In the philosophy of science we sometimes talk about “folk science”. Or even “folk logic”. This is content that is superficially true but unexamined — an excellent first guess and probably a sufficient first guess to survive for 40,000 years or so. It’s often wrong, but it works at an animal level and it works as a survival instinct.
Post hoc ergo propter hoc is kind of the perfect folk logic. Event A happened before B therefore A caused B. You can already smell a lot of magic here — I shook my fist at the sky and then it rained. I can make it rain! But less magic things too — they were there right before the murder! They must be the murderer! And probably right enough of the time that it gets a little easier to catch murderers. And a lot of the time it’s even right — if I plant these seed things then later corn will grow. Sure enough, that sympathetic magic works. If you bury a little piece of corn in the earth, later there will be more corn.
Folk science is an extension of this. The sun goes around the earth, for example. Obviously it does. Humans are too puny to have an effect on global climate. People of different colours are fundamentally different beings. But also more nearly true things — when you drop something it falls straight down, for example. When you accelerate you will keep going faster and faster for as long as you accelerate. There’s such a thing as simultaneity.
So this morning in the shower I was thinking about folk aesthetics: things that we find pleasing but that we find are imperfect, naïve. That produce results that are pleasing but not as pleasing as they could be. And in some cases we find these so pleasing we are almost addicted to them.
Symmetry is an easy one. We love symmetry. But a perfectly symmetrical natural image (a tree in center frame, for example) feels both pleasing and naïve. It isn’t as good as it could be. But there’s an appeal, especially in an idealized form like a logo. It’s more than simple, it’s simplistic. But something in our brain loves it and something else in our brain does not.
Complementary colours is another one. Why do we love blue and gold so much? Because they are opposites on the colour wheel. It triggers something we like, a simple and natural opposition. You shoot a whole movie in blue and gold and it’s visually energizing. But clearly there is a lot of colour-based mood you are missing out on. It’s a cheap trick.
Sorting like things together. We really dig this. We build addictive games around it. Get things of the same colour into a line. Hell as a kid I would spend time sorting a deck of cards because a properly sorted deck felt wonderful. We adore the purity of segregation.
Fitting things together. Another addictive game seed. In fact I think that “sorting like together” and “fitting things together” are the core elements of all successful “shit keeps falling” (thanks Joshua Schacter) games. When each successful move is accompanied by a sharp satisfying POP you have a winner. Worth millions. Because it pleases the animal.
It’s valuable for any artist (not just visual art, but also game design, hence this discussion in this blog) to identify folk aesthetics in order to break them. It pays to find richer, deeper aesthetics in, around, and in defiance of folk aesthetics. Black and white together is a killer aesthetic. Add a single colour and it explodes. Draw the eye in a deliberate direction with placement rather than simply up and down the middle of the page. Leave like things apart, in tension. Clash a colour. Jumble things that refuse to fit together. Better, show things that should fit together that will never fit together. These things occupy our brains. We try to make them right. This makes us pay attention. When we do this we please more than just the animal. Sometimes we even succeed by defying the animal.
But simply defying these things does not work. You need to deliberate. But this is how you get from folk wisdom to wisdom.
Yes there is a subtext.
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brad j. murray 