Course Description: Art is definitional of what it is to be human. Our ability to appreciate or make art hinges on personal characteristics and cultural preferences. This course explores some important perceptual and cognitive foundations that give rise to aesthetic preferences. For example, are there any differences in: crafting compositions in left- versus right handers; how do children of various ages represent “reality”; or what does each cerebral hemisphere “see” and “feel”?
Course Outcomes
(a) Understand the process of assigning meaning to what we perceive (personal experiences, social context and historicity) in 2-D and 3-D art forms
(b) Apply perceptual (e.g., Gestalt) principles to the interpretation and descriptions of art
(c) Understand how brain-based individual differences contribute to art composition and its execution
(d) Understand how psychological science, and particularly perception and cognition, sheds light into the processes of creating and/or experiencing art, and then apply this understanding to a critique and evaluation of a specific work of art (to be assigned)
- Teacher: George Conesa