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Is Beauty in the Age of the Beholder?

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Artificial Intelligence in Music, Sound, Art and Design (EvoMUSART 2023)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 13988))

Abstract

Symmetry is a universal concept, its unique importance has made it a topic of research across many different fields. It is often considered as a constant where higher levels of symmetry are preferred in the judgement of faces and even the initial state of the universe is thought to have been in pure symmetry. The same is true in the judgement of auto-generated art, with symmetry often used alongside complexity to generate aesthetically pleasing images; however, these are two of many different aspects contributing to aesthetic judgement, each one of these aspects is also influenced by other aspects, for example, art expertise. These intricacies cause multiple problems such as making it difficult to describe aesthetic preferences and to auto-generate artwork using a high number of these aspects. In this paper, a gamified approach is presented which is used to elicit the preferences of symmetry levels for individuals and further understand how symmetry can be utilised within the context of automatically generating artwork. The gamified approach is implemented within an experiment with participants aged between 13 and 60, providing evidence that symmetry should be kept consistent within an evolutionary art context.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, Aston University, Birmingham, UK

    Edward Easton, Ulysses Bernardet & Anikó Ekárt

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  1. Edward Easton
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  2. Ulysses Bernardet
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  3. Anikó Ekárt
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Edward Easton .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK

    Colin Johnson

  2. University of A Coruña, A Coruña, Spain

    Nereida Rodríguez-Fernández

  3. University of Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal

    Sérgio M. Rebelo

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Easton, E., Bernardet, U., Ekárt, A. (2023). Is Beauty in the Age of the Beholder?. In: Johnson, C., Rodríguez-Fernández, N., Rebelo, S.M. (eds) Artificial Intelligence in Music, Sound, Art and Design. EvoMUSART 2023. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 13988. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29956-8_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29956-8_6

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