Aesthetic evaluation

1. Aesthetic evaluation Dr Tan Wee Hoe

2. Outline • What is evaluation? What is assessment? • Concepts associated to evaluation • Aesthetic assessment • How to evaluate creativity?

3. What is evaluation? What is assessment? • Evaluation: the making of a judgement about the amount, number, or value of something; assessment. Dimension Paradigm Principles Measurement

4. What is principle? • A fundamental truth or proposition that serves as the foundation for a system of belief or behaviour or for a chain of reasoning. • A general scientific theorem or law that has numerous special applications across a wide field.

5. What is paradigm? • Paradigm: a set of interrelated ideas for making sense of one or more aspects of reality. [Greek ‘paradeigma’ = pattern] • Paradigm as knowledge filters: trap us into a particular way of looking at things and close our minds to other possibilities. • Unawareness of assumptions made, as the assumptions are invisible to us and we look straight through them to make sense of the world.

6. Aesthetic assessment Bringing educational assessment methods into aesthetic evaluation: • Criterion-referenced assessment • Norm-referenced assessment • Ipsative assessment

7. Criterion-referenced assessment • Criterion (plural criteria): a principle or standard by which something may be judged or decided. • Criterion-referenced assessment: • The assessment that examines whether or not one performed well or poorly on a given task. • E.g. by the end of the lesson, students should be able to define “criterion” in the context of design aesthetics using less than ten words.

8. Norm-referenced assessment • The assessment that compares one to his, her or its peers. • E.g. Graduate Record Examination (GRE), Scholastic Aptitude (SAT)

9. Ipsative assessment • An individual assessment that is compared to himself, herself or itself through time. • One is compared to his / her / its previous performance.

10. Reflexion time (10 minutes) • How would you evaluate/assess beauty? • Write down your reflexion

11. Tony Buzan’s answer Wee Hoe : How to measure creativity? Tony : There are four ways:- • Novelty (Being new, original, or unusual) • Quantity (The amount of ideas created) • Practicality (The feasibility of things/ideas) • Aesthetics (The beauty of the creation/ideas)

12. How evaluation could be conducted? • Subjectivism • Objectivism • Relativism • Emotivism

13. Subjectivism • The doctrine that knowledge is merely subjective and that there is no external or objective truth.

14. The most handsome man in the world! The most handsome man in the eyes of my wife, Tan Wee Hoe (2009) at EileanDonan Castle, Scotland.

15. Objectivism • The belief that certain things , especially moral truths, exist independently of human knowledge or perception of them. • The tendency to emphasize what is external to or independent of the mind.

16. Objective or Cosmetic? Carina Lau Sun Ni (Hua Pi Jie)

17. Relativism • The doctrine that knowledge, truth, and morality exist in relation to culture, society, or historical context, and are not absolute. (OED) • Points of view have no absolute truth or validity, having only relative, subjective value according to differences in perception and consideration. • Truth is always relative to some particular frame of reference, e.g. a language or a culture.

18. Aesthetic Relativism • The judgment of beauty is relative to individuals, cultures, time periods and contexts. • There are no universal criteria of beauty. • How about Miss Universe? Mister Universe? • Even if so, how about universal criteria of ugly?

19. Aesthetic Relativism Leila Lopes (Angola), Miss Universe 2011

20. Recognised Beauties (contemporary) Chloe Chen Tien Nee Miss Malaysia 2011 AnanthanThanuja Miss Malaysia 2009 Nadia Heng Min Dern Miss Malaysia 2010

21. Recognised handsome men (contemporary) Huang Xiao Min Brad Pitt Rain

22. Body building

23. Ugly? Or Ugly or funny? Baby Bean Extreme bodybuilding Ugly Betty

24. Aesthetic relativism (Ancient) Beauty in Dynasty Tang Venus of Willendorf

25. The Three-inch Golden Lotus

26. Aesthetic relativism (Contemporary) The Padaung minority in Burma A lady in Ethiopia

27. The wisdom of Lao Tzu • 天下皆知美之为美，斯恶矣。When everybody sees beauty as beautiful, ugly emerges through the comparison. Thus, ignoring beauty, there would be no ugly, which makes the real beauty exists; as this is the only condition where there is no ugly. • 相反者其实相依。 Two matters which are contradicting to each other are indeed dependent to each other.

28. Emotivism • An ethical theory which regards ethical and value judgements as expressions of feeling or attitude and prescriptions of action, rather than assertions or reports of anything. (OED) • Moral judgments do not function as statements of fact but rather as expressions of the speaker’s or writer’s feelings. (EB)

29. Emotivism • According to the emotivist, when we say “You acted wrongly in stealing that money,” we are not expressing any fact beyond that stated by “You stole that money.” • It is, however, as if we had stated this fact with a special tone of abhorrence, for in saying that something is wrong, we are expressing our feelings of disapproval toward it.

30. But, what is emotion? • From epistemological perspective, the emotions are treated as one of the four ways of knowing, together with language, reason and perception. • Six primary emotions that are common to all cultures: • Happiness • Sadness • Fear • Anger • Surprise • Disgust Children who are born blind and deaf also show these emotions – which suggests that they are inborn rather than learnt.

31. James-Lange Theory • the emotions are essentially physical in nature, and bodily changes come before, and cause, emotional changes. • Let’s do a quick thought experiment! • Imagine you are about to sit an exam and you are feeling very nervous. Your mouth is dry, you have a sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach, the palms of your hands are sweaty, and you want to go to the washroom. • Now remove each of these physical symptoms one by one. What is left of your exam nerves?

32. James-Lange Theory • When all the physical symptoms of nervousness were removed, the nervousness disappeared itself. • In conclusion, if you remove the physical symptoms the corresponding emotion disappears. • If you mimic the appropriate physical symptoms you can generate the corresponding emotion. • E.g. if you smile, you will feel happy; if you scowl you will feel angry. • Empathy: When talking to someone who is feeling depressed, you unconsciously mimic some of the physical expressions of his mood.

33. Criticism to James-Lange theory • It ignores the fact that emotions have both a mental and a physical aspect—our beliefs can affect the emotion. • The role of beliefs differs human emotions from the emotions of other animals. • What is your response to the emotion being conveyed in The Scream? • What if the human figure was replaced by a dog in the same pose? Edvard Munch’s The Scream

34. Feel ugly? Or not? Hunchback of Notre Dame

35. Social emotions • Ambition, contempt, embarrassment, envy, gratitude, guilt, indignation, jealousy, pride, shame and sympathy. • Due to our intelligence and imagination, we can anticipate and picture more distant dangers. • E.g. final exams, Armageddon • In theory, a change in our beliefs can lead to a change in the corresponding emotion. • 杯弓蛇影（ The visual of snake in a cup)

36. Passion – the emotional energy • Emotions provide us with the energy to engage in intellectual and creative activity. • Linking a subject versus being good at it, revisiting the affective domain in surface—deep learning matrix Tan, Johnston-Wilder & Neill, 2011

37. Reflexion time (10 minutes) • How would you evaluate aesthetics? • Write down your reflexion