evolved together.
Part 3: The Science Behind Art
Chapter 15: The Quintessential Artist:
The Master Mason The math and process behind creating gothic cathedrals.
Chapter 16: Mathematics and Ideal Form
Re-examination of the science and math behind art and how it relates to the philosophy of the classic Greeks and Humanism.
Chapter 17: A Matter of Perspective
How did the visual arts break from government and religion and began to be more driven by commercial interests
Chapter 18: The Difference Between then and Now
An explanation of teaching process and novelty.
Chapter 19: The Eye, Color, and Perception
The mechanism for perception is investigated in a search for universals which can be used to quantify art.
Chapter 20: Breaking it down
The mechanics of the eye and color are analyzed.
Chapter 21: Killing the Right Side of the Brain
The myths behind right side and left side brain function are dispelled and brain functions are outlined.
Chapter 22: The Brain, Creativity, and Inspiration
The biological mechanisms behind the processes for creativity and inspiration are explained.
Chapter 23: It’s Time to Behave
A number of paintings are analyzed to determine if there are qualities that can be used to determine their worthiness to be called art.
Part 4: The Value of Art
Chapter 24: The Root of Emotion
The processes for defining art using the methods of quantification devised and terminology used in the rest of the book.
Chapter 25: Economics, Education and the Great Con Artists
The value of education beyond teaching a profession and art’s role in informing the body politic. Why the paradigm of the starving artist is a myth. Art’s contribution to society in terms of economic value.
Conclusion: How to Measure
Concluding thoughts on why it is necessary to protect all forms of artistic expression using the Geneva Convention and the Lieber Code as guidelines. The authors conclude with suggestions for how to begin to quantify art objectively
Dan May has exhibited his art and design work nationally and internationally for thirty years, and has authored 2 papers on desire and its role in art preference. He attended Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville acting as a pseudo activist/juvenile delinquent in the 1970s and received his BA at the University of Missouri -St. Louis.
Prior to his art career, his life vacillated between unemployment and manual labor. He worked driving a truck, as a steel laborer, a hospital janitor, a dockworker, an autoworker, electrician, a day laborer, and in harder times sold meat door to door. Frequently being laid off and often seeking work, he was homeless and living on the street in NYC when he returned to school and received his Masters in Fine Arts in Graphic Design. As a designer/ illustrator his clients were SONY, Miramax, Disney, and General Foods. His work has appeared on merchandise, promotions, and illustrations for movies, and the rock concert tours of Eric Clapton, Queen, and REM. He has also designed layouts for 2 children’s books and 2 reference books. He is now a Professor at University of Nebraska-Kearney.