The team of XSCAPE PROJECT He has a secret ambition: being able to predict what art style a person is looking at just by analyzing the movement of his eyes. Although it is not its final objective, it is what they have achieved indirectly in the last experiment they have done with the Greek ceramics of the exhibition Between chaos and cosmosof the National Archaeological Museum (MAN).
Through technology of Eye monitorings (Eye-Tracking) mounted on glasses, scientists have followed the ocular movement of some volunteers and have been able to capture the difference that exists when observing different Greek ceramic styles of the exhibition.
What they have seen is that the most complex pieces give rise to less predictable ocular movements, more diverse and with greater cognitive charges for the subjects, which demonstrates, in their opinion, that there are fundamental cognitive strategies that allow us to interact adaptively with the environment.
A story written in the eyes
This test is part of a broader project encompassed under the concept of MINDS MATERIAL (Material minds), approved and funded by the European Research Council (ERC), with which the archaeologist Felipe Criado and the neuroscientist Luis Martínez Otero They try to understand the evolution of cultural artifacts through neuroscience.
His proposal is as novel as stimulating: if we study the material forms left by the cultures of the past with tools of modern cognitive sciences we can understand their way of looking at the world and how it evolved until reaching us. Moreover, they argue, there is “a reciprocal relationship between our mind and the world”, in the sense that they influence each other.
In a previous workThe scientists analyzed the ocular scanning trajectories in response to prehistoric ceramics, from the Neolithic to the Iron Age (between 6000-2000 BC, and discovered that each ceramic style caused a particular pattern of visual exploration. The selection of pieces of this exhibition in the MAN represents the evolution of an artistic style over a much shorter period of time that allowed the research team to test its hypothesis in a much lower period and with a less convulsed society.
“We have long wanted to apply the same techniques on a delimited, concrete artistic style, such as Greek ceramics, which occupies less than 400 years in a society that has its political and social changes, but not as great as those of the Neolithic eldiario.es. According to the authors, the results confirm what they had already seen in the Neolithic, that the physical complexity of the ceramic pieces correlates with the complexity of the look and the cognitive processing involved.
Perceptual patterns
“The result confirms the viability and likelihood of our conjecture: that not only the different styles are seen in different ways, but there are perceptual patterns that accompany and characterize each of their own style,” says Criado. At the same time, having done the experiment in a museum confirms that the perceptual behavior of observer people is similar to the one they observed when the objects presented on a screen, in laboratory conditions.
“We can see that with the change of styles the complexity of the gaze changes,” says Martínez Otero. “This gives us clues of why styles evolve as evolve, why they collapse and are replaced by others and always begin in a similar way: from the simple to complexity to return to simplicity again.”
Not only are different styles in different ways, but there are perceptual patterns that accompany and characterize each style
Felipe Criado Boado
– XSCAPE project collide and Director of the Incipit-CSIC
In other words, the authors of the experiment have been able to measure for the first time quantitatively how and why the different styles evolve through different phases until they exhaust themselves and be replaced by new ones. “It is not only about seeing if the ceramics of the first moment have perceptual observation keys different from the most advanced moments of that style,” says Criado. “The idea is to see if we are able to explain one of the great mysteries of art history, which is that of style and stylistic change.”
We can see that with the change of styles the complexity of the gaze changes. This gives us clues of why styles evolve as evolve, why they collapse and are replaced by others
Luis Martínez Otero
– Neuroscientific and collide of the XSCAPE Project
This is a well -known guideline for classic historians in art history, underlines raised. All styles go through a formation stage and reach a moment of maturity (classic), which becomes more complex (baroque) until it reaches extreme recharge (Rococó) and returns to simplification (neoclassical). “Let’s say people get bored of overload and that moment of simplification usually is the final moment that opens the door to a total style change, to a substitution,” says the expert. “Why? We are able to confirm this sequence of phases in style through the perceptual changes it causes, and what we have detected as a possible marker is the Entropy”
“We see that entropy is a very interesting measure to study cognitive load, allows us to understand regularities in perception and know what is the variable that we must measure when leaving the laboratory,” says Martínez Otero. “For the broader context of our project, which is still underway, that the entropy of the environment is related to the complexity of the cognitive response is very useful, because it acts as a regulatory element of attention and visual exploration. That is, it serves as proxy To know what a person is doing when navigating the world, ”he concludes.
#gaze #lot #art #movement #eyes #betrays #style #contemplating
