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Toward Quantifying Ambiguities in Artistic Images

Published: 06 November 2020 Publication History
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  • Abstract

    It has long been hypothesized that perceptual ambiguities play an important role in aesthetic experience: A work with some ambiguity engages a viewer more than one that does not. However, current frameworks for testing this theory are limited by the availability of stimuli and data collection methods. This article presents an approach to measuring the perceptual ambiguity of a collection of images. Crowdworkers are asked to describe image content, after different viewing durations. Experiments are performed using images created with Generative Adversarial Networks, using the Artbreeder website. We show that text processing of viewer responses can provide a fine-grained way to measure and describe image ambiguities.

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    Cited By

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    • (2023)Being alive to the world: an artist's perspective on predictive processingPhilosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences10.1098/rstb.2022.0429379:1895Online publication date: 18-Dec-2023
    • (2023)Aesthetics and predictive processing: grounds and prospects of a fruitful encounterPhilosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences10.1098/rstb.2022.0410379:1895Online publication date: 18-Dec-2023
    • (2021)Generative adversarial networks unlock new methods for cognitive scienceTrends in Cognitive Sciences10.1016/j.tics.2021.06.00625:9(788-801)Online publication date: Sep-2021

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    1. Toward Quantifying Ambiguities in Artistic Images

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      Published In

      cover image ACM Transactions on Applied Perception
      ACM Transactions on Applied Perception  Volume 17, Issue 4
      Special Issue on SAP 2020
      October 2020
      65 pages
      ISSN:1544-3558
      EISSN:1544-3965
      DOI:10.1145/3434049
      Issue’s Table of Contents
      Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

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      Association for Computing Machinery

      New York, NY, United States

      Publication History

      Published: 06 November 2020
      Accepted: 01 August 2020
      Received: 01 June 2020
      Published in TAP Volume 17, Issue 4

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      Author Tags

      1. Datasets
      2. aesthetics
      3. generative adversarial networks (GAN)
      4. image descriptions
      5. text tagging

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      • (2023)Being alive to the world: an artist's perspective on predictive processingPhilosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences10.1098/rstb.2022.0429379:1895Online publication date: 18-Dec-2023
      • (2023)Aesthetics and predictive processing: grounds and prospects of a fruitful encounterPhilosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences10.1098/rstb.2022.0410379:1895Online publication date: 18-Dec-2023
      • (2021)Generative adversarial networks unlock new methods for cognitive scienceTrends in Cognitive Sciences10.1016/j.tics.2021.06.00625:9(788-801)Online publication date: Sep-2021

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