剑桥雅思11test2passage3阅读原文及翻译

剑桥雅思11test2passage3阅读原文及翻译

第1段

An emerging discipline called neuroaesthetics is seeking to bring scientific objectivity to the study of art,and has already given us a better understanding of many masterpieces.The blurred imagery of Impressionist paintings seems to stimulate the brain’s amygdala,for instance.Since the amygdala plays a crucial role in our feelings,that finding might explain why many people find these pieces so moving.

一门正在兴起的，被称为神经美学的学科正试图将科学的客观性带给艺术研究，并已经让我们对许多名作有了更好的理解。例如，印象派画作模糊的画面似乎刺激了大脑的杏仁核。由于杏仁核对我们的感受至关重要，这一发现可能能够解释为什么许多人觉得这些画作如此让人感动。

第2段

Could the same approach also shed light on abstract twentieth-century pieces,from Mondrian’s geometrical blocks of colour,to Pollock’s seemingly haphazard arrangements of splashed paint on canvas?Sceptics believe that people claim to like such works simply because they are famous.We certainly do have an inclination to follow the crowd.When asked to make simple perceptual decisions such as matching a shape to its rotated image,for example,people often choose a definitively wrong answer if they see others doing the same.It is easy to imagine that this mentality would have even more impact on a fuzzy concept like art appreciation,where there is no right or wrong answer.

从蒙德里安的几何色块到波洛克看似随意泼洒在帆布上的色块，同样的方法也能够用于解释20世纪的抽象作品吗？持怀疑态度的人认为人们宣称喜欢这些作品不过是因为它们很有名罢了。我们当然有从众的倾向。例如，当被要求做出给旋转的图像匹配形状这样的简单认知判断时，如果人们看到他人做出同样的行为，就往往会选择一个绝对错误的答案。很容易想象，这种心态会对诸如艺术品欣赏这样的模糊概念造成更大的影响。毕竟在这方面没有正确和错误之分。

第3段

Angelina Hawley-Dolan,of Boston College,Massachusetts,responded to this debate by asking volunteers to view pairs of paintings–either the creations of famous abstract artists or the doodles of infants,chimps and elephants.They then had to judge which they preferred.A third of the paintings were given no captions,while many were labelled incorrectly–volunteers might think they were viewing a chimp‘s messy brushstrokes when they were actually seeing an acclaimed masterpiece.In each set of trials,volunteers generally preferred the work of renowned artists,even when they believed it was by an animal or a child.It seems that the viewer can sense the artist’s vision in paintings,even if they can’t explain why.

马萨诸塞州波士顿学院的Angelina Hawley-Dolan通过让志愿者观看几组画作来对这一争论进行回应。它们要么是著名抽象艺术家的作品，要么是婴儿、大猩猩或者大象的涂鸦。他们随后需要判断自己更喜欢哪一种。有三分之一的画作没有给出说明文字，并且有许多被错误标注。当志愿者看到一幅受人赞扬的名作时，他们可能认为自己正在观看一头大猩猩杂乱无章的绘画。每一组实验中，志愿者普遍更喜欢著名艺术家的作品，即使他们认为这是由动物或者孩子创作的。似乎观看者能够察觉到艺术家在画作中的想象，哪怕他们无法解释原因。

第4段

Robert Pepperell,an artist based at Cardiff University,creates ambiguous works that are neither entirely abstract nor clearly representational.In one study,Pepperell and his collaborators asked volunteers to decide how‘powerful’they considered an artwork to be,and whether they saw anything familiar in the piece.The longer they took to answer these questions,the more highly they rated the piece under scrutiny,and the greater their neural activity.It would seem that the brain sees these images as puzzles,and the harder it is to decipher the meaning,the more rewarding is the moment of recognition.

卡迪夫大学的艺术家Robert Pepperell创作了一些既非完全抽象，也非清晰具象的模棱两可的作品。在一项研究中，Pepperell和他的同事要求志愿者判断他们认为一幅作品是多么“有力”，以及他们是否在作品中看到了一些熟悉的东西。他们用于回答这些问题的时间越长，经过仔细观察后给出的分数就越高，并且神经活动就越活跃。大脑似乎将这些图像当作谜题，解读其含义越困难，识别出来的时候奖励也越大。

第5段

And what about artists such as Mondrian,whose paintings consist exclusively of horizontal and vertical lines encasing blocks of colour?Mondrian’s works are deceptively simple,but eye-tracking studies confirm that they are meticulously composed,and that simply rotating a piece radically changes the way we view it.With the originals,volunteers’eyes tended to stay longer on certain places in the image,but with the altered versions they would flit across a piece more rapidly.As a result,the volunteers considered the altered versions less pleasurable when they later rated the work.

那么像蒙德里安这样的艺术家呢？他的作品完全由水平和竖直的线以及包裹在其中的色块组成。蒙德里安的作品让人误以为十分简单，但眼球追踪研究证实它们其实是经过仔细创作的。仅仅旋转作品就会彻底改变我们观赏它的方式。对于原作，志愿者的眼睛往往在图画中特定的地方停留较长时间，但对于改动过的版本，他们会更加迅速的扫过整幅作品。因此，当志愿者随后对作品进行打分时，他们会认为改动过的版本不那么让人愉悦。

第6段

In a similar study,Oshin Vartanian of Toronto University asked volunteers to compare original paintings with ones which he had altered by moving objects around within the frame.He found that almost everyone preferred the original,whether it was a Van Gogh still life or an abstract by Miró.Vartanian also found that changing the composition of the paintings reduced activation in those brain areas linked with meaning and interpretation.

在一项相似的研究中，多伦多大学Oshin Vartanian要求志愿者比较原作与在作品框架内移动物品后的作品。他发现，几乎每个人都更加喜欢原作，不管它是梵高的静物作品，还是米罗的抽象作品。Vartanian还发现，改变作品的布局会降低那些与意义和理解有关的大脑区域的活动。

第7段

In another experiment,Alex Forsythe of the University of Liverpool analysed the visual intricacy of different pieces of art,and her results suggest that many artists use a key level of detail to please the brain.Too little and the work is boring,but too much results in a kind of‘perceptual overload’,according to Forsythe.What’s more,appealing pieces both abstract and representational,show signs of‘fractals’-repeated motifs recurring in different scales.Fractals are common throughout nature,for example in the shapes of mountain peaks or the branches of trees.It is possible that our visual system,which evolved in the great outdoors,finds it easier to process such patterns.

在另一项实验中，利物浦大学的Alex Forsythe分析了不同艺术作品的视觉复杂性。她的研究结果表明，许多艺术家会使用一定程度的细节来取悦大脑。根据Forstythe的观点，细节太少的话，作品会无聊，但太多了的话又会造成某种认知过载。此外，吸引人的作品，无论是抽象的还是具象的，都展现出“分形”的迹象-重复的图形以不同的比例重现。分形在自然界中十分常见，例如山峰或者树木枝杈的形状。我们在户外进化出来的视觉系统很有可能觉得处理这种模式更为简单。

第8段

It is also intriguing that the brain appears to process movement when we see a handwritten letter,as if we are replaying the writer’s moment of creation.This has led some to wonder whether Pollock’s works feel so dynamic because the brain reconstructs the energetic actions the artist used as he painted.This may be down to our brain’s‘mirror neurons’,which are known to mimic others’actions.The hypothesis will need to be thoroughly tested,however.It might even be the case that we could use neuroaesthetic studies to understand the longevity of some pieces of artwork.While the fashions of the time might shape what is currently popular,works that are best adapted to our visual system may be the most likely to linger once the trends of previous generations have been forgotten.

同样有趣的是，当我们看一封手写的信件时，大脑处理的举动就仿佛是我们在重放作者的创作过程。这导致一些人猜想波洛克的作品让人感觉如此生动，是否就是因为大脑重构了艺术家绘画时所使用的生动动作。这可能与我们大脑的“镜像神经元”有关，它们会模仿他人的动作。然而，这一假设需要彻底的验证。或许我们甚至可以使用神经美学研究来理解一些艺术作品的经久不衰。虽然一时的时尚可能会造就当下流行什么，但一旦之前的流行趋势被遗忘，最适应我们视觉系统的作品就更有可能流传下来。

第9段

It’s still early days for the field of neuroaesthetics–and these studies are probably only a taste of what is to come.It would,however,be foolish to reduce art appreciation to a set of scientific laws.We shouldn’t underestimate the importance of the style of a particular artist,their place in history and the artistic environment of their time.Abstract art offers both a challenge and the freedom to play with different interpretations.In some ways,it’s not so different to science,where we are constantly looking for systems and decoding meaning so that we can view and appreciate the world in a new way.

神经美学依然处于起始阶段。这些研究可能仅仅是即将到来的发现的前菜。然而，将艺术鉴赏简化为一系列的科学法则是不明智的。我们不应该低估特定艺术家的风格，他们在历史中的地位，以及所处时代的艺术环境的重要性。抽象派艺术对于不同的解读提出了挑战和自由。从某种方式上来讲，它与科学并没有很大不同。在科学领域，我们一直寻求体系并解读含义，以便我们能够以全新的方式观察和欣赏这个世界。