Measuring the impact of subjective and transient aesthetics in the generation and appreciation of 3D virtual artwork

Abstract

The topic of aesthetics is a vast puzzle with many contributing parts. It often seems incomprehensible; however, through decomposition into smaller problems, a solution may be within reach. It impacts almost every aspect of life, including romantic and platonic relationships, architecture, decoration, writing, theatre, mathematical proofs, algorithms, product design and artwork. This thesis aims to partially deconstruct the individual aesthetic judgement of sculptures into its component parts through the steps of understanding these parts at both individual and collective levels, introducing formalised measures which calculate how well a specific sculpture exhibits a particular aesthetic feature and then using these measures to provide a novel, extendable and flexible model of individual aesthetic judgement. This project represents a step forward in the computational research of aesthetics and aesthetic judgement through original Virtual Reality Environments and an art generation process capable of creating interesting 2D and 3D artwork. Experiments reveal some key aspects that contribute to human aesthetic judgement, both positively and negatively. The experiments also resulted in clear rules to follow for the generation of sculptures according to personal preference. New aspects are formalised, calculating how connected, calm, or friendly a sculpture appears; all three are found to be closely aligned with the human understanding of the term. Finally, a theoretical model of individual aesthetic preference is presented. The model is based on three categories of aesthetic aspects: constant, subjective, and transient; these allow the generation of sculptures which are unique to an individual. Importantly, the models can be applied to replicating a specified style of artwork, meaning that new items can be generated that exhibit close relationships to the original style whilst still being novel. Constituting a multi-pronged approach, the contributions presented in the thesis move us closer to decoding the puzzle of aesthetic appreciation.