In this work, I propose a model of visual aesthetic experience that combines formalist and contextual aspects of aesthetics. The model distinguishes between two modes of processing. First, perceptual processing is based on the intrinsic form of an artwork, which may or may not be beautiful. If it is beautiful, a beauty-responsive mechanism is activated in the brain. This bottom-up mechanism is ...

Building upon ten years of empirical work, this paper refl ects on how to study increasingly complex user engagement with transmedial worlds. We examine our own analytical evolution from an initial aesthetic orientation to our current eff ort to incorporate the useŕ s own perspective through qualitative and quantitative studies. We argue that mapping user experience requires a sophisticated and...

We investigated whether design experts or laypersons evaluate webpages differently. Twenty participants, 10 experts and 10 laypersons, judged the aesthetic value of a webpage in an EEG-experiment. Screenshots of 150 webpages, judged aesthetic or unaesthetic by different sample of 136 participants, served as stimulus material. Behaviorally experts and laypersons evaluated unaesthetic webpages si...

After a century of studies, there is no agreement on what it means to construct a sociology of music. From the beginning this " of " has been a place of tension, not of smooth coordination. If music has easily attracted social readings, there has been strong resistance to a systematic sociology of music whose aim would be to explain musical values or contents through reference to sociological f...

Colette Carmen CamenisCh is Specialist in Surgery and Attendant for Plastic, Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgery, Department of Plastic, Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgery, Kantonsspital Frauenfeld, Switzerland; and riikka Veltheim is Specialist in Plastic, Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgery, Department of Plastic, Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgery, Akademikliniken, Sweden email: cc-cam...