Abstract art contains a hidden mathematical structure, which manifests itself in the way voids, loops and textures unfold throughout an image.
Already Wozownia Art Galleryin Poland, visitors were in front of two abstract exhibitions. One was created by Polish artist Lidia Kot.
The other was created by a custom imaging neural networkwithout much of the order that normally guides its production. The researchers ensured that it matched the artist’s works in general visual properties, such as brightness and color difference.
In new, published last week in PLOSresearchers created two matching sets of abstract images, one by Kot and another created by algorithms. The one created through algorithms had titles, exhibition framing and a curatorial text generated by AI and reviewed by an artist.
Both sets were printed in the same size, using the same paper and technology, and displayed in the same gallery space.
According to , participants used eye tracking glasses while looking at the art exhibit or the AI exhibit, which the researchers used to track their gaze. They also assessed their aesthetic experience, including emotional intensity, perceived elements, understanding of the artist’s intention, and fluidity.
Another series of experiments were carried out in the laboratory, where the same images were shown during a fixed interval. The scientists monitored brain activityanalyzing brain connectivity patterns while people looked at works of art.
The participants then assigned them aesthetic classifications across several parameters, reporting a clearer perception of visual elements, a stronger emotional intensity, a greater understanding of the artist’s intention, a clearer context and a stronger sense of fluidity.
In the laboratory, where images appeared one by one on a screen for a fixed time, works created by artists produced a stronger response than artificially created images.
They spent more time looking at the fake images than the real works of art, and their visual exposure was longer during the first visit. Their eyes also moved less while looking at the faked images.
The researchers also analyzed a mathematical relationship called “Alexander duality“.In this context, it means that a flat image, the dark shapes and the light spaces around it are interconnected.
Real paintings do not behave like ideal mathematical objects, especially since their shapes meet the edges of the canvas. They are not infinite mathematical objects, and interactions with the frame create the “violations of Alexander duality“.
Images generated without human compositional intention revealed a different pattern of duality violation compared to abstract works created by artists.
Based on this information, researchers analyzed works by artists including Wassily Kandinsky, Mark Rothko e Jackson Pollockand found that many of them appear to exhibit a specific rate of violation of this duality.
The authors describe this as something similar to a “golden rule” of abstract composition. This is not a literal formula that artists follow, but a structural balance that they can arrive at through trained perception, practice, and intuition.
Finally, although not all abstract art can be described using an equation, the present study reflects that this type of art may contain a structure below the surface.
