Tuesday, April 1, 2008

My Art and Philosopy Expiriment

My hypothesis: If given an abstract work of art with a lot going on in it, we will get a wide range of differing interpretations due to everyone's individuality.

Counter hypothesis: Despite our "individuality," we all think similarly, and we will only get a few completely different interpretations.

Professor Johnson showed his second Art and Philosophy class the painting that can be found at this link http://www.dartmouth.edu/~matc/math5.pattern/Janson.p766.gif. I believe he asked them to say what they saw. Sadly, all of the responses were not interpretations, and I would like to do the experiment again.

Total # of responses: 14
Said that the work was "busy": 2
Said that it was "Chinese Art": 1
Purely commented on it's form and nothing else: 4
Said that it was "instruments of life": 1
Said there were faces in the work: 1
Said there were "undersea animals": 1
Said there was anger: 1
Made a circus related comment: 2

This last one, I do not know if I can take seriously, because no matter how hard I try, I do not see this, and feel that the remark may have been sarcastic:
"A boy in glasses riding a tricycle through a fiesta where there are balloons shaped as a lobster and an Incan Warrior': 1

2 comments:

David K. Braden-Johnson said...

Interesting. Maybe we can jointly devise a more rigorous experiment.

Nikki said...

Ok, I would like to do that!
Nikki