Vers une Culture de L’interactivité ed. by C. Faure and A. Bacchetti (review)

of them. But it is reassuring to learn, for example,that when one of the hemispheres has been damaged by physical lesion, the practicing artist or musician is likely to be more successful in making up for the loss by rehabilitation than is often the case for unskilled persons. another by Otto-JoachimGrusser et al. tend to confirm what has been dis covered about the complex response to the two sides of the visual field. The right brain’s predispositionfor spatialorganization moves the perceptual focus to the left half of the observed field and gives it more weight. But by the same token, whatever a p pears in the right field attracts attention and tends to counterbalance the physiologicalasymmetry of the whole. This asymmetryis not likely to be due only to neurological factors. For example , the study by Grusser et al. offerscareful observationson the perceptual effectsof the human infant when usually held on the left side of its mother’s body. Acoustically this placement approaches the mother’s heartbeat to the child’sright ear. Also, its right eye is favoredas it explores the narrowvisual world open to it at its close distance from the mother. The heartbeat of the mother, so dominant already in the prenatal experience of the embryo, is a good example of the role played by basic physiologicalfactors in aesthetic perception . Certainly,this early percep tion must contribute to the establishment of rhythm as one of the most powerful components of organic functioning. But when one acknowledges the contribution of such factors , for example,as the role of rhythm in music, one does well not to exaggerate its importance for musical experience at its true human relevance . The power exerted by such physiologicalforces is compensated by their primitivity.The basic beats of a Beethoven symphonyare obviously fundamental to but at the same time remote from an account of the meaningful structure of the composition. equating, for example, the nervous system’s selectivity in processingvisual shapes with similarchoices made by a painter. Rentschler et al. refer to the fact that, depending on the size of the receptive fieldsat various levels of shape perception, different ranges of spatialfrequency are recorded. B y One study byJerre Levy and One must be careful, therefore, in using a similarfilteringprocedure in a computer, they reduce the level of spatial definition for pictures to obtain images that look somewhatlike examples of various pictorial styles. But from there to conclude that stylistic form patterns in art history are directly relatable to the hierarchy of neurologicalprocessing takes courage. One is on safer ground by assuming that universallyfound regularities in aestheticform derive from biological mechanisms even though these physical bases cannot be, or are not yet, specified.David Epstein has carried out exact measurements to show that in Western classical music, as well as in the music of seven non-Western cultures, all tempos relate intrinsically to one another in whole number ratios such as 1:1,1:2,2:3,3:4 (p.93), and Turner and Poppel “constructa general definition of metered poetry that applies to the ancient Greeks as well as to the Kwakiutl,Racine and the Polynesians”(p. 76). Any attempt to relate formal properties or the content of art to the physical functioning of the organism refers to aspects that apply universally rather than to individual differences, and to objective facts rather than to subjectiveinterpretations. In his essay, the ethologistIrenius EiblEibesfeldtrefers to experiments with monkeys, raccoons and birds in which B. Rensch demonstrated that “animalsshow aesthetic preferences in that regularity, symmetry and order are preferred to asymmetryand irregularity”(p. 35).Given our present inclination toward anarchic reasoning and taste in the arts, it is wholesome to be reminded by scientists that what is true for animals holds a fortiori for us humans. PARABLES OF SUN LIGHT: OBSERVATIONS O N PSYCHOLOGY, THE ARTS, AND THE REST Rudolf Amheim. University of California Press, Berkeley,CA,U.S.A., 1989. 384 pp., illus. Trade, $27.50. ISBN: 0-520-065166. Reviewed by Elizabeth Crumley, 2208 Derby Street, Berkeley, CA 94705, U.S.A. Amheim’s newest book is a selection on the University of California Press list of Centennial Books. The 100 distinguished books to...