Gustav Fechner is widely respected as a founding father of experimental psychology and psychophysics but fewer know of his interests and work in empirical aesthetics. In the later 1800s, toward the end of his career, Fechner performed experiments to empirically evaluate the beauty of rectangles, hypothesizing that the preferred shape would closely match that of the so-called 'golden rectangle'....

This report discusses the important role that aesthetics may play in software engineering. We begin with an exploration of the practical importance of elegance for both the designers and users of software systems, and argue that it promotes software that is technically superior and a pleasure to use. Second, because of the abstract and formal character of software we draw analogies with aesthet...

The article explores the relationships between aesthetics, ethics, and new media art by discussing the process, influences, and consequences of aesthetic judgements. The text proposes that the aesthetic judgements of artworks created in any medium, including new media, function as mechanisms for propagating certain ethical values.

Synchronized movement is a ubiquitous feature of dance and music performance. Much research into the evolutionary origins of these cultural practices has focused on why humans perform rather than watch or listen to dance and music. In this study, we show that movement synchrony among a group of performers predicts the aesthetic appreciation of live dance performances. We developed a choreograph...

Experiences of art involve exercise of ordinary cognitive and perceptual capacities but in unique ways. These two features of experiences of art imply the mutual importance of aesthetics and cognitive science. Cognitive science provides empirical and theoretical analysis of the relevant cognitive capacities. Aesthetics thus does well to incorporate cognitive scientific research. Aesthetics also...

What comes first: the expression or the emotion? If you smile do you become happy, or are you happy so you then smile? Since Charles Darwin first observed “that even the simulation of an emotion tends to arouse it in our mind,” a large body of evidence has supported the facial-feedback hypothesis, which suggests that the emotion follows the expression. Volunteers forced to smile by placing a pe...