Seminar on Supernormal Stimuli in relation to art and aesthetics at the Netherlands Institute of Advanced Study on october 26th, 2017.

1. the supernormal
interdisciplinary reflections on Tinbergen's supernormal stimulus

2. NIAS seminar october 26, 2017
• structure of the project, my role in it
• Niko Tinbergen and the supernormal stimulus
• examples
• alleged implications for our understanding of the arts
• backstory: the two cultures, interdisciplinarity

3. structure of the project
• Book project:
• on Tinbergen’s concept of the supernormal stimulus and the alleged implications for our
understanding of the arts
• I’m not the only author: it will be a collection of essays by experts from all art disciplines
(art history, musicology, theatre studies, architectural theory and literature studies)
• My role: initiator, inspirer/matchmaker, editor. I will also write a comprehensive
introduction, on which the other writers will reflect in their own essay (my main goal at
NIAS)
• Separate chapter in cooperation with prof. Carel ten Cate (Leiden University) and
Museum Boerhaave: historical account of original experiment, including never-before
published image material
• And (probably?) a separate chapter on the use of this kind of knowledge in art education

4. structure of the project
• target audience: ‘art lovers, science lovers’
• academics / professionals in art and culture
• art students / science students
• museums, galeries, art institutions, universities
• general audience

5. structure of the project
• Exhibition? Symposium?
• talks by the authors of this book
• dialogue between scientists and artists
• in collaboration with Natuurmuseum Brabant, Museum
Boerhaave, contemporary art museum

6. structure of the project
• Project blog!
• thesupernormal.arnoldhoogerwerf.net
• accompanying collection of texts,
images, links and thoughts

7. Niko Tinbergen
• Nikolaas Tinbergen (The Hague, NL 1907 - Oxford, ENG 1988)
• Zoologist / Ethologist / Filmmaker / Writer
• Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine (1973) with Konrad Lorenz & Karl von Frisch
• Brother Jan Tinbergen (economist) received a Nobel Prize as well!
• Served on the University of Oxford (1949 - 1974)
• Desmond Morris
• Richard Dawkins
• Emphasized importance of both instinctive and learned behaviour
• Towards the end of his career, he used animal behaviour as a basis for speculation
about the nature of human behaviour (esp. violence and aggression)

8. supernormal stimulus
• artefact / exaggerated and artificial stimulus that
elicits a much stronger response than a natural
stimulus

13. supernormal stimulus & art?
• Tinbergen never made a connection with art
• Although he was convinced that human behaviour
in general is susceptible to supernormal stimuli

14. supernormal stimulus & art?
• Last couple of decades, many references to the
concept of supernormal stimuli can be found in
scientific literature
• Connection with art is often speculative, heavily
discussed and criticized

15. supernormal stimulus & art?
• In this project / my introductional chapter I will give
an overview and compare several examples of
scientists who refer to the supernormal stimulus
and relate it to the aesthetic experience.
• For now: Ramachandran, Steven Pinker, Ernst
Gombrich

16. Vilayanur Ramachandran
• neuroscientist
• ‘The Science of Art - A neurological theory of aesthetic
experience (1999, with William Hirstein)
• Postulates supernormal stimulus as ‘the first law of art’

17. Nigel Spivey - “How art made the world” (BBC television, 2005)

18. Steven Pinker
• Linguist, evolutionary psychologist
• Art as a ‘byproduct’ of other evolutionary
adaptations
• Music as a supernormal stimulus

19. Richard Dawkins - “The Genius of Charles Darwin” (UK Channel 4 Television, 2008)

20. Ernst Gombrich
• Ernst Gombrich (1909-2001)
• biggest art historian of the 20th century
• ‘Art and Illusion - A study in the psychology of
pictorial representation’ (1960)
• Had a long-standing friendship and
correspondence with Tinbergen

21. Ernst Gombrich
• Refers to Tinbergen's work with
herring gulls and sticklebacks
(including the anecdote that male
sticklebacks became aggressive
when red mail trucks passed the
aquarium in Tinbergen’s laboratory).

22. Ernst Gombrich
“In recent years this making of
dummies and images has become one
of the most rewarding tools of the
student of animal behaviour. […] the
scientist’s laboratory has turned into an
artist’s workshop.”
Gombrich, Art & Illusion, A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation
(1960)

23. Ernst Gombrich
“We respond with particular readiness to
certain configurations of biological
significance for our survival. The recognition
of the human face, on this argument, is not
wholly learned. It is based on some kind of
inborn disposition. Whenever anything
remotely facelike enters our field of vision,
we are alerted and respond.”
Gombrich, Art & Illusion, A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation (1960)

24. Ernst Gombrich
“Now, I do not believe that the mystery of
Raphael will one day be solved through
the study of gulls. My sympathies are all
with those who warn us against rash
speculations about inborn reactions in
man - whether they come from the
racialist camp or that of Jung”
Gombrich, Art & Illusion, A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation (1960)

25. Ernst Gombrich
(in response to Ramachandran’s ‘The Science of Art’,
a few months before his death)
“Even a fleeting visit to one of the great
museums might serve to convince the
authors that few of the exhibits conform
to the laws of art they postulate”
Gombrich, ‘Concerning ‘The Science of Art’, Journal of Consciousness Studies,
2000)

26. “clear-cut example of late twentieth century sexist
scientific and reductive megalomania”
Donnya Wheel Well (pseudonym to avoid the scorn of her colleagues?!) in
response to Ramachandran
‘Against the reduction of art to galvanic skin response’ - Journal of
Consciousness Studies

27. Ramachandran - ‘The Artful Brain’
“There’s even a name for this discipline. My
colleague Semir Zeki calls it neuroaesthetics -
just to annoy the philosophers”

28. “Given the current highly
polarized situation, the
fact that we have been
criticized both for
publishing
Ramachandran and
Hirstein, and for
publishing certain
commentaries on it from
the humanities, sug-
gests that we are doing
something right!”

29. Backstory
C.P. Snow, The Two Cultures (1959)
“Thirty years ago the cultures had long ceased to
speak to each other, but they at least managed a
frozen smile across the gulf. Now the politeness has
gone and they just make faces”

30. Backstory
• Mutual criticism seems to be typical for the divide between the natural sciences and
humanities:
• social scientists (art historians, philosophers):
• object to attempts to reduce aesthetic experience to a set of physical, biological
or neurological laws
• questionable whether the theories can capture the originality of individual works
of art.
• Natural scientists (neuroscientists):
• object to excessive historicism, institutionalism, poststructuralism in 20th
century art theory.
• object to dogma of art as a purely cultural phenomenon

31. Backstory
• ‘Hyperspecialists’ that don’t speak each others language
• little openness towards other disciplines
• interdisciplinary research the only way to remedy this?
• If ‘culture’ increasingly becomes an aspect of ‘nature’,
how will this affect the arts of the 21st century?

32. “What I’m suggesting is that if those
seagulls had an art gallery, they would
hang the long stick with the three red
stripes on the wall, worship it, pay millions
of dollars for it, call it a Picasso, but not
understand why”
Vilayanur S. Ramachandran
Tinbergen’s needle - Paul Wolterink 2012