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Of course art is much more than randomly generated aesthetics, but I still think this project can be insightful, if not useful. Sure, it's not telling us what objectively makes great art, but I don't believe anything can.

But if statistically significant, it might tell us something more fundamental about the pure aesthetics assigned by people to patterns. It's more like the bouba/kiki experiment.

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As I said elsewhere in this thread, I think this probably just approximates a description of the neurobiology of vision, from the retina to the occipital cortex. For example, newborns prefer high contrast images, but I presume no-one would consider them to have any understanding of art. The same for things like red / green preferences, which are likely to have their roots in the red / green cones in the retina. I'd argue it's not just useless, but lacks any meaningful insight into art.

I agree it's not particularly useful as far as art goes, but I think it can be insightful as far as visual aesthetics go.

The mistake to me is in implicating art, instead of just aesthetics. But Art Vote is a lot more catchy than Neurobiology Of Visual Aesthetics From Retina To Occipital Cortex Vote.

Accurate or not, it's a fun project.

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