Redies Christoph, Hasenstein Jens, Denzler Joachim
Institute of Anatomy I, School of Medicine, Friedrich Schiller University, D-07740 Jena, Germany.
Spat Vis. 2007;21(1-2):137-48. doi: 10.1163/156856807782753921.
Both natural scenes and visual art are often perceived as esthetically pleasing. It is therefore conceivable that the two types of visual stimuli share statistical properties. For example, natural scenes display a Fourier power spectrum that tends to fall with spatial frequency according to a power-law. This result indicates that natural scenes have fractal-like, scale-invariant properties. In the present study, we asked whether visual art displays similar statistical properties by measuring their Fourier power spectra. Our analysis was restricted to graphic art from the Western hemisphere. For comparison, we also analyzed images, which generally display relatively low or no esthetic quality (household and laboratory objects, parts of plants, and scientific illustrations). Graphic art, but not the other image categories, resembles natural scenes in showing fractal-like, scale-invariant statistics. This property is universal in our sample of graphic art; it is independent of cultural variables, such as century and country of origin, techniques used or subject matter. We speculate that both graphic art and natural scenes share statistical properties because visual art is adapted to the structure of the visual system which, in turn, is adapted to process optimally the image statistics of natural scenes.
自然场景和视觉艺术通常都被认为具有美学上的愉悦感。因此可以想象，这两种视觉刺激具有共同的统计特性。例如，自然场景显示出一种傅里叶功率谱，它倾向于根据幂律随空间频率下降。这一结果表明自然场景具有类似分形的、尺度不变的特性。在本研究中，我们通过测量视觉艺术的傅里叶功率谱来探究其是否显示出类似的统计特性。我们的分析仅限于西半球的平面艺术。为作比较，我们还分析了通常显示出相对较低美学质量或无美学质量的图像（家庭和实验室物品、植物的部分以及科学插图）。平面艺术，而非其他图像类别，在显示类似分形的、尺度不变的统计特性方面类似于自然场景。这一特性在我们的平面艺术样本中是普遍存在的；它与文化变量无关，如世纪、原产国、使用的技术或主题。我们推测平面艺术和自然场景共享统计特性，是因为视觉艺术适应了视觉系统的结构，而视觉系统又反过来适应于最佳地处理自然场景的图像统计信息。
