Canmore abstract artist selected for world-class London art show - Rocky Mountain Outlook

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Mathematicians have calculated a “golden rule” for abstract art that famous artists tend to follow when they compose their works. Artificial intelligence, the team found, does not follow such implicit rules about shape placement, possibly explaining why computer-generated art doesn’t usually evoke awe from viewers. Scientists and philosophers have long tried to decipher why art moves people: Are there underlying features shared among masterpieces? Do painters unconsciously use similar shapes, contours or compositions to elicit an emotional response? Many of the ways researchers have tried to categorize shapes or complexity in paintings are “arbitrary,” however, says Jacek Rogala, a neuroscientist at the University of Warsaw and co-senior author of the new study. Rogala, co-senior author Shabnam Kadir, a mathematician at the University of Hertfordshire in England, and their colleagues looked to persistent homology, which is part of topology, a mathematical field that studies shapes as they deform and stretch. In this case, the team analyzed the contours of color in the works of Polish artist Lidia Kot.