Embodied Imagination: Emotional Expression Perception of Dynamic Line-Drawings Created by Artists

Abstract

The main purpose of this study is to challenge the relation of image generation, expression production, and expressive perception as related to the symbolic transformation of experiences (imagination) and artistic communication; as well as, the linkage between emotion, action, and perception in the dynamic person-object relationship in pictorial perception associated with a high-level experience like the aesthetic. This article reports on a research project that focuses on intra-cultural and inter-cultural (Greek-Canadian) variation of the perceptual experience of artistic, non-representational line-drawing depicting the subjective experience of the emotions of Joy and Fear, as compared to the communicability of the relevant emotional schemas stated in words. A series of experiments was designed to gain insight into the complexities of self-world interaction involving the image generation—as a schematized depiction, the perceptual experience and imagination processes, which are the basis of artistic communication, and emotional concepts that bear cultural diversity. Analysis of the results revealed a shared “embodied” frame of reference cross-culturally especially for the negative emotion of fear. This finding highlights the intersubjective nature of our “embodied” subjectivity, as an imaginative productive act—an enactment of lived significance that induces a shared understanding.