FINAL Exam May 11 2015 8 00 PM 11 00 PM Location Scott Hall 123 Lecture Notes Book Notes Exam Qs Required Book The Structure of Painting by Michael Leyton Chapter 1 Shape As Memory Storage Introduction 1 How to Read the composition of a painting 2 How the composition relates to the emotional expression The composition inspires emotions in the viewer 3 What is the survival function of art Main goal Train our eyes train you 3 Way Correspondence Composition Emotions Survival people worship art because it brings out emotion Compostion The composition is an organization created by shapes The shape structure produces a tension The tension gives the emotion stored in the artwork We will go deeply into how the artist achieves this How does the shape store the emotional tension The shapes gives us dynamic information i e information about movement The word emotion means E outward Motion movement Shapes show movement which shows emotion So the shapes in the painting give us information about the E MOTIONS OUTWARD MOVEMENTS of the artist So the shapes have acted as a STORE for those movements Shapes store the emotions and viewers grasp them So to understand how a painting works we have to understand how the viewer can RECOVER from the shapes The E MOTION of the artists The shapes are acting as a memory store for those E MOTIONS shape is equivalent to memory storage Leyton s book has developed New foundations to geometry In which the fundamental claim is SHAPE is equivalent to MEMORY STORAGE This goes against the foundations of geometry that have existed from Euclid to modern mathematics In his new foundations Leyton has argued ART WORKS ARE MAXIMAL MEMORY STORES This is why art works are so highly valued 1 2 New Foundations to Geometry Euclid and Einstein s conventional foundations do not explain art To understand art we need to begin by comparing two opposing foundations Einstein s theory of relativity is simply a restatement of the concept of congruence that is basic to Euclid Example of congruence Two Triangles To test if they are congruent you translate and rotate the upper one to try to make it coincident with the lower one If exact coincidence is possible you say that they are congruent This allows you to regard the triangles as essentially the same object Has Basis of Geometry A geometric object is an invariant an unchanged property under some chosen transformations Consider the upper triangle It has a number of properties 1 Three sides 2 Points upward 3 Two equal angles Properties 1 and 3 remain invariant unchanged i e the lower triangle also has three sides and has two equal angles Leyton s argument Because properties 1 and 3 are unchanged invariant under the movement it is impossible to infer from them that the movement has taken place Property 2 is not invariant i e the triangle no longer points upwards Klein said that the geometric properties are those that remain invariant i e properties 1 and 3 Leyton s argument Only the non invariant property the direction of pointing allows us to recover the movement Invariants are those properties that are memoryless i e they yield no information about the past Einstein s fundamental principle says this The objects of physics are those properties that remain invariant under changes of reference frame Thus the name theory of relativity is the completely wrong name for Einstein s theory It is in fact the theory of anti relativity It says that one must reject from physics any property that is relative to an observer s reference frame Leyton Argues Because Einstein s theory says that the only valid properties of physics are those that do not change in going from one reference frame to another he is actually implying that physics is the study of those properties from which you cannot recover the fact that there has been a change of reference frame i e they are memoryless to the change of frame Klein s theory that geometry is the study of invariants view really originates with Euclid s notion of congruence The invariants are those properties that allow congruence The basis of modern physics can be traced back to Euclid s concern with congruence We can therefore say that the entire history of geometry from Euclid to modern physics has been founded on the notion of memorylessness Geometric object is a memory store for action Leyton argues that shape is equivalent to the history that it has undergone Let us therefore contrast the view of geometric objects in the two opposing foundations for geometry STANDARD FOUNDATIONS FOR GEOMETRY Euclid Klein Einstein A geometric object is an invariant i e memoryless NEW FOUNDATIONS FOR GEOMETRY Leyton A geometric object is a memory store Furthermore from this fundamental link between shape and memory storage Leyton argues the following The retrieval of memory from shape is the real meaning of aesthetics As a result of this the new foundations establish the following 3 way equivalence Geometry Memory Aesthetics The laws of artistic composition are the laws of memory storage Most powerful memory store that human beings possess are artworks 1 3 The World as History We will define Memory Information about the past Consequently define Memory Store Any object that yields information about the past Leyton argues the entire world around us is memory storage i e information about the past And we extract this information from the objects we see Leyton also argues Many sources of memory Examples 1 Scars A scar on a person s face is in fact a memory store acts as memory store b c it gives us info on the past a It gives us information about the past b It tells us that in the past the surface of the skin was cut c Therefore process history is stored in a scar 2 Dents A dent in a car is also a memory store i e it gives us information the past a It tells us that in the past the door underwent an impact from another object b Therefore process history is stored in a dent 3 Growths Any growth is a memory store i e it yields information about the past a For example the shape of a person s face gives us information about the history of growth that produced it b E g the nose and cheekbones grew outward the wrinkles folded in etc c The shape of a tree gives us very accurate information about how it grew d Both a face and a tree inform us of the past history Each is therefore an example of a memory store 4 Scratches A scratch on a piece of furniture is information about the past a It informs us that in the past the surface had
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