PDF(Pubmed)
Abstract：
From an evolutionary perspective, art presents many puzzles. Humans invest substantial effort in generating apparently useless displays that include artworks. These vary greatly from ordinary to intricate. From the perspective of signalling theory, these investments in highly complex artistic designs can reflect information about individuals and their social standing. Using a large corpus of kolam art from South India (N = 3139 kolam from 192 women), we test a number of hypotheses about the ways in which social stratification and individual differences affect the complexity of artistic designs. Consistent with evolutionary signalling theories of constrained optimisation, we find that kolam art tends to occupy a \'sweet spot\' at which artistic complexity, as measured by Shannon information entropy, remains relatively constant from small to large drawings. This stability is maintained through an observable, apparently unconscious trade-off between two standard information-theoretic measures: richness and evenness. Although these drawings arise in a highly stratified, caste-based society, we do not find strong evidence that artistic complexity is influenced by the caste boundaries of Indian society. Rather, the trade-off is likely due to individual-level aesthetic preferences and differences in skill, dedication and time, as well as the fundamental constraints of human cognition and memory.
摘要：
从进化的角度来看，艺术提出了许多难题。人类投入大量精力来产生包括艺术品在内的明显无用的展示。这些差异很大，从普通到复杂。从信号理论的角度来看，这些对高度复杂的艺术设计的投资可以反映有关个人及其社会地位的信息。使用来自印度南部的大量kolam艺术（192名女性的N=3139kolam），我们检验了许多关于社会分层和个体差异影响艺术设计复杂性的假设。与约束优化的进化信号理论一致，我们发现科兰艺术倾向于占据艺术复杂性的“甜蜜点”，用香农信息熵来衡量，从小到大图纸保持相对恒定。这种稳定性是通过一个可观察的，显然是无意识的两种标准信息理论度量之间的权衡：丰富性和均匀性。虽然这些图纸出现在一个高度分层，基于种姓的社会，我们没有找到强有力的证据表明艺术复杂性受到印度社会种姓界限的影响。相反，权衡可能是由于个人层面的审美偏好和技能差异，奉献和时间,以及人类认知和记忆的基本约束。
