An initiation of a dialogue between aesthetics and neuroaesthetics by approaching them as two disciplines with equalized mathematical status. The argumentation is derived from the author’s dissertation on the mathematical foundations of art creation and recognition through functional analysis and reduction of art theoretical investigations, general information processing paradigms, brain function interpretations and brain data, incorporating her experience from art education, practice and critical writing. It argues that the theoretical core which is simultaneously an achievement and justification of art theory as a scientific domain, can be conceptualized as the formalization of aesthetics exclusively as a tool for data interpretation and expression and that this formalization holds the properties of an empirically derived mathematical artefact. Empirical aesthetics and neuroaesthetics, on the other hand, regardless of their ambiguous interpretations, do not utilize "aesthetics" as a data-reading tool, but as one of many elements in definitions-based apparatuses seeking systemic coherence. Despite this functional incompatibility, through neuroaesthetic and more broadly neuroscientific meta-analyses both approaches agree that the artistic domain does not exist. It becomes increasingly clear that the artistic label is self-referential and misleading from a scientific standpoint, and that art is about the “how”, not about the “what” or “who”, hinting at an abstract mathematical dimension of brain data processing. Since a framework interpreting causation in neuroscience is yet to be established, we are urged to ask: could the missing recognition of the humanist artefact as an empirically derived mathematical construct be a factor for the “data-rich, theory-poor” state of neuroscience?

Authors:
Aleksandra Zlatanova, National Academy of Art, Bulgaria

About the Presenter(s)
Aleksandra Zlatanova is a PhD researcher in Digital Arts, Department of Art History, National Academy of Art, Bulgaria. Investigating opportunities for the naturalization of creativity through a domainless, abstract mathematical approach.

Additional website of interest
https://orcid.org/0009-0002-9651-7380

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