Article from WeChat public account:Shell (ID:Guokr42), author: Ye Yahya, from the title figure: Oriental IC
Speaking of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, what would you first think of?
“Nobody doesn’t know” “Mystery” “She’s a sly expression” “Isn’t it a picture?”
Whether it’s true or not, her mysterious (?) smile has indeed led to countless “analysis” of melons:
Even British essayist and writer Walter Pate also expressed confusion about the expression on her face: “Mona Lisa first showed the ‘endless gentle commitment’, but when the viewer’s eyes are on When she stayed on her face, the smile turned into an ‘evil threat’.” Too complicated, to say “I don’t understand.”
In fact, Mona Lisa has long been known for her “spot class=”text-remarks” label=”(notes”> (emotional ambiguity)“, her expression is more like the world Public recognition is a symbol of fuzzy emotions. In order to give a clear explanation to this face that has been widely discussed, in the past two decades, researchers have been trying to interpret her “fuzzy emotions” in different ways.”, want to figure out the information carried on the face.
And, she really isn’t just a painting.
Where to see is the key
Harvard University professor Margaret Livingstone (Margaret S. Livingstone) found that a painting passed on to our facial emotions Information changes as people look at their positions. That is to say, the same painting, staring at different positions, shows that the emotions are different.
The reason for this is that the spatial resolution of the vision system decreases as the distance from the gaze center increases. In general, a feature of a portrait (such as the corners of the mouth, eyes, etc.) the farther away from the gaze point, the feature we see will The more ambiguous it is, the more difficult it is to identify the information it carries.
Looking at different locations for a while, what does it feel like? | Wikipedia
For Mona Lisa, her key feature is the corner of her mouth. Margaret found that when the viewer’s eyes were on the corner of the Mona Lisa’s mouth, she thought that the corner of the mouth showed a neutral mood; and when the gaze center moved to other areas, the area around the field of vision Discrimination of information seems to make the corner of the mouth “laugh.”
After determining that the key to the facial expression of Mona Lisa lies in the mouth, the scientist then finds the specific feature position of her emotions. Neurosist Christopher Taylor of the Smith-Katewell Institute of Visual Studies in San Francisco, USA (Christopher W. Tyler) and Leonid Concezić(Leonid L. Kontsevich)In 2004, an experiment was conducted in which volunteers were allowed to observe the face of Mona Lisa modified by visual noise patterns (Figure 1) and judge the degree of emotions carried in these composite images (sad, slightly sad, slightly happy, happy).
They found that when noise disturbances appear in the Mona Lisa’s mouth, people’s judgments about emotions become more difficult, while other emotionally critical features (eg eyes) did not show the same result, indicating that the specific location of the Mona Lisa emotional characteristics is the upper left corner of the mouth.
Fig. 1 Experimental design of Kongzevic et al.; A. Original image B. Synthetic noise mouth angle negative emotion C. Noise head angle positive emotion, D , E. Noise picture | Reference 9
The neuroscientist Isabel Bohrn of the Free University of Berlin and her research team from Germany confirmed this conclusion. They created a dynamic portrait of the “Mona Lisa”—that is, when the viewer’s gaze center is placed on the eye, the corners of the characters in the portrait are raised into a smile; when the center of the focus shifts to the corner of the mouth, The corners of the portrait characters become the corners of the neutral expression.
phaseCompared to the static portrait of neutral emotions, this dynamic portrait created by the “Mona Lisa” condition makes people feel more attractive, more trustworthy, and more positive. This confirms the conclusions of Margaret and Christopher from another level.
smooth method
Da Vinci’s well-known painting method (Sfumato) also strengthens Mona Lisa to some extent This feature. He paints through as many as 30 layers of thin-layer pigments that add up to less than 40 microns. This technique weakens the transition between colors, hides lines and borders, and makes the contours of objects in the work have a ripple effect. This painting technique further blurs the facial features of the Mona Lisa, and perhaps makes it easier for the painting to produce the effect Margaret said.
Mona Lisa is happy?
“Sometimes she feels that she is laughing at us, but then she can feel the sadness in her smile.” British art historian Gong Bridge (Ernst Gombrich) describes the portrait of Mona Lisa. Many people think that Mona Lisa’s facial emotions are very complicated, and happiness and sadness coexist. But in fact, on the whole, Mona Lisa’s facial emotions are positive and happy. However, this “positive feeling” is not absolute.
The psychologist Jürgen Kornmeier of the Frontier Institute of Psychology and Mental Health in Freiburg, Germany (Jürgen Kornmeier) and him Colleague Immanuel Liach (Emanuela Liaci) conducted an experimental study of “Mona Lisa really smiles.” They asked the participants to judge whether the Mona Lisa in the picture was happy or sad, and to rate the confidence level of the answer. Surprisingly, the participants were almost 100% judged that the mood of Mona Lisa was positive.
Figure 27 “Mona Lisa” examples of different mouth curvatures forming different emotional levels 丨 Reference 1
But then, when the researchers manipulated the curvature of the Mona Lisa’s mouth, the judgment of the subject changed. The researchers produced portraits of Mona Lisa in seven different emotional states (eg Figure 2), and invited the participants to manipulate the images and The original painting is scored. It turns out that when the mood of the current sequence picture is more sad, people tend to regard the next original picture as “sad”. This shows that our perception of the mood of the painting is not absolute, but will adapt to the environment.
Happiness exists only in the left half
But even though Mona Lisa’s smile is positive overall, the researchers have found that this positive emotion may only be reflected in the left half of the face. Mona Lisa’s smile is asymmetrical, and you can see this by observing the raised portion of the left side of the corner of the mouth (Fig. 3a).
Lucca Masiri, a researcher at the University of Cincinnati, (Luca Marsili), Lucia Ricciardi, St. George’s School of Medicine, University of London (Lucia Ricciardi) and Matteo Bologna of the University of Rome(Matteo Bologna ) In a recent study, a synthetic image was used to replace the right side face with the left face image (left embedded)Set the mosaic image) and replace the left face with the right face image (right nested mosaic image) (Figure 3c, d) image.
They found that 39 of the 42 subjects indicated that the left chimera image expressed positive emotions, while none of the subjects indicated that the right chimera image contained positive emotions. This means that Mona Lisa’s smile is asymmetrical, and happiness is expressed only through the left side.
Figure 3 a) Mona Lisa’s portrait of a smiling full picture b) Mona Lisa’s smile portrait face close-up c) left nesting Graphics d) Right nested mosaic graphics 丨 Reference 2
American psychologist Paul Ekman (Paul Ekman) distinguishes a smile from the perspective of authenticity, he believes that it is truly spontaneous The smile is composed of two-way symmetric activation of the upper and lower facial muscles, which usually conveys a pleasant and positive subjective experience. This smile is called “Du Xiang” smile (Duchenne Smile). The asymmetric smile with asymmetric characteristics – “non-duxiang” smile reflects a kind of unreal emotion.
Mona Lisa’s asymmetrical smile is precisely the “non-duxiang” style of smile. Think about it, it is unlikely that a person will sit on the model for hours without being able to keep a truly happy smile.
What you don’t know
Beginning that “Mona Lisa” is “not just a painting”, in fact, it is a typical portrait of “having a fuzzy emotional expression”It can be used as a tool and means of measurement in experiments, and can be used as a measurement tool to evaluate and measure the emotional ability of others. Similarly, as a celebrity painting, it can also be used for experimental materials.
Klaus Christine Carbon, a professor of psychology at Bamberg University in Germany, (Claus-Christian Carbon) Familiar with the quick recognition of faces, the modified “Mona Lisa portrait (Figure 4a). He found that after a long period of gaze, the subjects became more difficult to recognize the normal Mona Lisa portrait. This suggests that even a very familiar face, after a specific change, people’s ability to quickly recognize the changed face will be limited.
Figure 4 a. Variant Mona Lisa portrait b. Participants need to choose which one is normal Mona Lisa portrait | Reference 1
With the development of psychology and neuroscience, the scientific community has begun to have new capabilities and methods to analyze and explore problems that were once impossible to “quantify”, and “visual art (Visual Art)” and “Art PerceptionReferences
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Article from WeChat public account:Shell (ID:Guokr42), author: Ye yeye