Research on Transformative Aesthetics
What’s planned…
This summer we will commence a larger project on art in the city. Theorizing on its role in public live and collecting data on the impact of some central Berlin examples.
What we do….
At the ARTS AND MINDS LAB we have one central research question that we approach from different perspectives and disciplines of the cognitive sciences and philosophy: how do the arts (architecture, images, media) and Art transform our minds? We give emphasis to 4EA and predictive processing theories of the mind and the role affect and aesthetic emotions to explain the impact of different media and the power of art.
We research the influence of architecture and urban design on our well-being (as a leading lab in the Research Platform Neurourbanism), the impact of visual media and film on how we perceive and think, and generally the potential of artworks to transform our worlds and to introduce us to new ways of world-making. We employ methods from the 4EA cognitive sciences (include philosophy, anthropology, ….. psychology, neuroscience) but also use AI as a heuristic method and include design disciplines as well as artists in our Lab.
What’s new…
Corinna Kühnapfel will present at the IAEA joint research of the ART*IS consortium on the impact of neighborhood galleries on well-being and attitudes. See here.
Joerg Fingerhut will be a guest professor at the Department for Philosophy at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin starting April 2024.
In October 2023 Corinna Kühnapfel joined our team as a Postdoc. Read more about her interests and academic background here.
Where we are…
House 1, R. 215, 216, 317, 308
Luisenstr. 56, 10117 Berlin
History
The current ARTS AND MINDS LAB has been around since January 2020 (albeit under slightly different names) building on the ART*IS grant from the Horizon-2020 program of the EU. It evolved out of a series of previous research groups at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin that also focused on embodied cognition and emotion research as well as the study of pictures, architecture, and art. Since 2020, we have had several guest researchers/fellows, such as Matthew Crippen (University of Seoul, working with us on urbanism and selective permeability) and Eva Schürmann (University of Magdeburg; working with us on theories of affective-aesthetic seeing) to name only two.
The current lab continues to work on topics of the Einstein Visiting Fellew group of Prof. Jesse Prinz: “Consciousness, Emotions, Values,” which was originally funded from 2015-2017, and received additional funding from 2018-2019 under the coordination of Joerg Fingerhut. It consisted of up to 12 international members that all investigated conscious experience, emotions, or values. Some study these topics independently, but all were also interested in their interrelations. We had three workpackages: Aesthetic Psychology (lead: Joerg Fingerhut), Morality and Sentiments (lead: Jesse Prinz), and Embodied and Embellished Perception (lead: Joerg Fingerhut).
Members of the “Consciousness Emotion, Values” group have been (among others, in alphabetical order): Anna Borghi (University of Bologna), Ophelia Deroy (Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich), Katrin Heimann (Aarhus University), Katharina Anna Helming (University of Warwick), Helmut Leder (University of Vienna), Bence Nanay (University of Antwerp), Simone Schnall (University of Cambridge), Maureen Sie (Tilburg University), Ana Tajadura-Jiménez (Charles III University of Madrid, University College London), Martin Troendle (Zeppelin University), Eva Weber-Guskar (Ruhr-University of Bochum), Hong Yu Wong (University of Tübingen).
Associated Researchers were (in alphabetical order): Marianna Ambrosecchia, Marta Benenti, Aenne Brielmann, Matthew Crippen, Gen Eickers, Javier Gomez-Lavin, Lara Pourabdolrahim; Research Assistants were (in alphabetical order): Felix Binder, Giulia Cabbai, Corinna Kühnapfel, George Neish, Laura Wallor, Claudia Winkelmayr.