On which basis we have artistic preferences? What’s behind the emotional connection that we establish with a certain image or a specific form? Why sometimes we tend to attribute life to an image or feel an object as a piece of us? And finally, what kind of benefit could bring us if we pay more attention to these dynamics?

1. On which basis we have artistic preferences?
What’s behind the emotional connection that we establish with a certain image or a specific form?
Why sometimes we tend to attribute life to an image or feel an object as a piece of us?
And finally, what kind of benefit could bring us if we pay more attention to these dynamics?
AESTHETHIC EMPATHY IN DESIGN
A research about aesthetic empathy and the relationship between
shapes and emotions

2. The aesthetic empathy is the key to understand this phenomenon because it studies the the
process that leads to the phisical reaction of the body in front some specific object.
People has got diffrent tastes
As Donald Norman says, there are diffrent levels of pleasure in design: intellectual, functional
and visceral. Here we are going to examine the last type of pleasure.
There are some objects that can communicate through the expressiveness of their form using a
language made of symbols and associations.
The expressivenss is a kind of information that is perceived directly from our body.
That’s why sometimes we can say that we like something viscerally.

3. The empathy:
a social instinct derived from the process of natural selection. (Darwin; The Descent of Man,
1871)
Thanks to this we warn each other in case of danger, and we defend each other in order to save the
species from extinction.
- a form of non-verbal and instinctive communication
- involves mirror neurons
- is able to make resonate in us the same emotional movements expressed by someone else.
It’s possible to feel the empathy in the
moment when we notice the body si-
gnals of another living being.
Facial expressions, posture and
gestures can capture our attention and
make us remember the moments when
we have experienced the same feelings.

4. The aesthetic empathy is the same thing that happens in empathy between people, but it invol-
ves things.
It works as an unconscious transfer of our body structure in the structure of the observed
object so we can find association between the shape that we are observing and the shape of
our inner elements (feeling/state of mind).

5. The trick is to learn how to pay proper attention to our
bodily sensation while we are observing an object that
has really captured our attention.
- what do we feel and where in our body we feel it -
What happens if we look at a tightrope walker while he is
walking on a rope?
Thanks to the mechanism of mirror neurons, which is
the biological base of empathy, we can identify oursel-
ves with him insomuch as we can feel inside the same
movements he is doing to not lose balance. Something
similar happens in aesthetic empathy.
Observing an object or a draw we can internally feel
what we see. It will be a bit more difficult to notice these
bodily sensations, but you just have to pay proper atten-
tion.

6. Looking at Refuge for Drawbacks of Yves Netzhammer
we can almost feel the discomfort in our arms, looking at
the red thread that goes Around the Bones. But we are
just observing some marks on a surface.
Looking at Running bowls by Ronit Baranga we could al-
most feel our that hand wants to take the same position
of bowls, and have a walk on the table with its fingers.
This shows how aesthetic empathy can be a matter of
great potential.

7. Empathy : Einfühlung
The story of aesthetic empathy studies is very com-
plex but these are some of the fondamental concepts
Theodore and Robert Vischer the same who coined the
term Einfuhlung stated that: The aesthetic empathy is
an unconscious transfer of our corporeal structure in the
structure of an object and each formal dynamic corre-
sponds to a similar movement of inner life.
“We tend to seek in the other the same characteristics
similar to those that we value in ourselves, thus provi-
ding a positive auto-activation called the self-objectified
feeling.”
Theodore Lipps
Everything has its universal expressiveness and as the
rumbling sound of thunder is threatening itself or that the
weeping willow thanks to its shape expresses a passive
dangling that we associate with sadness.

8. we feel before we think
The first thing we have to remember is that... we feel be-
fore we think. This is an important intuition made by Ja-
mes and Lange in 1890.
Our body is able to feel before we cognitively recognize
a thought or an emotion.
If we see a wolf in the forest, long before realizing that
we are afraid, we are already running away really fast!
This is caused by the brain sending signals to our ner-
vous system on order to react with that fight-or-flight
response we need to defend ourselves. Only at the very
end we have time to think “oh my god, there’s a wolf
how scared I am!”
This happens because emotions are a consequence of
the physiological response of the body.
A form of knowledge that goes through the cognitive
processing of bodily sensations.

9. Bottom Up and Top Down process
The act of processing visual informa-
tion follows two paths.
The BOTTOM UP and the TOP
DOWN process.
At first, the brain experiences a bot-
tom up phase, in which the infor-
mation passes through the occipital
lobe that detects the physical cha-
racteristics of what we see, as shape
and color. Once collected and analy-
zed, this information passes through
the temporal lobe, where it’s again
re-evaluated following a top down
process. This revaluation is based on
the comparison with images of past
experiences and other data stored in
the memory.
It’s the top down process that fills
what we see with personal infor-
mation, allowing us to make con-
nections that make us recognize in
the object something familiar.

11. Expressive and symbolic forms
The form is the trace of a movement; the movement is
the result of an emotion.
There are forms which, thanks to their specific formal
characteristics, are able to evoke feelings and moods,
which can symbolically be associated with elements wi-
thin our being.
These forms communicate directly with our unconscious
using the symbolic language that spontaneously asso-
ciate an item to another based on common expressive
characteristics.
We can understand it’s language by seeing not only the
shape but understanding the movement that creates it.

12. Shapes and formative principles
Our body has been formed according to the natural morphogenetic processes, the same ones
that formed everything that surrounds us.

13. The morphogenesis is a process of infor-
mation given by a diagram of forces in-
terconnected to each other and constant
elements that are related to a specific
formative principle.
D’Arcy Thompson
Some examples :
the principle of the center;
the principle of radiation which in plants is
further subdivided into branching and nerva-
tion;
the principle of the division;
repetition;
rhythm;
symmetry;
polarity and many others

14. Organic shapes
We all have a sensitive intuition for the forms of nature
and nature itself, this is because we are part of it.
Organic forms are immediately recognized as something
familiar, harmonious and alive.
Our body has been formed according to the natural
morphogenetic processes, the same ones that formed
everything that surrounds us. The sensitivity that allows
us to perceive this concept is visceral and closely linked
to our body and its sensations.
Studying the natural formative principles could be very
interesting from the perspective of the aesthetic empa-
thy because it may make us see the formative principles
that act on the creation of the forms, as triggers that can
define even other kind of form wich could be forms of
thought or art forms or even emotions.

16. The principle of radiation.
A very immediate example can be found watching this
form, which is actually a formative principle. The princi-
ple of radiation, the same principle that gives a shape to
a dandelion and has generated the universe through the
Big Bang explosion.
“Radiation is a feeling of movement steadily bursting
outward from a visible or suggested central point. It is
the emission of rays from a single source”.
Since everything is made by formative principles, inclu-
ding us, we are able to recognize them internally.
It’s possible to compare the movement of a formative
principle to a concrete movement of an emotion.
A particular shape or element can assume a completely
different meaning from person to person.
and the connection we make between the things that
fascinate us and our personal experience, is the real en-
richment that art can give to us.

20. So, looking at this
form, can you
feel an expan-
sion somewhere
in your body? Do
you feel it in your
chest, in your
head or maybe
somewhere else?

21. Anthropomorphic and zoomorphic
forms
As we can see anthropomorphic
and zoomorphic forms have an im-
mediate ability to communicate a
sense of “life” and we go into imme-
diate empathy with the object.
We are biologically predisposed to
the identification of living elements
especially if these are people or ani-
mals.
The vision of human body parts cau-
ses us a great deal of attention be-
cause we make a direct association
with our body.

22. Lines
Our eyes love to
watch lines.
The line is in fact
the expressi-
ve element par
excellance be-
cause it predi-
sposes us to a
motion heard in-
ternally.
The line is an ele-
ment perceptible
instantly in its
dynamism.
“The different dimension of line and surface, the diffe-
rence between their movements act symbolically; the
vertical line elevates, the horizontal one fills; the zig-zag
line excites more than the straight one, recording us the
changing directions in life in relation to specific rules and
patterns.”
F.T. Vischer

23. Symbols in design
A symbol is similar to a metaphore;
it’s the connection between image
and a meaning and express itself
throuh the sensible intuition and we
came to understand it in a poetical
way.
“The concept of this project talks
about the awakening, assuming
new shapes to overcome personal
blocks. I think that I evoked these
long legs for a hope of elevation from
volgarity and monothony of everyday
life.”
Umberto Dattola

24. The cocoon is a protective envelope in which occurs the
metamorphosis of some insects.
Its shape and its natural biological function allows the
association of protective sensations and transformation.
There’s even the possibility to perceive a sensation con-
cerning time, as we know the long timescale of the co-
coon we can feel a time dilation, accompanied by a
feeling of tranquillity given by the natural lowering of the
energy level that we experience identifying ourselves wi-
thin it.

25. Form in being and deformation
Contrary to what one may think, the formless or a form
in being, that is a not fully actualized form, is quite loa-
ded with significance. What is formless is characterized
by a state of unrealized morphic potentiality that leaves
open numerous morphological possibilities because it
contains already the information of the final form which
it is destined to become. Deformity and exaggeration
are very powerful expressive principles that presuppose
the changing of a form that at first was considered nor-
mal, but later abnormal.
There is, therefore, an approach that seeks to investiga-
te the possible reasons for the deformation, an intuition
of the principle that was responsible for the deforma-
tion of a detail, that makes explicit the way in which the
creative force acted to modify the form. “Deformation”
implies an anomaly and the mind is interested and intri-
gued by the desire to understand what its cause might
be.

26. As in the caricatures examined by Kris and Gombrich, it
is the exaggeration of the traits that define the expres-
sion of a face characterizing a person.
The expressive use of lines and the expression of a
face, eyes and hands, if made to stand out and distor-
ted, serves to make explicit the psychic motion which
causes the arrangement to assume a new shape, the
shape most expressive of such motion.
In the case of design, the application of a principle
of deformation has the capacity to take an every day
object and make it unusual. Exaggeration serves to fo-
cus attention on the anomalous variable that suggests
an interference springing from an unforeseen force. An
object of that nature has the ability to reawaken us from
the lethargy of the ordinary reality, reminding us once
again that the morphological possibilities can be infinite
and as such to inspire an ever more open mind.

27. Rhythm and texture
The music of matter.
Can you relate a tex-
ture to some kind of
music?
In Nature, the shape
is the result of a vi-
bration wave that me-
ets the material. The
vibration indicates
the passage of a cre-
ative or a destructive
force trhrough the
material.
If we look at
everything with the
idea that a form is
a result of a certain
type of vibration, we
can easily hit the he-
art of the genesis of
forms and emotional
meanings.

28. Inorganic and geometric shapes
As Worringer said in Abstraction and
Empathy contrary to what happen in
empathy, the abstraction, the tran-
scendence and the spirituality are
man’s response at the beginning of
the times, to the fearful chaos of na-
ture. Primitive man, completely bur-
dened by bad weather and natural
forces, had to abstract his thoughts in
an enclosed space, geometric, inor-
ganic and regular.
The fascination for this kind of sha-
pes can imply an interest in the rese-
arch of the mathematical principles
that shaped the universe. The feeling
of connection to this kind of shapes,
especially if we see examples of sa-
cred geometry, can also imply a will
of transcendence and spiritualism.
These shapes synthesize often a
symbolical meaning and can be per-
ceived as abstractions of ideas.

29. Effects on everyday life
Incorporation of art into everyday life
causes a dense effect of symbolic
meaning. We can see two extremes
generating a third and new form of
vision. Being able to see or use a
common object, this time infused
with art and poetry, provides to our
everyday life, an atmosphere that has
the unique power to create new point
of views.
There is an analogy in psychology
between symbols and their integra-
tion into reality.
The integration of these two extre-
mes, leads to a significant evolution
for humans. And according to Jung,
the synthesis that the symbol is able
to recreate is the transcendent fun-
ction, the secret of the transforma-
tion of the self.

30. Finding an intimate unconscious element transposed in
the form of a design object, and placed in a real environ-
ment, help to integrate the psychic element into reality.
This type of design is the interface of our internal world
transposed to the outside world, a synthesis of what we
are in our deepest and what is the result in the material
world.
As we have the design as an extention of the body,
could we assert that we can also have
a design as extension of the soul?