MSc Psychology of the Arts, Neuroaesthetics & Creativity

This module aims to provide students with an introduction into empirical aesthetics, focusing primarily psychological and neuroscience perspectives.

Lecture structure:

Aesthetic theory

1. History of the neuroscientific, psychological and philosophical study of aesthetics and art appreciation (Rebecca Chamberlain)
2. Psychological theories of aesthetic experience (mere exposure, gestalt psychology, information theory, processing fluency, prototypes, neuroaesthetics and evolutionary psychology) and brain mechanisms of aesthetic appreciation: reward, interest and curiosity (Guido Orgs).

Measuring aesthetic experience

1. Behavioural and neuroimaging methods used in an experimental psychology approach to aesthetics (Guido Orgs ).
2. Measuring aesthetic responses in the gallery (Guido Orgs )

The role of the stimulus in aesthetic perception

1. Stimulus-specific aspects of aesthetic perception in vision, audition, touch, taste/smell and multisensory aesthetics (Guido Orgs).
2. Aesthetic perception of bodies, faces and human movement(Guido Orgs).

The role of the observer in aesthetic perception

1. The role of expertise, culture and individual differences in aesthetic perception (Rebecca Chamberlain)
2. The role of intention, effort and authenticity in aesthetic appreciation (Rebecca Chamberlain).

The impact of aesthetics in society

1. The psychological value of engagement in the arts (Rebecca Chamberlain)
2. Applications of experimental aesthetics in consumer psychology, branding, marketing design (Rebecca Chamberlain)

This module aims to provide students with a comprehensive and an in-depth understanding about the research on creativity. By adopting a multidisciplinary approach, this module will cover latest research findings from various disciplines within psychology, covering research fields such as cognitive psychology, social psychology, comparative and developmental psychology, creative arts and media, and neuroscience. It will bring the students up to date about what has been done in creativity research and how one can hone creative skills/processes.

Lecture structure:

1. Introducing Creativity (JB)
2. Measurement of creativity (JB)
3. Neuroscience of Creative Insight (JB)
4. Neuroscience of Idea Generation and Evaluation (JB)
5. Creativity and Individual Differences (JB)
6. Enhancing Creativity (JB)
7. The evolutionary origin of creativity and the arts (RCham)
8. Creativity and the development of expertise in the visual arts (RCham)
9. The creative process and creativity across the lifespan (RCham)
10. Creativity and psychopathology (RCham)

This module covers the primary statistical analyses used in psychology including:

• multivariate data
• screening and cleaning
• power and sample size determination
• factor analysis
• multiple regression
• analysing contrasts
• univariate and multivariate repeated measures
• ANCOVA and MANCOVA.

This module provides you with the core skills needed to become a successful researcher. This is achieved via two complementary strands; the first strand covers fundamental research skills: seminars on bibliographic searching, essay writing, research report writing, oral presentation skills and career planning and lab sessions in which students conduct, analyse and write up an experiment from the field of music psychology. The second strand exposes students to cutting edge research in the field of music cognition and neuroscience via the Eminent Speaker Series and involves the opportunity to produce a collaborative report from the series for the Music, Mind and brain blog.

To provide understanding and critical skills related to research design and analysis for quantitative and qualitative studies.

Lecture topics will include: psychology as science and the hypothetico-deductive account, basic concepts (e.g., validity, reliability, sampling, and measurement), experimental designs, quasi-experimental and specialised designs, survey design and analysis, single-case designs, introduction to key concepts of qualitative research, thematic approaches and methods of qualitative research (including , thematic analysis, grounded theory and IPA), and discursive approaches to qualitative research (incl. narrative analysis and discourse analysis).

A student-led seminar series, consisting of 10, two-hour seminars on design and statistics as principled argument will run alongside the lectures.

This module covers brain anatomy and functions and modern experimental techniques to study the neural basis of behaviour.

Tutors: Professor Joydeep Bhattacharya and Dr Gianna Cocchini

This module aims to provide you with the opportunity to carry out an empirical research project supervised by a member of staff, investigating any aspect of the arts or creativity from a cognitive and/or neuroscientific perspective.

This module is an introduction to programming computer graphics, covering the basic principles of programming - variables, conditionals, functions, loops, data structures, as well as the principles of Object Oriented Programming. Within the module, you'll create computational work within the context of art and design.

You'll explore a selection of topics from the following:

• Procedural and generative drawing.
• Algorithms and problem-solving techniques.
• Development of interactive software.
• Image and video processing techniques.
• Installation practices.

This module builds on the introductory level of statistics and probability theory and aims to provide students with theory and practice in the application of advanced quantitative methods across multiple areas of psychology and neuroscience.

Topics include: using R and Matlab in psychological research, logistic regression, resampling and Monte Carlo methods, psychological model fitting, Bayesian inference, structural equation modelling, time series analyses, open science tools.

Within the humanities, sciences, and outside the academy we are witnessing a ‘turn to the body’. That is, from contagions, which spread virally on social media seen to work through embodied forms of sense-making and perception, through to the amplification of the senses, attention and perception within simulated realities; the modulation of emotion, affect and feeling, and the creation of mediated intimacy across a range of media forms; through to a range of practices which target the body as the site of change, expression and transformation. The body and its capacity for mediation is central to understanding media and communications. This option will explore these debates by encouraging the student to think through their own embodied experience in relation to a number of case studies. These will include media representations and eating disorders; body image; queer and transgendered bodies; social media contagions, non-verbal and subliminal communication; affect and emotion; film and the senses (including suggestion); narrative and identity; images and the non-visual; biomediation; and mental health and the media (particularly exploring mental health and difference in the context of diasporic media).

The module draws from a wide range of debates and theories across the field of body studies, including affect studies, queer theory, feminisms, cultural studies, media studies and sociology. It will provide students with some timely and novel ways of thinking about the place of experience within contemporary governance and communication processes.

Since the beginning of moving images, the world has moved from industrial and imperial to digital and global. Among the political movements that have been most important in the period since the invention of the movies are (neo)liberalism, Marxism, fascism, nationalism, feminism and anti-colonial struggles. These trends are inescapably bound up in the technologies, techniques and forms of the moving image and the sound arts, from the early days of cinema to contemporary handheld and immersive media.

This module investigates the politics of these forms and technologies as attempts at controlling the dispositions of minds and bodies and as struggles for their emancipation. It will address a broad range of topics from the power of sounds, images and visual apparatuses in the 20th and 21st centuries to the relationship of politics and aesthetics, the problem of democracy, and ideology critique.

Physical Computing is of increasing interest to artists, musicians, choreographers, and other creative practitioners for the creation of novel artworks and for forms of computational interaction between these objects and people. 

There are many other applications of Physical Computing, for example in museums, ubiquitous and embedded computing, robotics, engineering control systems and Human Computer Interaction. A physical environment may be sonic, tangible, tactile, visually dynamic, olfactory or any combination of these.

The module will provide a starting point for you to build an understanding of microcontrollers, and how they fit into a wider computing and artistic context. It will cover basic physics, electronics, programming, and software engineering; alongside practical knowledge of tools such as laser cutting and 3D printing which are very commonly used in physical computing. This module will culminate in an extended project which will also give you an opportunity to plan a project over time, and make decisions as your project develops.

Physical Computing is an interdisciplinary area of computational art and design that blends conceptual thinking, programming, human factors, engineering, physics, and physical crafting. This module introduces you to some of the intermediate prototyping, electronics, and programming skills necessary for practitioners making interactive, computational physical artefacts and systems. You'll also examine some more advanced knowledge of physical prototyping and design, such as human factors, user experiences and user testing, which are necessary to guide students in a co-evolutionary process of emergent computational art and design.

Building on the previous module, you'll learn tools and architectures for creating scalable and robust projects. You'll apply these skills in their explorations of the physical making process and work towards a large final outcome for the module, on which they will spend the majority of their time on the module.  

You'll work on developing a self-initiated project that explores advanced topics in the art of physical computing. These topics could include communication between embedded systems and software/frameworks from other modules, CNC fabrication such as 3D printing and laser cutting, and advanced strategies for building node-based, scalable projects.

This module aims to provide you with an introduction to the study of music psychology. Lectures will focus on the perception, cognition and neural basis of musical understanding, perception of musical structure and emotions and theories about music’s evolutionary roots.

The scientific methods used in research will be explored in a research participation session and in lectures. The module will introduce you to music psychology. Lectures will focus on four main themes:

• Musical perception and cognition
• Musical cognition and learning
• Musical origins and emotions in music
• Musical creativity.

This module provides the knowledge requirement for marketing and advertising. The module will provide a critical understanding of what consumers buy, how they buy (i.e., buying patterns), and why they buy the way they do (i.e., why we see these patterns). This knowledge in turn will enable you to improve marketing and advertising strategies of organisations both on large scale and small-scale projects. By using theory, case material and practical examples, you are introduced to the importance of theory and research-based practice in these fields.

Throughout the module you will develop a contemporary, cognitive toolkit for researching, analysing, and understanding buyer behaviour. You will contrast this current approach with traditional models of marketing and advertisement. Finally, you will learn to apply this knowledge for organisational strategy initiatives (e.g., launching a new marketing campaign). This module brings together a wide range of approaches to buyer behaviour, marketing and advertising, both on organisational and project-by-project levels. You will also be offered an opportunity to apply your learning to analysing case studies.

This lecture course will introduce you to the fundamentals of consumer psychology and behavioural economics.

It will give you an understanding of the fundamental decision making processes and the factors that influence these processes. It covers topics such as prospect theory and classical economics, brain structures and information processing, heuristics and rules of thumb, and framing and influencing techniques.

It also discloses the various strategies used by marketers to differentiate their products, leverage brands, set strategic prices, reduce the effectiveness of consumer search, and it compares the effectiveness of each.

The course covers topics such as the types and effectiveness of pricing strategies, individual differences in uptake of pricing strategies, value perceptions and subconscious influences (priming), and ethical and legal issues around influencing consumer choice.

The lectures in this course will be supplemented by several assignments designed to develop and enhance practical skills, and further develop familiarity with consumer psychological methods and theories.