1/28/2004   slide 44
Ectoff Quotes from The Science of Beauty
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•“..three-month old infants prefer to gaze at faces that adults find attractive, including faces of people from races they had not been previously exposed to.”p137
•“..cross-cultural research suggests that shared ideals of beauty are not dependent on media images.” [from a study of isolated tribes w/no TV or media exposure who rate faces according to beauty.] p138
•“…Victor Johnston believes that  the faces of beautiful women, with their plump lips and small jaws, are signs of a female with low androgen and high estrogen.”p153
•So culture, media important, but not everything…
“reading “ images and deconstructing their message can help us bring to consciousness affects of an image that would otherwise go unobserved. This is invaluable in everything art to science, to simply being a wise consumer and navigator of our modern, highly image-based, culture.

But not all rationale for image production come from deliberate work on the part of the maker (or viewer). Sure, fashion model may not be good role models for body fat content for today’s women—but they are successful because there is something we find attractive about them. We do we find certain faces attractive? Why are certain types of images and visual artifacts appreciated across cultures and times? This gets into work on aesthetics and there are no clear answers to these questions.

However, there research that shows that much, if not the vast majority, of our visual processing is unconscious, or preconscious. We may try to rationale our preferences or interpretations with various theories, but these may not always be correct.

So, although visual studies/culture theory is important, it is not sufficient for understanding why we make images and how we are affected by them.

Another piece of the puzzle from research on the scientific side of things, in Vision and Brain sciences.

We will start looking at things from that perspective next week…

I want to leave you with an example of the dangers of taking solely a cultural approach to understanding images, or other aspects of the world.