Framed as a multidimensional space for dialogue, ARTOEND captures the continuous dynamic between the human mind and the possibilities of art. The inaugural issue takes readers on a profound journey where scientific data shapes aesthetic practices, and internal experiences are examined deeply through the lens of neurology.

Dear Readers,

You are holding an experiment.

When we began assembling this first volume of ARTOEND, we set ourselves a deceptively simple goal: bringing neuroaesthetics into life. We wanted to explore neuroaesthetics not as a rigid laboratory discipline, sealed behind scanners and statistics, but as an embodied experience. It is what happens every time a body meets a space, a sound presses against the skin, or a memory rises unbidden at the smell of the sea.

The journey through these pages unfolds in three movements.

We begin Without—in the realm of the aesthetically possible, viewing the physical world as the fertile ground from which aesthetic experience arises. Here, we see heartbeats turned into light and architecture stilled into meditation. We explore a sensorium that shifts like a kaleidoscope, finding new ways to make interior worlds both visible and speakable.

We then turn Within—to the aestheticizing worldview, where the first-person mind reaches outward to make sense of its surroundings. In this space, we find art in the anatomy of language, encounter books that think, and are reminded that both code and philosophy are profound ways of perceiving.

Finally, we arrive at the Dialectic—the synthesis where the corporeal and the aesthetic intertwine to outline a true neuroaesthetics of living. This section culminates in the exploration of performance as a living laboratory, the boundaries of techno-corporeality, and a compelling case for an art history with an empirical spine.

If there is one conviction running through these pages, it is this: the aesthetic is neither a luxury nor a spectacle. It is a fundamental way of being in the world, one that can be studied, certainly, but more importantly, one that must be practiced, defended, and shared.

I warmly invite you to turn the page, to perceive, to expand, to embody, and to recognize that every piece of art you see, every immersive space you step into, and every memory your body holds is a part of beauty.

With immense gratitude and anticipation.

Welcome to ARTOEND Magazine! Issue 01: Dialectical Lives is out now! 👏

Read the acknowledgements: https://napatfoundation.org/archive/issue-01-dialectical-lives/acknowledgements
Read the editor's letter: https://napatfoundation.org/archive/issue-01-dialectical-lives/editor-s-letter
Access full magazine here: https://napatfoundation.org/

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Marie-Henri Beyle - better known by his pen name Stendhal - described his visit to Florence and Santa Croce in Rome, Naples et Florence (1817) as a deeply physiological experience prompted by an overwhelming aesthetic encounter: “Absorbed in the contemplation of sublime beauty ... I reached the point where one encounters celestial sensations ... Everything spoke so vividly to my soul. Ah, if I could only forget. I had palpitations of the heart, what in Berlin they call ‘nerves’. Life was drained from me. I walked with the fear of falling.”

What Stendhal described that January day has since lent its name to one of the more unusual conditions in the literature of psychosomatic medicine. Stendhal Syndrome - also known as Florence Syndrome or hyperkulturemia - refers to an acute physical and psychological response triggered by exposure to works of great beauty, typically concentrated in a single space such as a museum (Magherini, 1989). Its symptoms range from tachycardia and dizziness to dissociation, paranoia, and, in rarer cases, hallucinations. Dario Argento visualises the symptoms in the thriller movie The Stendhal Syndrome, in which the main character Anna becomes overwhelmed upon experiencing art.

It was not until the late 1970s that the phenomenon was systematically studied. Graziella Magherini, then chief of psychiatry at Florence’s Santa Maria Nuova Hospital, began noticing a consistent pattern: tourists admitted to her ward were not simply suffering from exhaustion or heat, but something their own accounts described as “a painful and numbing ecstasy”. Between 1977 and 1986, she recorded 106 such cases, all among foreign visitors to Florence (Magherini, 1989). She organised the cases into three clinical categories: predominantly psychotic presentations such as paranoia and perceptual disturbances (the majority), affective disturbances including episodes of euphoria or depression, and anxiety with physical symptoms expressed through panic and chest pain. She named the condition after Stendhal.

What is striking about these cases is not the occurrence itself but their specificity. Patients did not collapse from general tourist fatigue - they collapsed in front of particular objects. One of the patients, a man named Franz, developed intense tachycardia before Caravaggio’s Adolescent Bacchus. A visitor named Lilibet, standing before Donatello’s David in the Bargello, felt the sculpture looking back at her - felt it begin to fall upon her - and believed she was losing her mind (Magherini, 1989). And while it could be argued that these are extreme outliers, they open up a valuable dialogue about the way we physically experience art and aesthetic encounters.

Despite Magherini’s decade of clinical work, Stendhal Syndrome has never been formally recognised by the DSM or the ICD, and skepticism has followed it throughout its history. Critics have proposed that the cases represent little more than travel exhaustion compounded by ambient heat, or the product of a romantic cultural expectation that Florence ought to overwhelm the visitor - a self-fulfilling psychological prophecy (Bamforth, 2010; Innocenti et al., 2014).

While these critiques have force, they struggle to account for the clinical consistency of Magherini’s case series, and they say nothing about what happens, physiologically, when a human being stands before an image of exceptional aesthetic and cultural power. That question has become, in recent decades, the domain of neuroscience.

Research in neuroaesthetics has established that viewing art is far from a passive act - it actively recruits the brain’s sensorimotor systems through a process known as embodied simulation, in which the brain responds to depicted bodies and forms as if they were physically present (Gallese, 2009). Vittorio Gallese’s work on mirror neurons suggests that when we look at a painted figure, we are, at a neural level, inhabiting it: internally rehearsing its posture, its implied motion, and its emotional state.

Studies on the coupling between bodily sensation and aesthetic response have found that heart rate can accelerate or shift in response to both music and visual stimuli, pointing to a deep connection between what we perceive in the world and our internal physical state (Azevedo & Tsakiris, 2017). More directly relevant to the Uffizi cases is research by Tawakol et al. (2017), published in The Lancet, which identified what the authors termed a “neural-hematopoietic axis” - a biological pathway linking activity in the amygdala (the brain’s threat and emotion centre) to cardiovascular events via downstream effects on bone marrow and arterial inflammation. Higher amygdala activation, they found, correlates with elevated cardiovascular risk. Separately, research on the amygdala’s response to imagery has shown that this structure is activated not only by threatening stimuli, but also by images of significance or beauty that violate prior expectations (Ewbank et al., 2009).

Drawing these findings together in the context of the museum experience, a clearer picture begins to emerge of what may have occurred in Magherini’s patients. A viewer with heightened aesthetic sensitivity, surrounded by a dense concentration of masterworks and engaged in embodied simulation of emotionally charged figures, may be sustaining elevated amygdala activation - with downstream cardiovascular effects that, in individuals with particular physiological vulnerabilities, could place real strain on the heart. This is, in effect, what we might call an “art attack”.

The broader phenomenon described by Stendhal Syndrome appears to recur across cultures and historical periods under different names. The so-called Paris and Jerusalem Syndromes document similarly acute physical and psychological responses triggered by aesthetic or spiritual encounters. Paris Syndrome, a term introduced in the 1980s by Japanese psychiatrist Hiroaki Ota, is characterised as a crisis of shattered cultural expectation: visitors whose image of Paris has been shaped by cinema and high fashion can experience a jarring collision with the ordinary reality of a modern city, leading to reported symptoms including hallucinations, depersonalisation, heart palpitations, dizziness, and rapid heart rate. Jerusalem Syndrome, by contrast, involves an intense religious identification or delusion triggered by the city’s spiritual associations, in some cases producing psychotic episodes such as the belief that one is a reincarnation of a biblical figure.

It would be easy to read Stendhal Syndrome as evidence of art’s danger, or as a curiosity confined to unusually sensitive individuals. But the accumulating body of evidence surrounding this and related phenomena has real value when considering the depth of the human aesthetic response - the fact that beauty is something the body registers as urgent, as real, and as physiologically significant.

Art historians have long observed that the boundary between aesthetic experience and physical response is a permeable one. Bernard Berenson described the “aesthetic moment” as a state in which the observer and the artwork dissolve into one another - time abolished, selfhood suspended (Berenson, 1948). Proust reportedly experienced dizziness and near-loss of consciousness before Vermeer’s View of Delft. Dostoyevsky was reportedly left motionless before Holbein’s Dead Christ. These are not the reactions of fragile people to overwhelming stimuli. They are extreme expressions of something universal: the capacity of art to break through the constraints of its medium and produce responses that are entirely, undeniably physical.

Stendhal himself, recovering on the steps of Santa Croce, ultimately concluded that the episode had been worth it. He wrote two days later that the memory of what he had felt gave him a kind of pride - that it was better to have a sensibility capable of such response than any social distinction (Stendhal, 1817). The syndrome, in his own reckoning, was not an illness, but rather, a life-affirming experience.

Aesthetic experience activates the brain’s reward circuitry, modulates the body’s internal state, and engages the amygdala in ways that blur the line between merely seeing and genuinely feeling. That this can occasionally go further than expected - that the connection between art and body sometimes carries more weight than we anticipate - is not a warning against engaging with art. It is a reason to take seriously the place that art occupies in our understanding of human biology and behaviour.

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Azevedo, R. T., & Tsakiris, M. (2017). Art reception as an interoceptive embodied predictive experience. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 40, 17–18.

Bamforth, I. (2010). Stendhal’s syndrome. British Journal of General Practice, 60(581), 945–946.

Barnes, J. (2008). Nothing to be frightened of. Random House Canada.

Berenson, B. (1948). Aesthetics and history in the visual arts. Pantheon.

Ewbank, M. P., Lawrence, A. D., Passamonti, L., Keane, J., Peers, P. V., & Calder, A. J. (2009). The amygdala response to images with impact. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 4(2), 127–133.

Gallese, V. (2009). Mirror neurons, embodied simulation, and the neural basis of social identification. Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 19(5), 519–536.

Innocenti, A., D’Ambrogio, T., & Castellini, G. (2014). The Stendhal Syndrome between psychoanalysis and neuroscience. Rivista di Psichiatria, 49(2), 61–66.

Magherini, G. (1989). La sindrome di Stendhal. GEP spa.

Takaes de Oliveira, I. (2020). One touch of Venus: Notes on a cardiac arrest at the Uffizi. Figura: Studies on the Classical Tradition, 8(1), 115–149.

Tawakol, A., Ishai, A., Takx, R. A. P., Figueroa, A. L., Ali, A., Kaiser, Y., … Pitman, R. K. (2017). Relation between resting amygdalar activity and cardiovascular events: A longitudinal and cohort study. The Lancet, 389, 834–845.

Stendhal [Marie-Henri Beyle]. (1854). Rome, Naples et Florence. Michel Levy Ed. (Original work published 1817)

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Aesthetic experience is often cultivated through the imagination, prompted by specific artistic cues. By immersing ourselves in these representations, we engage in a unique mode of perception. Through this process, stimuli typically categorized as painful, ugly, or terrifying are sufficiently distanced from our immediate reality. Because we do not directly interact with or attempt to modify these negative experiences, they are transfigured into a form of intellectual delight (Burke 1756/2007). Similarly, Kant argued that when confronting the dynamical sublime, individuals experience a distinctive pleasure derived from the realization of their own practical reason and mental capacities, which ultimately transcend physical vulnerabilities (Kant 1787/1987, as cited in Livingston, 2024). This suspension of biological impulses toward evasion or intervention liberates the viewer to safely simulate perilous circumstances.

We unnecessarily must enjoy misery or ugliness itself. Butler in 2004 proposed that we might instead acknowledge happiness through ordering the life event structurally. Indeed, real life is messy and chaotic, but art imposes a satisfying structure on that mess. Whether it’s a Gene Kelly dance number, a Beethoven symphony, or even a detective novel, we feel pleasure when things fit together and make sense. So it is convinced that the artistic form, rhythm, and overarching structure of art transfigure fundamental facts of human suffering that would otherwise paralyze us. This structure produces a salutary illusion, allowing us to take aesthetic pleasure in what is horrifying.

Lately, the literary critic A.D. Nuttall reinforces this perspective, observing that the tragic genre provides gratification by presenting the most harrowing human experiences as “ennobled by form” and “eloquent of control.” Through the artist’s precise technical execution, the inherent turbulence of sorrow and repulsion is effectively restrained, yielding a sense of compensatory satisfaction. Consequently, the intellect finds pleasure in the realization that a potentially overwhelming encounter has been subdued and meticulously restructured into a logical, discernible order. The worst imaginable things, when shaped into art, feel like they make sense, and that sense of control and understanding is genuinely pleasurable, rather than seeing it from a safe context.

Furthermore, our fascination with the grotesque and the tragic is anchored in the profound gratification derived from psychological and physiological stimulation. Aristotle introduced the classic notion of catharsis, suggesting that tragic performance intentionally evokes sentiments of pity and dread to facilitate a restorative discharge of emotional strain.

Contemporary psychological theory further illuminates this through a mental orientation wherein the individual finds delight in the very sequence of arousal and excitement, regardless of the eventual conclusion. When observing a visceral horror or a brutal thriller, the mind revels in the acute accumulation of suspenseful energy, even when the underlying imagery is inherently repulsive. Under specific conditions, human biology permits ostensibly aversive sensations to transition into a state of enjoyment, effectively reorienting our survival mechanisms toward recreational ends (Chatterjee, 2013, chapter 2)

From a cognitive standpoint, the appreciation of tragedy is tied to the intellect’s persistent impulse to decipher human motives and social dynamics. We can understand this phenomenon through the framework of affective appraisal. When we consume tragedy, our brains simultaneously activate the systems responsible for negative emotional response and those responsible for reward-seeking behavior. Essentially, the aesthetic form acts as a cognitive buffer, allowing the intellect to process high-intensity stimuli without triggering the neurobiological feedback loop of actual danger.

By engaging with the unappealing or the tragic through the lens of art, we broaden our empathetic capacities and examine our emotional limits within a secure environment, satisfying a fundamental evolutionary drive to probe the human experience without the burden of actual peril.

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Burke, E. (2007). A philosophical enquiry into the origin of our ideas of the sublime and beautiful (A. Phillips, Ed.). Oxford University Press. (Original work published 1757)

Butler, C. (2004). Pleasure and the arts: Enjoying literature, painting, and music. Oxford University Press.

Chatterjee, A. (2014). The aesthetic brain: How we evolved to desire beauty and enjoy art (Chapter 12, pp. 74–83). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199811809.003.0012

Kant, I. (1987). Critique of pure reason (W. S. Pluhar, Trans.). Hackett Publishing. (Original work published 1787)

Livingston, P. (2024). History of the ontology of art. In E. N. Zalta & U. Nodelman (Eds.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2024 ed.). Stanford University.
https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2024/entries/art-ontology-history/

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Two centuries of sedentary modernity later, traditional cardiac rehabilitation programmes struggle to retain patients at rates above 30%. The prescription exists, and evidence remains unambiguous. What has been lost is precisely what the waltz once provided as a matter of cultural course: a structured, aesthetically compelling, socially embedded reason to keep the heart moving.

A converging body of research suggests that structured dance interventions produce cardiovascular outcomes equivalent to conventional exercise training in chronic heart failure (CHF) populations, while outperforming those interventions on the dimension that arguably determines all others: the willingness to continue engaging with it.

Two centuries later, in a hospital gymnasium in Ancona, Italy, patients with structurally damaged hearts were prescribed to waltz: take a partner’s hand, find a tempo, and move. The foundational study remains Belardinelli et al. (2008), who randomized 130 stable CHF patients across supervised aerobic training, a waltz protocol, and sedentary control. The dance intervention - alternating slow and fast waltz over 21 minutes, three times weekly for eight weeks - produced improvements in peak VO₂, anaerobic threshold, and VE/VCO₂ slope statistically indistinguishable from conventional aerobic training. Endothelium-dependent relaxation improved equivalently in both active groups. The brachial artery, it turns out, does not distinguish between a waltz and a cycling ergometer. What it responds to is sustained hemodynamic demand - and dance delivers this reliably.

This finding was subsequently validated at the population level. A systematic review and meta-analysis by Gomes Neto et al. (2014) identified no significant difference in peak VO₂ or health-related quality of life between dance therapy and exercise training in CHF patients, while both active interventions produced meaningful gains over sedentary controls. Kaltsatou et al. (2014), examining 51 male CHF patients randomized to Greek traditional dance or formal aerobic and resistance training across eight months, replicated these functional and cardiovascular outcomes - and found that the dance cohort demonstrated significantly greater improvements in intrinsic motivation, including enjoyment, perceived competence, and sense of purposeful effort. The physiological equivalence held. The psychological divergence was substantial.

The adherence data tells the most clinically consequential story. Belardinelli et al. (2008) recorded protocol completion of 91% in the dance group versus 77% in exercise training - a statistically significant gap (p < 0.02) with implications that extend well beyond any single trial. As a JACC expert panel review noted, cardiac rehabilitation participation globally runs between 10% and 30%, and even in well-resourced trials with home equipment provision, long-term adherence remains chronically poor (Bozkurt et al., 2021). In this context, an intervention that patients demonstrably complete is not merely equivalent medicine - it is medicine that actually reaches the patient.

The mechanism underlying this adherence advantage is not incidental to dance’s artistic character but constituted by it. Dance prescribes how bodies move in relation to each other, in time with music, under the implicit social contract of partnership. Its alternating tempos - the very structural feature that mirrors interval training and accounts for its cardiovascular stimulus - are experienced not as a prescribed exercise dose but as an aesthetic form. Kokubo et al. (2018), validating a low-impact dance programme for cardiac rehabilitation in elderly Japanese patients, confirmed that heart rate responses during dance sequences fell within the recommended 40–85% heart rate reserve training range, while participants reported the intervention as engaging rather than effortful. The art form engineered the compliance that the clinical protocol alone could not.

Daisy Fancourt’s framework in Arts in Health (2017) provides the theoretical scaffolding: artistic engagement recruits reward, social bonding, and embodied cognition systems that structured exercise leaves largely dormant - generating intrinsic motivation that sustains participation beyond any supervised programme. Nobody returned to the ballroom because a physician recommended sustained moderate-intensity cardiovascular engagement three times weekly. They returned because the music was playing, someone was waiting, and while they kept dancing, the heart kept beating.

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Belardinelli, R., Lacalaprice, F., Ventrella, C., Volpe, L., & Faccenda, E. (2008). Waltz dancing in patients with chronic heart failure. Circulation: Heart Failure, 1(2), 107–114.

Bozkurt, B., Fonarow, G. C., Goldberg, L. R., Guglin, M., Josephson, R. A., Forman, D. E., & O’Connor, C. M. (2021). Cardiac rehabilitation for patients with heart failure: JACC expert panel. Journal of the American College of Cardiology, 77(11), 1454–1469.

Fancourt, D. (2017). Arts in health: Designing and researching interventions. Oxford University Press.

Gomes Neto, M., Menezes, M. A., & Carvalho, V. O. (2014). Dance therapy in patients with chronic heart failure: A systematic review and a meta-analysis. Clinical Rehabilitation, 28(12), 1172–1179.

Kaltsatou, A., Kouidi, E., Anifanti, M., Douka, S., & Deligiannis, A. (2014). Functional and psychosocial effects of either a traditional dancing or a formal exercising training program in patients with chronic heart failure. Clinical Rehabilitation, 28(2), 128–138.

Kokubo, T., Sato, A., Higashida, K., & Ishikawa, Y. (2018). Validity of the low-impact dance for exercise-based cardiac rehabilitation program. Journal of Cardiology, 72(2), 130–135.

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Surveying the anti-coloniality of Caribbean Surrealists, like the Cesaires and Rene Menil, and examining the contemporary surrealist practice which is in close proximity to social contexts, it becomes evident that artmaking does amount to worldmaking, rather than world-depicting (Wong, 2025). In the journal Tropique, surrealist form was employed as a rhetorical camouflage which served as tactic against censorship of the Vichy regime. The political pragmatics and teleology of art, in this case, becomes an act of negotiating and as political resistance, rather than a reflection of colonial oppression (Wong, 2025).

In his mixed media series Trails of Absence, contemporary Burmese artist Sai reproduced photographs on easily-transportable fabric, with main human subjects in the works anonymized using textile sourced from the clothing of political prisoners in Myanmar (Wong, 2025). The politics which is intertwined to the artworks, included in the exigency of creation, the choice of medium, and the sociological reverberations consequent to the exhibition, amount to the mixed media being a political participation, as co-constitutive rather than representational of the material and social texture pertinent to the turmoil now rampant in Myanmar (Wong, 2025).

Other than the surrealist praxes, the act of artmaking as worldmaking is present in many other domains of the art. Jean Francois Millet’s The Gleaners, as it portrays the lowest ranks of society with sympathy and on a size of painting usually reserved for mythological and biblical figures, is not merely reflecting the rural life and its pertinences, but rather is an attempt to disrupt the elitist-classist discourse which infested art reception at the time, destabilizing the status quo ante discursive power of the upper class.

Wojciech Weiss and his Manifesto consolidated the ideological hegemony of socialism and acted as a conduit to maintain the then prominent sociopolitical structures whose constituents involve socialist realist art. And, conversely, postmodernism which rejects metanarratives, arrives as resistance to epistemological domination and subjugation, rendering the power of institutions more fragmented for political worldmaking. Propositionally speaking, artwork A either is itself as a sustenance of or a resistance against the political reality B which is pertinent to its creation, exhibition and censorship, rather than merely visualized political reality B.

Then, the intimacies between the aesthetic and the political manifested in multitudinous spatiotemporality of artmaking, rendering it worldmaking rather than merely world-depiciting. It thus makes exigent a re-contemplation on what is to be considered political and what the political entails (Wong, 2025). On a macroscopic scale, it instantiates the aesthetic as indispensable to understanding politics, demonstrating convergence rather than connected divergence between the arts and order, and as a form of negotiating power through its facticity-bound materialization rather than through an explicit, well-intended political statement.

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Wong, Sara. “Towards an Anti-Colonial Aesthetic Politics: Surrealist Praxis and Epistemic Refusal.” Review of International Studies, 2025, pp. 1-22, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0260210525100971.

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[VN]: Khái quát hoá cái phi biểu đạt

Dẫn nhập: Phức hợp của nhiếp ảnh

0:00-7:01: Diệp, khách mời, dẫn nhập vào tập lần này bằng những va chạm sơ khởi với nghệ thuật, cùng việc nói về nhiếp ảnh—trải nghiệm, lựa chọn đối tượng, và thế giới quan hàm ẩn-đa nguyên trong từng lần chụp.

Đồng điệu bằng lệch pha

7:02-15:01: Sự lệch pha giữa ý niệm của nghệ sĩ và kiện tính của tác phẩm, giữa cái hiện hữu và cái tái hiện, được Diệp tái định vị như biểu hiện của nhân tính trong sáng tạo. Tính khách quan của tương hỗ giữa cá nhân và hiện thực, kỹ thuật và kỹ nghệ cũng được bàn tới

Chụp lại trật tự trong phi trật tự

15:02-20:19: Đời sống đương đại giải trật tự một cái đẹp mang tính đại tự sự, Diệp kể về một trật tự thẩm mỹ riêng đồng tồn tại trong quang cảnh phi trật tự đó một cách linh hoạt.

Nghệ sĩ tính

20:20-24:25: Dẫn nhập bởi host Linh, Diệp đi sâu hơn vào cấu phần của nghệ sĩ tính trong nhiếp ảnh qua những trải nghiệm thực hành của mình.

Nhiếp ảnh: mỹ học trong hỗn mang giá trị học

24:46-27:32: Là một thực hành nghệ thuật gắn liền với thực tại khách quan, một tác phẩm nhiếp ảnh có thể được gọi là của nhiếp ảnh gia trong trường hợp nào, và với mức độ nào? Theo Diệp, một bức ảnh được xem là của một nhiếp ảnh gia khi người đó đã tìm ra được giá trị thẩm mỹ giữa một thực tại khách quan đầy nhiễu dấu giá trị học.

Nghệ thuật phi lịch đại là nghệ thuật nhân bản

27:33-29:00: Diệp bày tỏ tính đồng nguyên giữa nhân tính và thẩm mỹ tính—với nhân tính nằm trong cấu trúc bản thể học của tính phi lịch đại của nghệ thuật, từ phân kỷ cổ điển đến cái hậu hiện đại

Tự sự thị giác: cố định và bất định

29:01-31:13: Tính cận bất khả của diễn giải ngữ nghĩa học qua nhiếp ảnh được tái nhìn nhận bơi Diệp như đã được giải quyết qua việc đặt các chỉ dấu thị giác, với phần còn lại nằm ở dạng thức tồn tại liên cá nhân của hình ảnh trong không gian trừu tượng

Ảo ảnh của “công chúng đồng nhất”

31:14-34:57: Thảo luận về thực tế xa cách giữa công chúng và nghệ thuật, Diệp chỉ ra “công chúng” có lẽ là không tồn tại trong tiếp cận nghệ thuật, bởi từng tác phẩm được tạo ra với tệp khán giả hàm ẩn trong tâm thức nghệ sĩ.

Khoảng giữa: tái tổ chức hư vô

34:58-45:30: Đi qua khoảng trống giữa nghiệp dư và thực hành chuyên nghiệp, Diệp nhắc lại những lần trải nghiệm khoảng không này với nhiều hình thức nghệ thuật khác nhau, khi phải dung hòa giữa yêu cầu bên ngoài và lựa chọn thẩm mỹ tự thân, cùng mọi khoảng liên phạm trù khác.

Điện ảnh xuyên-con-người

45:31-51:40: Host Linh đưa ra một thí nghiệm suy tưởng: nếu một tác phẩm yêu thích của Diệp bỗng được phơi bày là tạo bởi AI, sẽ có những thay đổi nào trong quan điểm về giá trị của tác phẩm đó? Và, có hay không một lằn ranh phân định việc sử dụng AI có đạo đức và phi đạo đức? Theo Diệp, trong khi trường hợp đầu sẽ dẫn đến việc giá trị tác phẩm bị đảo lộn hoàn toàn, vẫn tồn tại cách sử dụng AI trong nghệ thuật một cách quy củ, dù ở hiện thời, việc huấn luyện hệ thống này dường như khó tách khỏi xâm phạm tác quyền.

Outro: Nhân tính và sự xuyên thời-không

51:41-end: “Nếu có một giá trị khiến nghệ thuật trường tồn và bất hoại, nó là gì?” Trả lời câu hỏi signature của series Art Brain Talk, Diệp gợi lại tầm quan trọng của nhân tính.

Đề xuất của khách mời

Đọc:

• On Photography - Susan Sontag

• Tàn ngày để lại - Kazuo Ishiguro

• Người đua diều - Khaled Hosseini

• Côi cút giữa cảnh đời - Ma Văn Kháng

Xem:

• The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)

• Bức Chân Dung Bị Thiêu Cháy (2019)

• Những Cô Nàng Lắm Chiêu (2004)

• Perfect Blue (1997)

[EN]: Synthesizing the inarticulable

Intro: Complexions of photography

0:00-7:01: Diep leads the audience into this episode with her primordial engagement with the arts, and her tie to photography—experience, choice of subject, and the implied-divergent Weltanschauung in every shot.

Synchrony through disparities

7:02-15:01: The disparity between the artistic intention and the facticital artwork, the existent and the embodied, is positioned by Diep as indicative of the humanness of creation. The objectivity of the dichotomy between the personal and the real, technicality and artistry, is also discussed.

Capturing the order of disorder

15:02-20:19 : As contemporary life destabilizes the metanarrative beauty, Diep talked about her personally constructed aesthetic order which coexists with non-order, with transience.

Pondering artistry

20:20-24:45: Led into the discussion by host Linh, Diep elaborates further into the artistic aptitude in the context of photography through the reiteration of her practicing of the medium

Photography: aesthetics amidst axiological diffusion

24:46-27:32: Being an artistic practice with close intimacy to the empirical, to what extent can a photographer consider their creation theirs? Answering this inquiry, Diep maintains that a photograph is one’s own as the photographer unearth the embedded aesthetic value in the axiologically confusing empirical.

Transtemporal arts as humanly arts

27:33-29:00: Diep expresses the convergence between humanity and beauty—she maintains that remains the ontology of the transtemporality of art, from antiquity to postmodernity.

Visual narration: the certain and the uncertain

29:01-31:13: The non-capability of narration innate to photography is framed by Diep as partially assuaged through the adding of visual cues—partial for the photograph also exists interdependently in the abstract realm.

A misrecognition of wholeness

31:14-34:57: Addressing the fact that the general public has more frequently than not been alienated by the necessity of interpretation in artistic engagement, Diep maintains that there is no general public, as an artwork is willed towards its own type of audience.

Liminality: reorganizing nothingness

34:58-45:30: Navigating the limbo between a generalist and a practitioner, Diep recalls how she experienced this stage as she engages with many mediums of art, resolves requirements and self-motivation, and everything in between.

Filmography of transhumanity

45:31-51:40: Host Linh introduced a thought experiment: if a favorite work of Diep were to be revealed as AI-generated, how would [she] alter or disregard her stance on the work? Is there any separation between well-intended and immoral usage of generative AI in filmmaking? For Diep, whereas the former would result in her disregard of the work, there exists a way to use AI ethically for the latter, although AI is as of now inseparable from the piracy which constitutes its training.

Outro: Humanity is beyond space and time

51:41-end: “If there is a value which makes art perennial and indestructible, what would it be?” Answering this Art Braint Talk’s signature question, Diep invokes the humanity, and human bound factors stated earlier.

Guest’s recommendations

To read:

• On Photography - Susan Sontag

• The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro

• The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini

• Côi cút giữa cảnh đời - Ma Văn Kháng

To watch:

• The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)

• Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019)

• Mean Girls (2004)

• Perfect Blue (1997)

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One of the most documented effects of artistic training is a fundamental shift in what the brain finds appealing. While novices typically prefer simple, symmetrical visual patterns and harmonically predictable musical chords, trained experts gravitate toward complexity, asymmetry, and non-prototypical arrangements (McWhinnie, 1966). This divergence reflects a genuine reorganization of evaluative processing. Where the untrained brain defaults to immediate sensory pleasure, the expert brain has learned to assess objects against higher-order criteria: an artwork’s conceptual intent, its historical context, and the subtle rule-bending that defines a particular artist’s signature style.

Neuroimaging studies have clarified precisely where in the brain this expert shift originates. In a landmark parametric fMRI study, architects showed significantly greater activation in the medial orbitofrontal cortex (overlapping with the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, VMPFC) and the subcallosal cingulate gyrus, a region closely related to the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) (Knutson et al., 2001; O’Doherty et al., 2003, as cited in Kirk & Freedberg, 2015). These areas are central to how the brain computes subjective value using learned, domain-specific features. The more training a person has, the more these regions engage when that expertise is relevant.

What is particularly striking, however, is what similar between the groups: the nucleus accumbens (NAcc), a subcortical hub at the core of basic reward and motivational drive, responded equally in experts and non-experts alike. This dissociation suggests that artistic expertise carves out a distinct neural pathway for aesthetic valuation, one that operates independently of the primitive desire to acquire or consume. Computational models of reward further support this interpretation, proposing that art experts may be uniquely capable of experiencing a pure form of “liking” without “wanting”: a deep appreciation of intrinsic aesthetic worth, entirely detached from biological incentive states (Brielmann et al., 2022; Chatterjee & Vartanian, 2016).

Expertise does more than elevate appreciation. It also insulates evaluation from distortion. We know from research by Kirk et al. (2009) on semantic context modulation that presenting the same artwork under different contextual conditions (such as a prestigious gallery label versus a neutral setting, referring from the previous NAPAT’s article about epistemology in experienced and judged art) can inflate its perceived aesthetic value in non-experts, with the VMPFC and medial orbitofrontal cortex registering artificially elevated signals. In trained experts, however, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) acts as an executive control mechanism, forming stronger functional connections with the VMPFC and actively suppressing these context-driven distortions (Kirk & Freedberg, 2015). The expert brain, in effect, self-censors socially or commercially induced value inflation, enabling more objective aesthetic evaluation.

The neurological differences between experts and novices extend equally to the act of creation. When trained visual art students engage in the generative phase of drawing, they recruit the medial temporal lobe (MTL), including the hippocampus and parahippocampus, far more robustly than untrained individuals (Ellamil et al. 2012). This reflects the artist’s capacity to tap into a vast, richly organized long-term memory bank of semantic and episodic associations, transforming stored experience into novel imagery. Creation, for the expert, is an act of deep memory as much as it is one of imagination.

Taken together, these findings confirm that artistic expertise physically and functionally welds sensory brain systems, creating a transmodal architecture in which hearing and movement, perception and action, become inseparable. While fMRI shows us where these changes happen (VMPFC, NAcc, DLPFC), this theoretical framework is essential when looking to map real-time emotional and aesthetic responses using tools like EEG. Knowing that an expert suppresses immediate reward (NAcc) in favor of higher-order valuation allows researchers to form better hypotheses about what specific EEG frequencies or patterns they should expect to see when different demographics view art.

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Brielmann, A. A., & Dayan, P. (2022). A computational model of aesthetic value. Psychological review, 129(6), 1319–1337.
https://doi.org/10.1037/rev0000337

Chatterjee, A., & Vartanian, O. (2016). Neuroscience of aesthetics. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1369(1), 172–194.
https://doi.org/10.1111/nyas.13035

Ellamil, M., Dobson, C., Beeman, M., & Christoff, K. (2012). Evaluative and generative modes of thought during the creative process. NeuroImage, 59(2), 1783–1794. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2011.08.008

Huston, J. P., Nadal, M., Mora, F., Agnati, L. F., & Cela-Conde, C. J. (Eds.). (2015). Art, aesthetics and the brain. Oxford University Press.
https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199670000.001.0001

Kirk, U., & Freedberg, D. (2015). Contextual bias and insulation against bias during aesthetic rating: The roles of VMPFC and DLPFC in neural valuation. In J. P. Huston, M. Nadal, F. Mora, L. Agnati, & C. J. Conde (Eds.), Art, aesthetics, and the brain. OxfordUniversity Press.
https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199670000.003.0008

Kirk, U., Skov, M., Hulme, O., Christensen, M. S., & Zeki, S. (2009). Modulation of aesthetic value by semantic context: An fMRI study. NeuroImage, 44(3), 1125–1132. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2008.10.009

McWhinnie, H. J. (1966). Effects of a learning experience on preference for complexity and asymmetry. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 23(1), 119–130.
https://doi.org/10.2466/pms.1966.23.1.119

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The “integrative interplay model,” proposed by Villalobos, Pacios, and Vázquez, describes depression as a disruption in the balance between cognitive control processes and emotional reactivity (Villalobos et al. 2021). Depressive symptoms emerge when higher-level attentional control struggles to coordinate with lower-level emotional processing systems. Normally, the prefrontal cortex regulates emotional responses by modulating signals from subcortical structures such as the amygdala. Neuroimaging research, including studies at University College London, shows that coordinated activity between prefrontal and limbic structures allows individuals to reinterpret emotional stimuli, disengage from negative thoughts, and manage mood adaptively (Dolcos et al. 2018). In depression, reduced prefrontal efficiency allows bottom-up emotional signals to dominate, creating persistent negative biases and rumination - a “cognitive bottleneck” that limits the effectiveness of strategies like reappraisal (Villalobos et al. 2021).

Despite these impairments, responsiveness to aesthetic and sensory stimuli often remains intact. Art can activate emotional and reward systems through pathways that do not rely on top-down cognitive control (Dolcos et al. 2018). Music, for example, engages the amygdala, hippocampus, insula, and ventral striatum, linking auditory stimuli to memory, emotional awareness, and dopaminergic reward. When listeners experience pleasure or “chills” during music, dopamine is released along reward pathways, producing positive affect independently of higher-order executive control.

Behavioral studies reinforce these neural findings. A large U.K. survey of over 22,000 participants examined how artistic activities regulate emotions in individuals with and without depression (Fancourt & Ali 2019). Strategies were categorized as “approach,” which involve reinterpreting emotions, and “avoidance,” which redirect attention. Depressed participants reported slightly lower use of approach strategies, but their engagement with avoidance strategies, such as listening to music or dancing, was comparable to non-depressed participants, with minimal differences overall.

Similarly, research on music listening by Sakka and Juslin at Uppsala and Karlstad Universities found that both depressed and non-depressed individuals use music to enhance mood, with “discharge” - releasing pent-up emotional tension - being the most common strategy, while suppression of emotion was least common (Sakka & Juslin 2018). These findings suggest that music remains an accessible tool for emotional regulation even amid depressive symptoms.

From a neurocognitive perspective, artistic engagement functions as a form of implicit emotion regulation. Unlike explicit strategies, which require conscious effort and executive control, implicit regulation operates through stimulus-driven processes that automatically influence emotional states. Music’s rhythmic, harmonic, and melodic structures engage sensory and affective neural networks directly, providing an external scaffold for emotion that does not rely heavily on executive systems often impaired in depression.

This distinction is critical for therapeutic applications. Depression weakens top-down cognitive control, limiting the effectiveness of interventions that rely on deliberate effort. Artistic engagement leverages intact sensory and reward pathways, offering an alternative route for emotional modulation. Through activation of reward circuits, modulation of affective processing, and facilitation of implicit regulation, the arts provide a biologically grounded mechanism for emotional support. Music and other aesthetic activities thus serve not merely as cultural enrichment or leisure but as active participants in shaping emotional cognition.

In this light, art functions as part of the brain’s external architecture for organizing emotion. By engaging with structured aesthetic stimuli like music, individuals can circumvent cognitive bottlenecks, accessing affective pathways otherwise impaired in depression. The arts are not only reflections of human experience but also instruments that actively shape the dynamics of emotional life.

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Dolcos, S., Moore, M., & Katsumi, Y. (2018). Neuroscience and well-being. In E. Diener, S. Oishi, & L. Tay (Eds.), Handbook of well-being. DEF Publishers. nobascholar.com

Fancourt, D., & Ali, H. (2019). Differential use of emotion regulation strategies when engaging in artistic creative activities amongst those with and without depression. Scientific Reports, 9, 9897.
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-46138-3

Sakka, L. S., & Juslin, P. N. (2018). Emotion regulation with music in depressed and non-depressed individuals: Goals, strategies, and mechanisms. Music & Science, 1, 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1177/2059204318755023

Villalobos, D., Pacios, J., & Vázquez, C. (2021). Cognitive control, cognitive biases and emotion regulation in depression: A new proposal for an integrative interplay model. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, 628416.
https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.628416

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Écriture féminine is an epistemic refusal whose natures are resonant and even encapsulated within principles of the unconscious, the id, the emancipation from the superego, and the vast deconstruction of the ego. Such implosion negates the symbolic imposition of what-already-is as what-has-always-been, debunking persistent stability with transience. As an escapism from the phallogocentric Symbolic and back to the infantry of the Imaginary, one may indulge oneself in such an attempt with as much involvement as one’s constant exchange and interchange of the factitious and the transcendent. In a sense, the abolition of the male writing by returning to the order before the imposition of the masculine-Symbolic epistemology is a negation which relates itself to itself, with many synchrony to the escape from the humanly-sensorimotor and imperfect cognition of the existent facilitated through the inevitable clashes of the rational and the deductible, thereby opening and bringing about the surreal existences.

An attempt to escape A and migrate to B, yet only achievable through the distortion in terms of cognition and formation of A, with the bridge between A and B unspecified and undefined. This is somewhat an attempt at a grandiose scale to explain the explanandrum with all explanans a part of what-is-to-be-explained. How much would I have to spatiotemporally warp a house for it to become the-other-house? How does one know a distortion of A amounts to the manifestation of B? Does A exist? Does B exist? What if there exists a plane of CDEF yet with no A and B?

The inescapable imprisonment as lived experience yet oozed out attempts to self-emancipation—automatism, surréalisme, écriture féminine—is not a rabbit hole of seeking-the-other where one enters with one eye open. The perceived exigency to escape what-is and to attempt for the higher-what-is or the what-yet-is is less of a prophecy of a clairvoyant about mankind’s transcendence as a collective, and is more of an extremely dark shade cast on the ground by whose blackness one can predict or make propositions about the light source which gave rise to it.

I dream of the human-centered when theocracy weighs on my shoulder, but I, too, long for an evident divine authority so as not to be burdened with my own freedom. I want to refuse the rational because the rational has failed to accomplish the epistemic task of A, B, C, D,… I seek to escape the masculine because the presence of the masculine has constituted a constraint for me. Thus, it is of trivial matter whether or not the surreal exists so as to be harvested by me through my unrestrained automatism and whether or not écriture féminine has properly identified where-it-is-to-flee-from and where-it-is-to-migrate-to. The one thing worth focusing one’s lens on is the constant fact that such epistemic refusal is felt to be urgent and necessary when the physical world and its sensorimotor decoy is strong enough to deceive my otherly rationalization of being and of alternative ontologies of what-is.

Thus, the submergence of one into alternative epistemologies are not just teleologically unsanctioned or fictitious, as the rationale which has materialized into the acted upon venture into said epistemic domains can be traced back to and amount to specific nature of the current or normal-hegemonic logic of empiricism and scientific inquiries.

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Cixous, Hélène, et al. “The Laugh of the Medusa.” Signs, vol. 1, no. 4, 1976, pp. 875–93. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3173239.

Lacan, Jacques. “The Mirror Stage as Formative”. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, edited by Vincent B. Leitch et al., 1st ed., W. W. Norton & Company, 2001, pp. 1285-1290.

Wong, Sara. “Towards an Anti-Colonial Aesthetic Politics: Surrealist Praxis and Epistemic Refusal.” Review of International Studies, 2025, pp. 1-22, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0260210525100971.

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(English below)

[VN] EP2: Nghệ thuật và đại chúng

Dẫn nhập: Cảnh quan nghệ thuật đương đại

0:00-07:56: Thuỷ kể lại hành trình của mình và nghệ thuật: từ các dòng truyện ngụ ngôn, đến những khung truyện tranh tự vẽ, tới các loại hình nghệ thuật thị giác nói chung. Cuộc trò chuyện dần chuyển qua hiện thể đương đại của nghệ thuật: trong bối cảnh mà công nghệ sản xuất, hạ tầng viễn thông, lẫn nền kinh tế dựa trên sức chú ý (attention economy) đang thay đổi cục diện thời đại. Thuỷ bàn đến sự thương mại hoá nghệ phẩm như đồng tồn tại với nghệ thuật, từ đó dẫn ra thương mại nghệ thuật ở Việt Nam, và cơ hội tiếp xúc với mỹ thuật ở quốc nội.

“Trao quyền” thụ đắc mỹ thuật cho đại chúng

07:57-15:51: Đặt cảnh quan nghệ thuật ở Hoa Kỳ và Việt Nam cạnh nhau, Thuỷ bày tỏ việc chương trình bậc cao trung có xuất hiện giáo dục nghệ thuật hay không có hệ quả nhất định tới cách cái thẩm mỹ len lỏi vào đời sống thường nhật. Bên cạnh đó là cách các tác nhân chủ chốt như có hay không việc bảo tàng đặt chính họ vào mối quan hệ với công chúng, các nhóm, tổ chức nào đang mang tri thức mỹ thuật đến với đại chúng, và lượng thông tin chạm đến được đối tượng mục tiêu.

Trình hiện, sáng tạo và tiếp nhận từ đại chúng: “xa,” “gần” và những “khoảng giữa”

15:52-30:52 : Linh và Thuỷ trao đổi về mối tương quan giữa quá trình giám tuyển, trình hiện nghệ phẩm và tiếp nhận: những lệch pha trong ngôn ngữ-thế giới quan, khán giả hàm ẩn chứng kiến quá trình sáng tạo, lằn ranh bất định giữa đại chúng và “đại trà.” Đồng thời, sự tồn tại của pop-culture, một phạm trù nghệ thuật “sống” giữa khoảng cách của tiếp nhận phổ thông và phê bình hàn lâm, nhưng lại chuyển mình khi rời xa khỏi đại chúng, xuất hiện như yếu tố hội tụ của đối thoại.

Giải cấu trúc hệ nhị đối hàn lâm-phổ thông trong nghệ thuật

30:53-39:23: Ở các nền nghệ thuật khác, Thuỷ chia sẻ trình hiện nghệ thuật dù về bản chất không hẳn là dành cho đại chúng, nhưng lượng tri thức về nghệ thuật luôn “mở” cho đại chúng khi có nhu cầu tìm hiểu. Với quan điểm thiên về nghệ-thuật-cho-đại-chúng, Thuỷ và Linh cùng bàn về sự nhập nhằng và có lẽ đồng nguyên giữa cái-hàn-lâm và cái-phổ-thông. Nhìn qua nghệ thuật đương đại Việt Nam, vốn dĩ nghệ thuật từ sự công nhận lẫn nhau của cộng đồng sáng tạo mà có được vị trí trong diễn ngôn.

Diễn ngôn nghệ thuật hiện đại, đương đại Việt Nam và nền tảng lý luận-phê bình Tây phương.

39:24-43:23 : Thuỷ chỉ ra việc nhìn nhận cái-gì-là-nghệ-thuật ở nền nghệ thuật Việt Nam dường như chịu ảnh hưởng lớn từ nền lý luận Tây phương, dẫn đến việc ta mường tượng ra các tác phẩm Âu châu nghi nghĩ về “nghệ thuật,” còn giới phê bình Tây phương lại hứng thú với mỹ thuật mang đậm chỉ dấu văn hoá Việt, điển hình là Mai Trung Thứ.

Cái gì làm nghệ thuật phi-lịch-đại?

43:24-50:03: Tiếp cận câu hỏi từ host Linh, Thuỷ bày tỏ những đối thoại qua và về nghệ phẩm làm cho chúng trở nên phi lịch đại, những trăn trở cá nhân lẫn những bận tâm bản thể, tinh thần thời đại lẫn các giá trị liên thời đại.

Roman Opałka và bản chất hiện tượng học của nghệ thuật: lời kết

50:03-end: Thuỷ giới thiệu Roman Opałka, nghệ sĩ người Ba Lan mà tác phẩm của ông đã làm bật lên bản chất hiện tượng học của tạo tác mỹ học.

Đề xuất của khách mời

Đọc:

• Totto-chan: The Little Girl at the Window

• Series My Brilliant Friend của Elena Ferrante

• Setting Sun by Osamu Dazai

Xem:

• Tick, Tick...Boom!

• ‘Before’ trilogy

[EN] Intro: Contemporary landscape of the arts

0:00-07:56: Thuy recalls her journey with the arts: from the lines of fables, to her first comic sketches, to other forms of visual arts. The conversation then shifts to the contemporary existence of arts: in an age whose very structures are being changed by mass production, telecommunications infrastructure, and the attention economy. Thuy mentions the commercialization of artworks as coexistent with artistic creation; thereon, one can envision the business landscape of the arts, and the accessibility of arts within Vietnam

“Granting the rights” of the mass to acquire the arts

07:57-15:51: Juxtaposing the artistic scene of the US with that of Vietnam, Thuy maintains that the presence or absence of artistic education within the high school curriculum plays a role in whether or not the arts can manifest through daily life of a demographic. Elaborating further, the ways in which key institutions like museums relate themselves to the public, which types of organizations are providing communal access to knowledge of the arts, and the amount of information that reaches the target audience also matter.

Presentation, creation, and appreciation from the public: “far,” “close,” and “the in-betweens”

15:52-30:52: Linh and Thuy discuss the interrelation between the curation process, presentation of artworks, and appreciation: the disjunction in language-worldview, the implied audience, and the uncertain border between the popular and the “regular.” At the same time, the existence of pop-culture, a domain of arts which seamlessly occupies the space between public appreciation and art criticism, yet evolves by itself as it alienates the demands of the masses, appears as the focal point of the dialogue.

Deconstructing the binary opposition between “high” and “low” art

30:53-39:23: In the artistic scenes of other countries, Thuy shares that the presentation of artworks there, whilst not oriented towards the public completely, does remain accessible for interested individuals. Tilting on the “art for the public” part of the continuum, Linh and Thuy talked about the overlapping, nay uniform, nature of high and low art. In an outlook toward contemporary Vietnamese arts, the cherished artworks and artists emerged from mutual recognition, which gestures at community.

The modern and contemporary discourse of Vietnamese arts and its basis on Western theories

39:24-43:23: Thuy points out that the answers to what-is-considered-as-art in Vietnam mainly have their foundation in Western theories, leading to the envisionment of European art as the standard, whilst Western critics exhibit interests with Vietnamese-embodied works, like that of Mai Trung Thu

What makes art timeless?

43:24-50:03: Responding to this question, Thuy expressed that the dialogues within/about the artwork make it timeless, from personal contemplation to ontological questions, values of the zeitgeist and the temporally untethered.

Outro: Roman Opałka and the phenomenological reality of the arts

50:03-end: Thuy introduces Roman Opałka, a Polish artist whose work reminds her of the phenomenological nature of aesthetic creations.

Guest’s recommendations

To read:

• Totto-chan: The Little Girl at the Window

• Series My Brilliant Friend của Elena Ferrante

• Setting Sun by Osamu Dazai

To watch:

• Tick, Tick...Boom!

• ‘Before’ trilogy

  Subscribe now

  Leave a comment

  Share

At the heart of any communication is ostension, the act of making an intention to communicate manifest (Wilson and Sperber 2004, p.612). When someone taps you on the shoulder, they are providing an ostensive stimulus. Such acts carry an implicit guarantee: the effort you spend processing the stimulus will be rewarded, a new piece of information or a shift in perspective. In the world of aesthetics, the act of placing an object in a gallery is the ultimate ostensive gesture.

By framing a pile of candy as Félix González-Torres did or a porcelain urinal as Marcel Duchamp famously did, the artist signals to the viewer about an interpretable artifact. In reality, we might walk past a flickering lightbulb without a second thought. However, when that same flickering light is encountered in a white-cube gallery, such as Martin Creed’s Work No. 227: The lights going on and off, the institutional setting provides the credence we need (McCallum et al., 2020). The hushed halls and museum labels co-opt our communicative instincts, telling us that this stimulus is profound.

In computational terms, this triggers a shift in our probabilistic generative models. According to the models proposed by Brielmann and Dayan (2022), the brain maintains an “expected true distribution” (pT) of the visual features it expects to encounter in the world. The museum context triggers a switch to a different mode for pT. The brain actively adjusts its internal algorithm, shifting its baseline expectations to process features specifically relevant to an aesthetic context. We invest significant mental energy because the environment provides an implicit guarantee.

When we have high prior confidence in a source (a prestigious museum or a world-renowned artist), we enter the interaction with massive expectations of relevance (McCallum et al., 2020). This is often called “Guru Effect.” Even if the stimulus is minimalist or opaque, our brain refuses to dismiss it as meaningless. In a mundane setting, if a visual input is too noisy or ambiguous, the brain assigns it low precision and ignores it. However, according to Bayesian models of perception, in this context, the cognitive effort of interpretation is actually the brain actively computing ways to suppress prediction errors and force a recognizable resolution onto formless data (Huston, 2015, p.154). Instead of abandoning the search, the brain generates speculative and personal interpretations to satisfy its expectation that the work must be important. This collaborative intellectual exercise not only resolves the visual ambiguity but enhances our own reputation as sophisticated interpreters.

Commonly, we think of communication as a delivery service where a message is packaged by a sender and unwrapped by a receiver. Cognitive pragmatics rejects this for art. Instead of a specific, encoded maxim transmitted, art functions through weak communication. Rather than telling the viewer exactly what to think, an artwork increases the manifestness of various ideas, memories, and emotions. Because the communication is deliberately diffuse, it triggers an open-ended interpretation. The viewer is granted the autonomy to entertain a multiplicity of thoughts. In this weak communicative space, a viewer’s interpretation can rarely be called wrong. Even if the artist never consciously intended a specific emotional resonance, the artwork’s success lies in its ability to spark that unique mental fire in the audience.

The artist creates objects that are complex enough to reward intense effort but open enough to avoid a single, correct answer. An artwork might set a thought process in motion without ever bringing it to a full stop. By understanding art through the lens of cognitive pragmatics, we see that the beauty of a masterpiece is a sophisticated dance between the artist’s ostension and the viewer’s innate hunger for relevance.

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Brielmann, A. A., & Dayan, P. (2022). A computational model of aesthetic value. Psychological review, 129(6), 1319–1337.
https://doi.org/10.1037/rev0000337

Huston, J. P., Nadal, M., Mora, F., Agnati, L. F., & Cela-Conde, C. J. (Eds.). (2015). Art, aesthetics, and the brain. Oxford University Press.
https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199670000.001.0001

McCallum, K., Mitchell, S., & Scott-Phillips, T. (2020). The art experience. Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 11(1), 161–177.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-020-00465-w

Wilson, D., & Sperber, D. (2004). Relevance theory. In L. R. Horn & G. Ward (Eds.), The handbook of pragmatics (pp. 607–632). Blackwell Publishing.
https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470756959.ch27

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Ambiguity, paradoxically, relies on clarity rather than confusion. When we engage with reversible figures like the Necker cube, the duck-rabbit illusion, or the Boring vase, the visual system is not suffering from a lack of data, but rather an overabundance of competing meanings (Huston, 2019). In these instances, the stimulus is entirely determinate; the brain does not remain in a state of flux but instead toggles back and forth between distinct, recognizable states (Ishai et al., 2007).

This principle of resolution also applies to “hidden figures,” such as R.C. James’s high-contrast photograph of a camouflaged Dalmatian (dog). Initially, the viewer may perceive only chaotic noise, but once the brain successfully binds the visual elements, the object becomes fixed and recognizable (Pepperell, 2006). In these states of ambiguity, the brain holds two or more valid semantic interpretations of the same visual data and switches between them with ease, successfully completing the object-recognition cycle.

In contrast to the clear alternatives provided by ambiguity, visually indeterminate images are defined by their active resistance to final identification. Unlike the duck-rabbit, which settles into one of two identities, indeterminate art, such as the squeegee paintings of Gerhard Richter, deliberately defies the transition from “stuff” to “things” (Pepperell, 2006). As Huston (2019) explains, while ambiguity provides a “fork in the road,” indeterminacy creates a cognitive roadblock where the viewer detects raw visual data but fails to correlate it with stored memories (sec. 7.3.2).

To understand this frustration of the visual system, researchers draw an analogy to associative visual agnosia1. In the classic case study of a patient named “John,” researchers found that while early perceptual processes, seeing lines and shapes, remained intact, the ability to match that input to functional meaning was obliterated (Humphreys & Riddoch, 1987). This leaves the subject experiencing a world of “richly elaborated but formless visual ‘stuff’” (as cited in Huston, 2019). Indeterminate art places the healthy viewer in a temporary state of agnosia, where the brain can “see” the image but cannot “know” it.

The brain’s struggle to resolve indeterminacy is clearly visible through fMRI and EEG studies, which show a marked shift in neural recruitment. When looking at representational or ambiguous art, there is strong activation in the fusiform gyrus and the temporo-parietal junction (TPJ), areas specialized for object processing and spatial binding (Ishai et al., 1999; Ishai et al., 2000; Haxby et al., 2001 as cited in Huston, 2019).

Indeterminate paintings, however, evoke much less activity in these regions because there are no clear objects for these networks to “grip.” Since the brain cannot settle on a meaning, it adopts a high-energy searching strategy. Rather than generating mental imagery in the precuneus, the brain triggers massive cortical coherence, recruiting a vast, distributed network across both hemispheres to hunt for visual similarities in semantic memory (Supp et al., 2005, as cited in Huston, 2019).

Ultimately, the fundamental difference is one of semantic resolution: where ambiguity allows the brain to travel down different paths of recognition, indeterminacy traps the viewer in a perpetual struggle, transforming the effort of perception itself into a potent, sustained aesthetic experience. As they provide a biological blueprint for engineered perception, understanding the “agnosia-like” gap in indeterminate viewing allows for the design of neuro-aesthetic tools that bypass stressful semantic associations, potentially serving as a digital therapeutic for emotional regulation and mindfulness.

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Fairhall, S. L., & Ishai, A. (2008). Neural correlates of object indeterminacy in art. Molecular Frontiers Journal, 2(1), 77–88.

Haxby, J. V., Gobbini, M. I., Furey, M. L., Ishai, A., Schouten, J. L., & Pietrini, P. (2001). Distributed and overlapping representations of faces and objects in ventral temporal cortex. Science, 293(5539), 2425–2430. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1063736

Humphreys, G. W., & Riddoch, M. J. (1987). To see but not to see: A case study of visual agnosia. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Huston, J. P. (2019). Art, aesthetics, and the brain. Oxford University Press.

Ishai, A., Fairhall, S. L., & Pepperell, R. (2007). Perception, memory and aesthetics of indeterminate art. Brain Research Bulletin, 73(4-6), 319–324. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brainresbull.2007.04.009

Ishai, A., Ungerleider, L. G., Martin, A., & Haxby, J. V. (2000). The representation of objects in the human occipitotemporal cortex. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 12(Supplement 2), 35–51. https://doi.org/10.1162/089892900564052

Ishai, A., Ungerleider, L. G., Martin, A., Schouten, J. L., & Haxby, J. V. (1999). Distributed representation of objects in the human ventral visual pathway. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 96(16), 9379–9384. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.96.16.9379

Pepperell, R. (2006). Seeing without objects: Visual indeterminacy and abstract art. Leonardo, 39(1), 79–81. https://doi.org/10.1162/leon.2006.39.1.79

Supp, G. G., Schlögl, A., Fiebach, C. J., Gunter, T. C., Vossen, H. G. M., Brauer, J., & Herrmann, C. S. (2005). Semantic memory retrieval: Cortical couplings in object recognition in the N400 window. European Journal of Neuroscience, 21(4), 1139–1143. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-9568.2005.03923.x

Wiesmann, M., & Ishai, A. (2011). Training-induced plasticity in the visual system of an agnosic patient. NeuroImage, 54(3), 2228–2233. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2010.09.076

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By Li & Zhang, the meaning-knowledge neural system is not localized to a single “art center” but is a distributed network across the brain’s most evolved regions. It utilizes the prefrontal cortex for high-level decision-making (Ferrari et al., 2017), the temporal regions for memory (Silveira et al., 2015), and the parietal cortex for spatial and semantic integration (Kirk et al., 2009), as cited in sec. 2.2.3. This vast neural geography suggests that “meaning” in art is an emergent property of multiple cognitive processes working in tandem. At the heart of this system is the ability to move beyond “what” an object is to “why” it matters. For instance, the temporal pole and entorhinal cortex act as a bridge to the viewer’s past. When we stand before a landscape painting that reminds us of a childhood home, these regions trigger a memory-based modulation of our emotions. Art becomes a vessel for autobiography, moving beyond just a representation of nature.

One of the most fascinating aspects of this system is its sensitivity to “top-down” information, what we are told about a piece of art before we even see it. Mentioned research into the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and temporoparietal junction (TPJ) reveals that our brains physically react differently to an artwork based on its perceived prestige.

When a viewer believes a painting is housed in a world-class institution like the Museum of Modern Art, these semantic “frames” enhance neural activity, effectively priming the brain to find higher value in the work (Silveira et al., 2015).

Furthermore, the dorso-medial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) integrates our social and moral values into the aesthetic judgment (Ridderinkhof et al., 2004). Because this region is a hub for social cognition (Ferrari et al., 2017), it allows us to project empathy onto the subjects of a portrait or to find beauty in works that challenge our moral perspectives. This connection ensures that art is not just a visual exercise, but a social and ethical one.

The meaning-knowledg neural system also shows its ability to dictate how we perceive, interpret, and interact. In a study of Cupchik and his colleagues in 2009, under normal circumstances, the brain is a pragmatic machine, using the fusiform gyrus to quickly identify objects: a chair, a face, a tree, or a bicycle wheel for the sake of utility.

However, the lateral prefrontal cortex (Brodmann area 10) allows us to override this “object-identification” mode (Cupchik, 1992; Cupchik & Winston, 1996, as cited in sec. 1). By exerting cognitive control, this system enables us to adopt an explicit aesthetic orientation.

It suppresses the urge to categorize the art as a “thing” and instead opens the mind to focus on composition, mood, and feeling (sec. 2.1.3). This internal shift is what allows a viewer to spend an hour staring at a canvas of abstract lines; the meaning-knowledge neural system provides the focus necessary to find depth where a purely pragmatic brain would see only clutter.

The meaning-knowledge neural system acts as the “narrative glue.” It ensures that our experience of art is grounded in the human story, both the collective story of culture and the individual story of the viewer. By integrating memory, social judgment, and intentional focus, this neural network elevates art from a sensory stimulus to a transformative intellectual event. It reminds us that while the eyes see the painting, it is the mind that truly perceives the art.

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Cupchik, G. C., Vartanian, O., Crawley, A., & Mikulis, D. J. (2009). Viewing artworks: Contributions of cognitive control and perceptual facilitation to aesthetic experience. Brain and Cognition, 70(1), 84–91.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bandc.2009.01.003

Ferrari, C., Nadal, M., Schiavi, S., Vecchi, T., Cela-Conde, C. J., & Cattaneo, Z. (2017). The dorsomedial prefrontal cortex mediates the interaction between moral and aesthetic valuation: a TMS study on the beauty-is-good stereotype. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 12(5), 707–717.
https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsx002

Kirk, U., Skov, M., Hulme, O., Christensen, M. S., & Zeki, S. (2009). Modulation of aesthetic value by semantic context: an fMRI study. NeuroImage, 44(3), 1125–1132. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2008.10.009

Li, R., & Zhang, J. (2020). Review of computational neuroaesthetics: bridging the gap between neuroaesthetics and computer science. Brain Informatics, 7(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40708-020-00118-w

Ridderinkhof, K. R., Ullsperger, M., Crone, E. A., & Nieuwenhuis, S. (2004). The role of the medial frontal cortex in cognitive control. Science (New York, N.Y.), 306(5695), 443–447.
https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1100301

Silveira, S., Fehse, K., Vedder, A., Elvers, K., & Hennig-Fast, K. (2015). Is it the picture or is it the frame? An fMRI study on the neurobiology of framing effects. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 9, 528.
https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2015.00528

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The first epistemic pillar in this article concerns the external contexts of a work of art; external here means that the context cannot be properly realized or recognized solely on the sensory perception of the work. Kirk and colleagues (2009) have explored this pillar through studying functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data, which was acquired as human subjects were being presented with, and asked to evaluate, artworks randomly labeled as either computer-generated or gallery-sourced. It is to be noted that neither of the labels was true.

Through analysis, one of their findings was that, compared to the other label, believing a work to be gallery-sourced enhanced activity in regions of the brain that integrate visual perception with memory, like the entorhinal cortex and the temporal pole (Kirk et al., 2009, Fig. 6A); this enhancement also happens irrespective of one’s personal preference over the artwork. What is more, parts of the reward system, especially the orbitofrontal cortex, factor the person’s expectations into their evaluation of the artworks (Kirk et al., 2009, Fig. 4).

Then, external contexts, when believed, affect the aesthetic experience not only experientially but also physiologically; or at least, the influence of external contexts on the aesthetic experience on the experiential level is sufficiently significant to be physiologically identifiable. This facticity also hints that the contextual framing of a work structurally affects how it would be artistically judged.

Not solely confined to the realm of neuroscientific explorations into aesthetic experiences, the role of contexts also reveals itself when one contemplates the arrival of the artistic judgement in itself. For example, when one looks at a canvas fully covered in blue, one may base it on one’s own sensory data that the work is artistically insignificant since the difficulty in ideating the work and materializing the work is reasonably low. The same self-judgment may pertain even if one is given the information that the blue canvas is titled IKB 191 and made by Yves Klein.

Nonetheless, one’s stance may change if it is provided that the blue hue in use was a result of formulaic attempts by Klein, which are otherwise not replicable. This potential shift demonstrates what Maxwell (1999) articulated when he maintained that artistic value (and interrelatedly, judgement) cannot be seen as subjective, because such a stance neglects the epistemological effort in grasping the realities and contexts pertinent to an artwork. Thus, the undertaking to understand an artwork through the gathering of factual, objective contexts overlaps with the first epistemic pillar mentioned above but also constitutes another epistemic pillar: the epistemological effort.

Lastly, and fundamentally, the third epistemic pillar is the fuzzy logic entailed in the perception, experience, and judgement of art; that is, the epistemological challenge or the impossibility of epistemological closure. From the same Blue and Green Music, each can offer a different rationalization and interpretation of ’O’Keeffe’s abstraction. Likewise, multitudinous readings can variably elucidate Federico Garcia Lorca’s Cicada!. In both cases, every rationalization, interpretation, and elucidation offer, so long as they ground themselves in intelligible aspects of the work, are of equal epistemic value—that is, they can neither be proved wrong nor right.

Overall, there are epistemic pillars integral to our understanding of the aesthetic experience and art perception, which are both interrelated with artistic judgment. Said epistemic pillars, as identified by this article, are: (1) the external contexts of a work, (2) the epistemological effort needed to understand a work, and (3) the impossibility of epistemological closure of a work.

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Chatterjee, A., & Vartanian, O. (2014). Neuroaesthetics. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 18, 370– 375.

Kirk, U., Skov, M., Hulme, O., Christensen, M. S., & Zeki, S. (2009). Modulation of aesthetic value by semantic context: an fMRI study. Neuroimage, 44, 1125– 1132.

Maxwell, N. (1999). Are there Objective Values?. The Dalhousie Review, 79(3), 301-317.

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This computational journey begins with a strict division of labor, where the brain separates the processing of raw visual data from the recognition of complex forms. The process begins in the early layers, where the brain focuses on low-level features. As light hits the retina and signals reach the primary visual cortex, regions such as the lingual gyrus and middle occipital gyrus act as biological filters (Luo et al., 2019, as cited in Li & Zhang, 2020). They serve as receptive fields that extract fundamental building blocks—color, brightness, orientation, and intensity (Chatterjee & Cardillo, 2022). At this stage, the brain is not yet “seeing” art; it is merely cataloging the structural DNA of the visual field.

As the signal ascends to the late layers of the visual stream, these fragments are assembled into high-level features. In specialized regions like the fusiform gyrus (which identifies faces and objects) and the visual motion area (MT+), the brain begins to recognize complex attributes (Thakral et al., 2012). It decodes whether an artwork is abstract or concrete, dynamic or still, or whether it depicts animate life. This is the stage where “style” emerges from “data,” allowing us to distinguish the frantic energy of an artwork from the clinical precision of a still life.

Crucially, however, this hierarchical processing is not strictly a passive, one-way street from eye to brain; it is modulated by attention and the specific nature of the artwork. This becomes evident when comparing hard-edge paintings, which utilize linear styles to clearly define boundaries, against soft-edge, “painterly” works characterized by porous, indeterminate forms. When viewing soft-edge art, the brain cannot simply identify features, it actively resolves them (Wölfflin, 1915, 1950 as cited in Cupchik et al., 2009). It engages the left superior parietal lobule, a region linked to spatial cognition and visual imagery, to construct a coherent image from the ambiguous visual data (Cupchik et al., 2009). This supports the theory that aesthetic experience involves a dynamic interaction where bottom-up perceptual input meets top-down cognitive control to stabilize the image before it can be fully appreciated.

Following this construction, the brain must weigh and combine these features to form a subjective preference. This occurs in the integration hubs of the parietal and lateral prefrontal cortex (lPFC). These regions act as neurological intermediaries, holding both the simple colors and the complex, constructed patterns in a unified mental space. The hierarchy culminates as these integration hubs increase their connectivity with the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) (Chatterjee & Cardillo, 2022, p.130), the brain’s primary center for subjective value. The mPFC effectively applies “weights”1 to the gathered features, whether they are the vibrant colors extracted in early layers or the fluently processed symmetry identified later—based on individual history, personality, and mood. While one viewer might heavily weight “concreteness” and realism, another might place higher value on “color” or “motion.” The final aesthetic judgment, the “I love this” or “I am moved by this,” is the result of this personalized weighting system.

Ultimately, the neural hierarchy reveals that our encounter with art is a seamless integration of physiology and philosophy. We interpret through a complex architecture that scales from the smallest pixel of light to the highest peak of human meaning from art. By mapping the brain’s hierarchical processing, we gain the ability to align artificial neural networks (ANNs) with biological neural networks (BNNs). This alignment is critical for developing computational neuroaesthetics, systems that do not just generate content based on data probability, but that can predict, support, and enhance deep human well-being.

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Chatterjee, A., & Cardillo, E. R. (2022). Brain, Beauty, and Art: Essays Bringing Neuroaesthetics Into Focus. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-382-5_84

Cupchik, G. C., Vartanian, O., Crawley, A., & Mikulis, D. J. (2009). Viewing artworks: Contributions of cognitive control and perceptual facilitation to aesthetic experience. Brain and Cognition, 70(1), 84–91. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bandc.2009.01.003

Li, R., & Zhang, J. (2020). Review of computational neuroaesthetics: bridging the gap between neuroaesthetics and computer science. Brain Informatics, 7(1), 16. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40708-020-00118-w

Luo, Q., Yu, M., Li, Y., & Mo, L. (2019). The neural correlates of integrated aesthetics between moral and facial beauty. Scientific Reports, 9(1), 1980. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-38553-3

Thakral, P. P., Moo, L. R., & Slotnick, S. D. (2012). A neural mechanism for aesthetic experience. Neuroreport, 23(5), 310–313. https://doi.org/10.1097/WNR.0b013e328351759f

Wölfflin, H. (1950). Principles of art history: The problem of the development of style in later art (M. D. Hottinger, Trans.). Dover Publications. (Original work published 1915)

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(English below)

[VN] EP1: Nghệ thuật không đẹp

Dẫn nhập: Nghệ thuật và Lam

1:35 - 10:35 : Làm quen với khách mời, host Khánh Linh nghe Lam nói về những bước đầu đến với nghệ thuật, cũng như các hình thức nghệ thuật hiện diện nhiều nhất trong đời sống tinh thần của Lam.

Trải nghiệm nghệ thuật: thành thật và đồng điệu

10:36 - 21:18: Từ góc nhìn của người sáng tạo, Lam cho rằng sự thành thật là cốt yếu cho hoạt động nghệ thuật—phần vì nghệ thuật bao hàm nhiều hơn là chỉ-cái-đẹp, phần vì nghệ thuật là một phương thức biểu đạt cho những nội tại không nhất thiết là đẹp của mỗi người. Với sự gợi mở từ Linh (host), cả hai bàn về trải nghiệm nghệ thuật từ điểm nhìn của người tiếp nhận. Có lẽ, những tác phẩm hiện lên hoàn mỹ trong mắt người xem không phải do vỏ ngoài thẩm mỹ của nó, mà là do sự đồng điệu của nó với người xem, như thể nghệ sĩ đã biểu đạt những nội tại khó biểu đạt nơi người thưởng thức.

Cái đẹp của sự phi thẩm mỹ: tác phẩm và chất liệu sáng tác

21:19 - 29:36: Một tác phẩm không nhất thiết phải “đẹp” để ta đi tìm hiểu ý nghĩa của nó. Vỏ ngoài phi thẩm mỹ của tác phẩm dường như không quan trọng khi ý nghĩa có thể là lý do nó đẹp, và khi cảm thụ mỹ thuật là câu chuyện của cảm xúc. Với nhiều nét tương đồng, cái đẹp của sự phi thẩm mỹ thường trực trong thế giới xung quanh người nghệ sĩ dường như không ảnh hưởng đến việc sáng tạo—trong lịch sử, ở thế giới hiện đại, lẫn những viễn cảnh phản địa đàng. Sự thiếu vắng của cái thẩm mỹ thường thức tự thân nó đã là một chất liệu cho cái thẩm mỹ.

Đính chính:

26:00 Khách mời nhắc tới tác phẩm Trăng sáng - Nam Cao

Sáng tạo là cá nhân hoá

29:37 - 35:58: Trả lời câu hỏi “sáng tạo là gì” được gợi ra bởi host, Lam (khách mời) bày tỏ rằng sáng tạo không thể là tạo ra cái mới nằm ngoài tri thức hiện có, mà là thể hiện một vấn đề qua góc nhìn của mình. Sáng tạo, đồng thời, là làm mới những gì có sẵn. Như tái khẳng định bởi host, những gì hiện lên như sáng tạo nhất là những gì cá nhân nhất. Từ đó, tính cá nhân trở thành cốt yếu trong nghệ thuật—như một thành tố và như một vấn đề bàn luận.

Nghệ thuật ở hậu nhân loại

35:59 - 41:01: Cân nhắc tương lai hậu nhân loại và hiện thực xuyên nhân loại, “nghệ thuật” tạo ra bởi trí tuệ nhân tạo (AI art) và máy móc được đưa vào cuộc đối thoại. Nghệ thuật còn lại gì nếu không có tính cá nhân? Nghệ thuật không có tính cá nhân có gì hơn cái vỏ ngoài được xem là thẩm mỹ? Và, có phải vỏ ngoài, miễn là thẩm mỹ, sẽ là nghệ thuật?

Nghệ sĩ tính là nhân tính: lời kết

41:02 - end: Vô hình trung, việc nghệ thuật gắn liền với đời sống con người có lẽ sẽ tiếp diễn trong tương lai xa, bởi nghệ sĩ tính là một hình thái của nhân tính. Nhắn nhủ đến thính giả, Lam cho rằng thụ đắc cảm quan cho nghệ thuật là không quá cần thiết để tiếp xúc và thấu cảm được nghệ phẩm.

Đề xuất của khách mời

Xem:

• Children of Men (2006)

• Past Lives (2023)

• Five Feet Apart (2019)

• Big World (2024)

Đọc:

• Chiến tranh không mang khuôn mặt phụ nữ — Svetlana Alexievich

• Bức chân dung Dorian Gray — Oscar Wilde

• Những nụ hôn thời mắc dịch

• Cọp cái chết vì mùi nước hoa

[EN] Intro: Art and Lam

1:35 - 10:35: Breaking the ice with the guest, host Khanh Linh listens to Lam as she speaks of her first engagements with art, as well as the forms of art that are currently present in her life.

The artistic experience: truthful and resonant

10:36 - 21:18: From the perspective of a creator, Lam regards truthfulness as integral to artmaking—partly because art encompasses more than just-the-beautiful, partly because art is a mode of expression for the not necessarily beautiful internalities of the human being. Led by Linh (host), the two discuss the artistic experience from the focal point of the beholder. Perhaps, the work that appears to be the most well-crafted in the eyes of the audience are seen as such not because of its aesthetic surface, but due to its resonance with the viewer, as if the artist has managed to articulate some internal inarticulables within the beholder.

The aesthetics of the unaesthetic: composition and inspiration

21:19 - 29:36: A work need not be “beautiful” to prompt one to explore its meaning. The unaesthetic surface of a work is seemingly unimportant when meaning is what makes a work beautiful, and when aesthetic perception belongs to the realm of affect. With many similarities, the beauty of the overall unaesthetic world in which an artist lives affects their composition minimally—in history, in the modern world, and in dystopian possibilities. The absence of the normatively aesthetic is by itself a foundation for aestheticization.

Correction:

26:00, the guest meant the work “Bright Moon” by Nam Cao.

To create is to individualize

29:37 - 35:58: Attempting to answer the question of “what is creating” Lam (guest) expresses that to create is not to invent a novelty that exists outside current epistemology, but to depict something through one’s own point of view. To create is also to renew what is existent. As reiterated by the host, what appears to be the most creative is whatever is most proficiently individualized. Thereon, individuality becomes crucial to the art—as a constituent and as a matter of discussion.

Art in the posthumanist interval

35:59 - 41:01: Taking the posthumanist future and the transhumanist present into account, “art” created by artificial intelligence (AI art) and machinery is brought up in the dialogue. What is there in art to be left without individuality? How is art without individuality different from a surface regarded to be aesthetic? And, is it the case that as long as a surface is aesthetic, the whole can be considered art?

Artistry as humanity: outro

41:02 - end: Overall, the coexistence of the human race and their artmaking will probably remain a facticity in the distant future, since artistry is a mode of manifestation of humanity. In her words for the audience, Lam maintains that the acquisition of artistic perception is not that necessary for one to expose themself to the art, and to resonate with the works of art.

Guest’s recommendations

To watch:

• Children of Men (2006)

• Past Lives (2023)

• Five Feet Apart (2019)

• Big World (2024)

To read:

• The Unwomanly Face of War — Svetlana Alexievich

• The Picture of Dorian Gray — Oscar Wilde

• Những nụ hôn thời mắc dịch

• Cọp cái chết vì mùi nước hoa

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An instance of an established teleology proposed for the art is “art for social change,” whose adversary is commonly regarded as “art for art’s sake.” The endorsement of the former usually points to the role of art in raising awareness, the inherent ideological nature of art, and the artist, whose ontology cannot be separated from the interdependent world in which they live. More institutional narratives like that of Marxism would go further to assert that the purpose of the human society is to achieve communism; thus, art and the artists as constituent of the human society have to will themselves to this cause. There, we have a starting point for ambiguating the teleology of the art.

Since art is widely recognized as a self-expression, venturing into the nature of the self changes how we view art itself. The process of artmaking, being prima facie a self-expression, entails the artist to either intentionally or unintentionally assert themself. Within said asserting, their moral-political self, among other aspects, has been made visible. Nonetheless, this only works provided that the self is a unified, coherent whole. Regarding the unified, coherent self, Jacques Lacan (1949, trans. 2006) asserted that the whole self is but an infantile méconnaissance (misrecognition) when a baby mistakenly deems the image they see in the mirror to wholly be themself; this illusion would later be the foundation of the ego (1).

Furthermore, in his analogy, Maxwell (1999) demonstrated that a person is all too complex; no one will know all there is to know about a given person, although said person might be one’s friend or relative, since all their relationships know them by different aspects and in different degrees (2).

Therefore, from (1) and (2), a person and the corresponding self exists in multitudinous aspects which cannot be fully grasped by said person themself and their relationships. And if the self is vast, one cannot possibly articulate all of themself, including their moral-political self, within an artwork. Since each artwork can only cover so many different aspects of the artist’s self, to demand “art for social change” might come off as neglecting the epistemological struggle in the assertion of the self. And if one is to assert that the moral-political self be privileged, one needs to foreground as to why the moral-political self is more important than other aspects of the self.

And, analogous to the self, one may go further to propose that the teleology of art should be treated likewise to the teleology of humans—i.e., in an existentialist manner. Nietzsche (1882, sec. 125) proposes that God is dead, and thus the human race is left to derive their teleology from within themselves.

 But how may this teleology be resonant to the work of art—art does not, and cannot, derive its meaning from itself because it is obviously non-sentient. However, the teleology of the work of art is articulated by humans, and all humans are created “all free, equal, and independent” Locke (1690, sec. 95). Thus, without a divine authority which may gesture toward a divine purpose for humans, and consequently, for the art as an activity of humans, one’s articulation of the teleology of the art is just as legitimate as the articulation of the same kind made by others, as humans are equal by nature. This perspective can be better underpinned when one considers artmaking as a process to create which is in itself meaningful to the artist, rather than meaningful because the artist knows what the artwork is to do—i.e., the artwork’s existence precedes its essence.

From examining the ontology and teleology of the human race itself, the teleology of an artwork can be reimagined as non-definitive and multiplicative likewise the artist by whom the work was created. Thus, the non-authoritative articulation of the teleology of art, while seemingly dismissing every attempt at asserting a teleology, does invite us to chime in: What is an artwork, and the art, supposed to do for each of us—intrapersonally?

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Lacan, J. (2006). Ecrits, the first complete edition in English (B. Fink et al, Trans.). W. W. Norton & Company. (Original work published 1949) https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~cavitch/pdf-library/Lacan%20Mirror%20Stage.pdf

Locke, J. (1690). The Second Treatise of Government. https://english.hku.hk/staff/kjohnson/PDF/LockeJohnSECONDTREATISE1690.pdf

Maxwell, N. (1999). Are there Objective Values?. The Dalhousie Review, 79(3), 301-317. https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/105657/1/105657_28%20Are%20there%20Objective%20Values.pdf

Nietzsche, F. W. (1882). The Gay Science: Parable of the Madman. https://philosophy.hku.hk/courses/200506/yphi0002/files/28-sept.htm

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From a neuroscientific perspective, art is its own reward because it directly activates the brain’s fundamental reward circuitry. When we create or experience art, our brains transform sensory information into value signals that engage reward-related networks and neuromodulators (Vartanian & Goel, 2004). A painter absorbed in mixing colors, a musician lost in improvisation, or a viewer moved by a sculpture experiences rewards that are immediate, personal, and self-sustaining. This process, known as sensory valuation, means that the visual patterns of a painting, the harmonic structures of music, or the rhythmic flow of curves become intrinsically rewarding stimuli. They do not need to promise food, safety, or social status to feel good (Nadal & Skov, 2024).

Surprisingly, the pleasure we experience when viewing art may arise not from the object itself, but simply from knowing that it is art. A study by Chatterjee & Cardillo in 2022 using fMRI examined whether simply labeling an image as “art” — regardless of personal preference or content — is enough to trigger a specific neural response in the brain’s reward circuit. The results showed that, compared to non-art control images (matched for content), art images activated reward-related regions, especially the ventral striatum and the right orbitofrontal cortex. The researchers concluded that the artistic status of an image alone is sufficient to activate the reward circuit (ventral striatum (e.g., nucleus accumbens, medial prefrontal cortex, orbitofrontal cortex, amygdala, and midbrain dopaminergic nuclei), independent of content or aesthetic liking (pp. 113, 114). In other words, the intrinsic value of art is derived from the act of engaging with it in both visible and invisible form. This finding suggests that people can derive satisfaction simply from recognizing something as art, even when its visible features are unchanged.

Put simply, the ventral striatum responded to art not because people liked the images or found them familiar, but for a different reason altogether.

To explain this, researchers distinguish between “wanting” (incentive motivation) and “liking” (pleasure), which are separable components of reward processing both psychologically and biologically. “Wanting” drives us to approach and engage with potentially rewarding stimuli, while “liking” reflects the pleasurable experience that comes from consuming the reward (Berridge et al., 2009, as cited in Chatterjee & Cardillo, 2022). One interpretation is that recognizing an image as art, which is invisible engagement, places us in a “wanting” state—motivating us to explore its content, style, and elements (McCallum et al., 2020, sec. 2) (visible engagement)—before experiencing the pleasurable “liking” phase.

Another attribution to art’s reward is predictive coding—the brain’s constant effort to predict incoming sensory information and update its models when predictions fail (Kesner, L. 2014). Art exploits this system brilliantly: great artworks create expectations, violate them in interesting ways, and then resolve them, generating a cascade of positive affect and interest. This process explains why we might find complex art either engaging or not, rather than confusing. As we view a painting or listen to a symphony, our brains work to minimize prediction error—to “solve” the artwork. Successful prediction updates produce pleasure, while surprising but resolvable mismatches generate curiosity and delight (Kesner, L. 2014). The activity itself becomes rewarding, creating states of deep engagement or “flow” where the process is its own motivation.

Ultimately, art stimulates intense cognitive engagement and gives objects a sense of “purposiveness without a purpose,” motivating viewers to interpret, explore, and create rich personal meanings. These rewards are unique because they arise entirely from the activity itself—the process of self-reflection and intellectual engagement—and not from external validation or material gain. This poses an interesting wonder for everyday life: By recognizing the principles of aesthetic engagement, can we transform other daily activities into an art form, thereby unlocking the secret, profound, and deeply personal reward of pure cognitive fulfillment?

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Berridge, K. C., Robinson, T. E., & Aldridge, J. W. (2009). Dissecting components of reward: ‘liking’, ‘wanting’, and learning. Current Opinion in Pharmacology, 9(1), 65–73. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.coph.2008.12.014

Chatterjee, A., & Cardillo, E. R. (2022). Brain, Beauty, and Art: Essays Bringing Neuroaesthetics Into Focus. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-382-5_84

Kesner, L. (2014). The predictive mind and the experience of visual art work. Frontiers in Psychology. https://doi.org/10.3389/FPSYG.2014.01417

McCallum, K., Mitchell, S., & Scott-Phillips, T. (2020). The Art Experience. Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 11(1), 21–35. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-019-00443-y

Nadal, M., & Skov, M. (2024). The sensory valuation account of aesthetic experience. Nature Reviews Psychology, 4. https://doi.org/10.1038/s44159-024-00385-y

Vartanian, O., & Goel, V. (2004). Neuroanatomical correlates of aesthetic preference for paintings. NeuroReport, 15(5), 893–897.

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The core benefit of the platform lies in its standardization. For years, fragmented data hindered global collaboration, making it difficult to compare findings across laboratories. By integrating millions of datasets—from cell morphology and molecular makeup to electrophysiology—the Allen Institute has created a common language for the brain. This standardization dramatically accelerates discovery, enabling researchers worldwide to move faster toward understanding the complexities of neural function and disease.

Openness as the Measure of Success

The BKP’s success hinges not only on its accuracy and transparency but on its daily usefulness in real experiments, where it faces competition from established field-specific repositories and general AI assistants. The institute’s track record emphasizes openness and community input, and the BKP is built with clear documentation and a mechanism to invite feedback from users. This approach is designed to allow the platform to be adopted by labs of all sizes—from universities to industry—and ultimately become the standard part of how neuroscience is done.

Unlocking the Aesthetic Nexus

This new infrastructure is particularly transformative for highly complex, interdisciplinary fields like neuroaesthetics—the study of the biological basis of art and beauty. It provides the necessary foundation for revealing the underlying biological processes of artistic involvement in life, particularly where neuroscience must navigate other disciplines. This massive scale allows researchers to move beyond simple correlation to precisely map the specific neural circuits that transform automatic emotional input into the intentional cognitive engagement necessary for aesthetic judgment, ultimately providing empirical grounding for humanistic concepts and accelerating the move toward understanding the full neural architectures of creation.

The Critical Next Phase: A Call for Amendment

The release signals that the next phase is critical, requiring the BKP to quickly handle real-world questions, competing findings, and fast-moving literature.

Napat Foundation calls for active participation and amendment from the global research community during this crucial initial rollout. Researchers must test the BKP rigorously against their own findings. Their input will determine how quickly the platform evolves and ensures it becomes reliable and open enough to solidify its position as the standard resource for the next generation of brain science.

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https://brain-map.org/bkp

Community Forum:

https://community.brain-map.org/c/how-to/brain-knowledge-platform/16

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We the audience, is endowed with the task to navigate this situation—do we reject and deplatform the work of art if they come from morally questioning figures, do we appreciate their artistic marvels while also acknowledging the troublesome nature of their creators (likewise what is usually done to examine historical figures), or do we have more demanding nuances to tend to?

Among the most prominent approaches to the stated problem is to appreciate the artistic marvels of a work while also acknowledging the problematic and morally questioning demeanors, behaviors, and beliefs. This is the case with the handling of Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, where the dissection of the work cherishes the feminist ideals within yet also call out the racism evident through the use of the N-word or the orientalist depiction of Esther being “yellow as a Chinaman” (Plath, 1963, p. 14).

On the same note, the examination of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s work, underlined with the insight that he stole the writings of Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald—his wife—and passed off as his own, is now approached as if the works are co-authored by the couple. The recognition of Scott’s stealing remains constant, alongside. Such resorts can be tied to the ontological divergence of a work from its creator.

Art originates from the author, but its reception requires a make-believe process of the audience—how The Bell Jar, The Great Gatsby became significant are owed to the coinciding point between what their authors intended and what resonated with the readers. The aforementioned phenomenon is revealed better when one considers the appreciation of poems by the abusive husband and lover Paul Verlaine, as the audience’s roles become intentionally more prominent in readings of the Symbolist poetry. Overall, it can be seen that cherishing a work while acknowledging the problematic nature of their creator is valid in the sense that a work’s identity is not entirely dependent on the author, but also on the audience—readers and critics alike. And if a work is ontologically divergent from its creator, a nod to it need not also be the nod to its author.

But does the ontological distance between the artist and their work sufficiently justify supporting morally vile artistic figures? The public is aware of J. K. Rowling’s transphobia and Kanye West’s antisemitism as of lately, and many approached them with respect to the quality of their work and with disapproval of their beliefs, speeches, and behaviors. Yet the important detail left out is that they are alive. Unlike Plath, Fitzgerald, or Verlaine, Rowling and West still benefit from the attention people pay to their work. The wealth from the Harry Potter franchise has been used by Rowling to fund anti-transgender agencies (Brown, 2025).

By the name nature, the wealth from streamed music and purchased merchandise of West, has been used to fund Neo-Nazi, or more specifically, Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes—the amount exceeding $30,000 in the year 2023 (Wade, 2023). West’s praising of the German genocider also uplifted white supremacists, given the rapper’s cultural significance (Ramirez, 2022). It is also vital to consider that Rowling’s and West’s wealth per se shields them from consequences normally met by transphobe and Neo-Nazis. The ontological distance of an artwork and the artist only seems plausible when the artist’s immoral endeavours is not enabled by said artwork. Here, the only solution there lies in front of us is to reject the artwork and the artist altogether.

And yet, even when a creator of an artwork does not benefit from the artwork being appreciated anymore, there are cases where the moral problems embedded in the artists are so vile that the option of separating them from their artwork comes off as implausible. Would one look at the portraits by Pablo Picasso the same knowing he mistreated his muses, cheated on almost all of them, at least indirectly, drove two of them into suicide, and maintained that:

“For me there are two kinds of women: goddesses and doormats” (Delistraty, 2017)?

Would one be able to feel the words of Alice Munro, the 2013 Nobel Literature Laureate, the same if they stumble upon the fact that her prize-winning words were used to make known her siding with Gerard Fremlin, the husband who sexually abuses her daughter, Andrea Robin Skinner?

To recapitulate, the separation of the art from the artist is a factual state—the arts need to involve the make-believe reception of the audience to fully realize itself. However, said ontological divergence from the creator does not necessarily amount to a sufficient justification for supporting morally questioning artists who benefit directly from their work being appreciated. And although said ontological divergence exists, does one even look at an artwork the same, knowing the ones who created it, in certain cases, were dispositionally vile?

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Brown, A. (2025, November 8). JK Rowling “funding transphobia” as equality in Britain goes backwards, MP says. Daily Mirror. https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/jk-rowling-funding-transphobia-equality-36173992

Delistraty, C. (2023, June 12). How Picasso bled the women in his life for art. The Paris Review. https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2017/11/09/how-picasso-bled-the-women-in-his-life-for-art/

Plath, S. (1971). The Bell Jar. Ryerson University.

Ramirez, N. M. (2022, October 12). White supremacists are doing backflips over Kanye West’s antisemitism. Rolling Stone. https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/kanye-west-antisemitism-praised-white-supremacists-extremists-1234610200/

Wade, P. (2023, April 16). Kanye’s Campaign Has Paid Holocaust Denier Nick Fuentes More Than $30,000 This Year. Rolling Stone. https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/kanye-west-campaign-nick-fuentes-2023-1234715909/

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