1 00:00:09,092 --> 00:00:11,928 [man] A professional domino artist is someone 2 00:00:12,012 --> 00:00:14,597 who can set up thousands and thousands of dominoes 3 00:00:14,681 --> 00:00:18,518 to create structures, patterns, images. 4 00:00:19,310 --> 00:00:22,313 [narrator] In 2017, Steve Price led a team 5 00:00:22,397 --> 00:00:26,860 that built a domino display of more than 76,000 pieces. 6 00:00:26,985 --> 00:00:29,362 Smashing a Guinness World Record. 7 00:00:29,446 --> 00:00:32,407 [Price] You can build flat on the ground two-dimensional, 8 00:00:32,490 --> 00:00:36,119 or you can also do 3-D structures like pyramids and walls 9 00:00:36,202 --> 00:00:39,748 and make certain sort of curves and spirals. 10 00:00:39,831 --> 00:00:43,668 [narrator] And his YouTube videos get millions of views. 11 00:00:43,752 --> 00:00:46,296 [Price] The pleasure of watching the dominoes toppling 12 00:00:46,379 --> 00:00:50,258 just comes from knowing how much went into the project. 13 00:00:50,759 --> 00:00:55,180 As the viewer, you get to just watch it all fall into place. 14 00:00:55,930 --> 00:00:59,392 [narrator] Humans love looking at all kinds of things. 15 00:01:00,393 --> 00:01:05,023 Why are millions of people watching videos of cookies getting iced? 16 00:01:05,106 --> 00:01:10,612 Or enjoy looking at a collage made up of 21 cutout images of pimples? 17 00:01:10,695 --> 00:01:15,742 Others like Gothic churches, horses, synchronized swimming, 18 00:01:15,825 --> 00:01:18,078 and of course, other people. 19 00:01:19,537 --> 00:01:21,456 Where do these preferences come from? 20 00:01:22,540 --> 00:01:25,001 And why is beauty something we seek at all? 21 00:01:26,294 --> 00:01:29,631 [man] Art is an individual creative experience. 22 00:01:29,714 --> 00:01:33,927 The greater the knowledge one possesses, the greater will be the experience. 23 00:01:34,469 --> 00:01:37,931 Many photographers owe their success to specialization. 24 00:01:38,014 --> 00:01:39,432 It might be still life, 25 00:01:39,891 --> 00:01:42,685 babies, animals, or fashion. 26 00:01:42,769 --> 00:01:45,146 The Earth, I'm afraid, is in a class by itself. 27 00:01:45,230 --> 00:01:46,564 [laughs] 28 00:01:47,315 --> 00:01:50,026 [man] The placement is exact and symmetrical. 29 00:01:50,401 --> 00:01:55,532 Exactness in details helps in giving the final impression of perfection. 30 00:01:58,993 --> 00:02:03,039 [narrator] For thousands of years, philosophers have tried to explain beauty. 31 00:02:03,498 --> 00:02:08,628 Aristotle said, "Beauty depends on magnitude and order." 32 00:02:08,711 --> 00:02:13,800 Confucius said, "I have not seen one who loves virtue as he loves beauty." 33 00:02:13,883 --> 00:02:18,054 Kant said, "The beautiful is that which pleases universally, 34 00:02:18,138 --> 00:02:19,722 without a concept." 35 00:02:20,348 --> 00:02:23,643 In the Renaissance, the seeds of an answer were planted 36 00:02:23,726 --> 00:02:28,815 when an Italian mathematician named a number the Divine Proportion 37 00:02:29,315 --> 00:02:32,110 in a book illustrated by Leonardo da Vinci. 38 00:02:33,027 --> 00:02:37,615 Mathematicians have been fixated on this number since ancient times, 39 00:02:37,699 --> 00:02:40,618 because it kept coming up in geometry. 40 00:02:40,702 --> 00:02:45,165 In the 1800s, a German psychologist decided this number 41 00:02:45,248 --> 00:02:49,836 was the universal law of beauty, and today it's known in popular culture 42 00:02:49,919 --> 00:02:53,673 as the golden ratio, with people claiming to find it 43 00:02:53,756 --> 00:02:57,552 in all kinds of human masterpieces all over the world. 44 00:02:58,720 --> 00:03:00,597 But, there's a problem with that. 45 00:03:00,680 --> 00:03:03,808 When people have tried to study it directly, 46 00:03:03,892 --> 00:03:08,897 it's not so clear that everybody responds specifically to the golden rectangle. 47 00:03:09,689 --> 00:03:12,150 [narrator] Study after study has found little evidence 48 00:03:12,233 --> 00:03:17,614 that people are especially drawn to rectangles with this exact proportion. 49 00:03:18,114 --> 00:03:19,782 We do like rectangles though. 50 00:03:20,825 --> 00:03:25,413 It's the best flowing configuration for images from plane to brain. 51 00:03:25,496 --> 00:03:28,374 As in, the fastest shape our brains can process. 52 00:03:29,459 --> 00:03:32,420 Pleasant to look at because it's easy on the eyes. 53 00:03:33,004 --> 00:03:36,090 And many scientists today believe the reason for this 54 00:03:36,174 --> 00:03:37,842 boils down to survival. 55 00:03:38,968 --> 00:03:43,806 More than 150 million years ago, dinosaurs dominated the Earth. 56 00:03:43,890 --> 00:03:46,351 But to understand how humans see the world, 57 00:03:46,434 --> 00:03:49,187 you have to look down at the dinosaur's feet. 58 00:03:49,270 --> 00:03:53,066 That's where our ancestors, small shrew-like mammals, 59 00:03:53,149 --> 00:03:56,653 spent their time and they had a pretty dim view of the world. 60 00:03:56,736 --> 00:04:00,073 They perceived just two colors: blue and red. 61 00:04:00,156 --> 00:04:04,202 They were also nocturnal to evade their better-seeing predators 62 00:04:04,285 --> 00:04:08,164 and constantly scanned their environment horizontally. 63 00:04:09,040 --> 00:04:14,212 And that may be the simple reason we make so many things in that shape today. 64 00:04:15,546 --> 00:04:18,591 Visual beauty is based in vision, of course, 65 00:04:18,675 --> 00:04:21,844 and our vision evolved because it helped us survive. 66 00:04:22,637 --> 00:04:27,850 When the dinosaurs went extinct, our ancestors came out into the light. 67 00:04:28,559 --> 00:04:30,770 And over time, their eyes developed, 68 00:04:30,853 --> 00:04:34,565 opening up all the colors of the rainbow we know today. 69 00:04:34,649 --> 00:04:37,860 And many things we're still visually drawn to 70 00:04:37,944 --> 00:04:40,697 are things that helped our ancestors survive. 71 00:04:41,614 --> 00:04:45,285 Flowers indicated that something might turn into fruit. 72 00:04:45,368 --> 00:04:49,372 Water sources signal the possible bounty of nourishment. 73 00:04:49,831 --> 00:04:52,834 And places of refuge helped us evade predators. 74 00:04:53,459 --> 00:04:57,672 We still like landscapes that resemble where early humans evolved. 75 00:04:59,173 --> 00:05:02,343 Two artists conducted a survey in the 1990s, 76 00:05:02,427 --> 00:05:07,015 to find the most desirable painting in 14 different countries. 77 00:05:07,098 --> 00:05:08,558 They asked questions, like... 78 00:05:08,975 --> 00:05:12,562 "Would you rather see paintings of outdoor or indoor scenes?" 79 00:05:12,645 --> 00:05:18,067 "Which one, if any, of the following types of outdoor scenes appeals to you most?" 80 00:05:18,151 --> 00:05:20,320 and "Would you say that you prefer paintings 81 00:05:20,403 --> 00:05:23,865 in which the people are nude or fully clothed?" 82 00:05:23,948 --> 00:05:28,328 The resulting painting looked like this in the United States. 83 00:05:28,411 --> 00:05:33,458 In France, like this. This was Turkey's. This China's. 84 00:05:33,541 --> 00:05:38,921 This is sometimes referred to as the African savanna hypothesis, 85 00:05:39,005 --> 00:05:41,007 because savanna's have those properties. 86 00:05:41,090 --> 00:05:44,385 [narrator] Blue skies, a sheltering rock of some kind, 87 00:05:44,469 --> 00:05:48,222 something edible growing in a big sweep of water. 88 00:05:48,306 --> 00:05:51,809 Turns out, we're terribly unoriginal creatures. 89 00:05:51,893 --> 00:05:54,645 Part of beauty is just a desire to live. 90 00:05:54,729 --> 00:05:55,772 [chirping] 91 00:05:56,522 --> 00:06:00,193 But not everyone's sold on some kind of explanation for beauty. 92 00:06:00,985 --> 00:06:04,030 I think scientists have been misled, 93 00:06:04,113 --> 00:06:07,408 by the fantastic experience of explaining something, 94 00:06:07,533 --> 00:06:11,537 to think that those kinds of explanations have broad power. 95 00:06:12,121 --> 00:06:13,706 [narrator] In 2017, 96 00:06:13,790 --> 00:06:15,458 Richard Prum published a book 97 00:06:15,541 --> 00:06:16,584 that caused a stir 98 00:06:16,667 --> 00:06:18,961 in the world of evolutionary biology. 99 00:06:19,045 --> 00:06:24,342 In it, he argues that not all beauty is about survival or fitness. 100 00:06:24,425 --> 00:06:27,929 Some of it is arbitrary and even useless. 101 00:06:28,429 --> 00:06:30,056 Take the tail of the peacock... 102 00:06:31,015 --> 00:06:35,436 [Prum] The tail is covered with hundreds of beautiful eye spots, 103 00:06:35,520 --> 00:06:38,815 each one of which includes four or five different colors 104 00:06:38,898 --> 00:06:41,484 created by optical nanostructures in the feathers 105 00:06:41,567 --> 00:06:43,778 that are made up of melanin granules 106 00:06:43,861 --> 00:06:46,030 organized in a crystalline fashion. 107 00:06:46,114 --> 00:06:49,534 [narrator] Female peacocks, they're actually called peahens, 108 00:06:49,617 --> 00:06:51,244 are drawn to these tails. 109 00:06:51,327 --> 00:06:56,249 During courtship display, a male peacock erects his tail 110 00:06:56,332 --> 00:06:59,585 and creates a huge sort of hemisphere 111 00:06:59,669 --> 00:07:03,589 that suspends over the female as he displays. 112 00:07:03,673 --> 00:07:05,883 [narrator] But the tails are heavy and make it harder 113 00:07:05,967 --> 00:07:08,386 for the male peacocks to run and fly. 114 00:07:08,469 --> 00:07:11,806 Their beauty, essentially, is bad for their survival. 115 00:07:11,889 --> 00:07:12,890 [caws] 116 00:07:12,974 --> 00:07:16,811 This even stumped Charles Darwin as he wrote in a letter to a colleague. 117 00:07:17,603 --> 00:07:20,690 [Prum] "Whenever I gaze at a feather from the tail of a peacock, 118 00:07:20,773 --> 00:07:21,983 it makes me sick!" 119 00:07:22,066 --> 00:07:25,486 He was troubled by the fact that adaptation by natural selection 120 00:07:25,570 --> 00:07:29,991 could not describe the evolution of ornaments that would not help 121 00:07:30,074 --> 00:07:32,034 in the struggle for survival. 122 00:07:32,118 --> 00:07:37,206 He proposed the theory of sexual selection and what he was hypothesizing, 123 00:07:37,290 --> 00:07:41,961 was that mate choice is really about the subjective experiences of animals. 124 00:07:42,044 --> 00:07:46,466 [narrator] And it's not just the peacock that has seemingly unhelpful ornaments. 125 00:07:47,008 --> 00:07:50,720 There's the flame bowerbird and his waving cape. 126 00:07:50,803 --> 00:07:54,474 The sage grouse and his inflatable yellow chest. 127 00:07:54,557 --> 00:07:58,478 The great frigatebird and his ballooning red throat pouch. 128 00:07:58,561 --> 00:08:01,522 The shoebill and his bill that looks like a shoe. 129 00:08:01,606 --> 00:08:03,649 [Prum] So, there aren't any birds in the world today 130 00:08:03,733 --> 00:08:06,486 that don't exhibit the radiation, 131 00:08:06,569 --> 00:08:09,739 the elaboration, the diversification of preference. 132 00:08:09,822 --> 00:08:11,240 It's about pleasure. 133 00:08:11,324 --> 00:08:14,911 Pleasure is the motivation that drives the choices that animals make. 134 00:08:16,829 --> 00:08:20,791 [narrator] In the human brain, that's what beauty is: pleasure. 135 00:08:20,875 --> 00:08:25,463 [Chatterjee] So our view, is that the combined activation of visual cortex 136 00:08:25,546 --> 00:08:28,299 and these reward systems together 137 00:08:28,382 --> 00:08:32,011 is the biologic signature of our response to beauty. 138 00:08:32,094 --> 00:08:35,556 [narrator] Three main neurotransmitter systems are involved. 139 00:08:35,640 --> 00:08:37,433 First, the dopamine system. 140 00:08:37,517 --> 00:08:43,648 The dopamine system seems to be about our desires and our wanting things. 141 00:08:43,731 --> 00:08:46,984 [narrator] A surge of dopamine can literally move us. 142 00:08:47,485 --> 00:08:52,073 It is what motivates us to approach things that we find attractive. 143 00:08:52,156 --> 00:08:57,578 [narrator] Beauty can also activate our endocannabinoid and opioid systems. 144 00:08:57,662 --> 00:09:02,041 The same systems that are activated by consuming cannabis or opioids. 145 00:09:02,166 --> 00:09:06,337 They seem to be the core experience of pleasure. 146 00:09:06,754 --> 00:09:08,130 [narrator] But peahens evolved 147 00:09:08,214 --> 00:09:11,300 to find pleasure in the same kind of peacock tail. 148 00:09:11,384 --> 00:09:15,638 Explaining all the pleasure humans get from beauty is harder, 149 00:09:15,721 --> 00:09:17,682 because we don't all agree. 150 00:09:19,850 --> 00:09:23,771 It was once a sign of beauty in Japan to dye your teeth black. 151 00:09:23,854 --> 00:09:27,608 It was once a sign of beauty in Europe to pluck out all your eyelashes. 152 00:09:27,692 --> 00:09:33,114 In America today, some consider it a sign of beauty to stain, spray, 153 00:09:33,197 --> 00:09:36,701 mist, burn, or mousse your skin bronze. 154 00:09:36,784 --> 00:09:39,829 We humans are deeply cultural creatures. 155 00:09:39,912 --> 00:09:42,206 We're influenced by our social environment, 156 00:09:42,290 --> 00:09:46,127 and we take variation in that environment and we incorporate it into ourselves. 157 00:09:47,211 --> 00:09:52,216 Aesthetic preferences are established psychologically through development, 158 00:09:52,300 --> 00:09:55,303 through exposure, and through individual innovation. 159 00:09:55,803 --> 00:09:57,930 [Stoller] Of course, we're all kind of culturally conditioned 160 00:09:58,014 --> 00:09:59,265 depending on our context. 161 00:09:59,348 --> 00:10:01,142 But, I think I'm always trying to ask myself, 162 00:10:01,642 --> 00:10:04,312 "Why do I think that? Where does that come from?" 163 00:10:05,146 --> 00:10:08,858 [Price] The culture of domino art is definitely based around the internet. 164 00:10:08,941 --> 00:10:15,239 There is a very big niche community for people who enjoy this sort of thing. 165 00:10:15,948 --> 00:10:18,409 One hundred fifty years ago, impressionist paintings, 166 00:10:18,492 --> 00:10:21,245 they had a hard time breaking into the scene. 167 00:10:21,329 --> 00:10:24,040 Now, if you survey most Americans, 168 00:10:24,123 --> 00:10:27,418 people tend to say they like impressionist artwork the most. 169 00:10:27,501 --> 00:10:29,545 Our brains haven't changed in 150 years, 170 00:10:29,629 --> 00:10:34,592 and yet these kinds of population-based preferences have changed dramatically. 171 00:10:34,675 --> 00:10:37,928 Right? So, that has to be from what we're exposed. 172 00:10:39,347 --> 00:10:40,431 [narrator] Take color. 173 00:10:41,057 --> 00:10:45,186 In the USA today, pink is often associated with young girls. 174 00:10:45,728 --> 00:10:51,442 But it 1927, when Time magazine surveyed ten major American department stores, 175 00:10:51,525 --> 00:10:54,153 half said pink was the color for boys. 176 00:10:54,236 --> 00:10:57,239 That shift happened over the following decades. 177 00:10:57,323 --> 00:11:01,327 Thanks in part, to toy marketing campaigns in the 1980s. 178 00:11:01,410 --> 00:11:03,412 I love you, My Little Pony. 179 00:11:03,496 --> 00:11:04,872 [narrator] And dark yellow. 180 00:11:04,955 --> 00:11:09,460 One study found that babies' eyes linger the longest on this color. 181 00:11:09,543 --> 00:11:11,045 But adults around the world 182 00:11:11,128 --> 00:11:12,505 consistently rank 183 00:11:12,588 --> 00:11:14,715 this as their least popular color. 184 00:11:15,132 --> 00:11:18,094 A leading theory is that as we grow up, 185 00:11:18,177 --> 00:11:22,515 we learn to associate this shade with unpleasant things. 186 00:11:23,015 --> 00:11:26,727 There are complicated ways in which our experiences, our education, 187 00:11:26,811 --> 00:11:29,438 and also the structure of a society 188 00:11:29,522 --> 00:11:33,693 can have an influence on what one regards is attractive. 189 00:11:33,776 --> 00:11:35,486 You can look at a painting of a monarch 190 00:11:35,569 --> 00:11:40,157 and just be amazed at the opulence or the beauty. 191 00:11:40,241 --> 00:11:44,995 On the other hand, if the whole notion of monarchy is disturbing to you, 192 00:11:45,079 --> 00:11:47,248 then you're not going to find it beautiful. 193 00:11:48,958 --> 00:11:54,213 How to get a sense of what certain people find satisfying is really hard, 194 00:11:54,296 --> 00:11:55,548 which is why scientists 195 00:11:55,631 --> 00:11:59,593 generally tend to focus on the things that most people get pleasure out of. 196 00:12:00,219 --> 00:12:02,346 [narrator] There isn't robust research yet 197 00:12:02,430 --> 00:12:05,725 to explain why some people see beauty in this... 198 00:12:06,142 --> 00:12:07,059 or this... 199 00:12:08,394 --> 00:12:09,478 or this... 200 00:12:10,479 --> 00:12:12,982 But researchers studying the brain 201 00:12:13,065 --> 00:12:15,776 during moments of peak aesthetic experience 202 00:12:15,860 --> 00:12:20,948 believe they may have found a clue in an area of the brain called the DMN. 203 00:12:21,449 --> 00:12:26,036 The DMN is the Default Mode Network. 204 00:12:26,120 --> 00:12:29,665 So you can almost think of it as the idling state of the brain. 205 00:12:30,082 --> 00:12:31,083 [narrator] In brain scans 206 00:12:31,167 --> 00:12:34,962 when people are asked to do a task or think about something specific, 207 00:12:35,045 --> 00:12:37,423 this area of the brain quiets down. 208 00:12:37,965 --> 00:12:42,470 The DMN actually lights up when we aren't doing a specific task 209 00:12:42,553 --> 00:12:44,555 and our minds turn inward. 210 00:12:45,222 --> 00:12:49,268 They probably reflect a kind of internal state, 211 00:12:49,351 --> 00:12:52,313 when you're kind of spacing out, when you're mind's wandering, 212 00:12:52,396 --> 00:12:53,689 when you're self-reflective. 213 00:12:54,440 --> 00:12:56,192 [narrator] In a few recent experiments, 214 00:12:56,275 --> 00:13:01,071 people were presented with images of art from a variety of cultural traditions. 215 00:13:01,572 --> 00:13:03,616 And something surprising happened. 216 00:13:03,699 --> 00:13:07,036 The DMN region in their brains lit up. 217 00:13:07,119 --> 00:13:08,871 But, only when they were looking 218 00:13:08,954 --> 00:13:11,582 at the paintings they said moved them the most. 219 00:13:11,665 --> 00:13:16,170 It is triggering a whole set of associations 220 00:13:16,253 --> 00:13:17,880 and thoughts in our own brain, 221 00:13:17,963 --> 00:13:20,716 which is a kind of free play of our own imagination. 222 00:13:21,133 --> 00:13:23,385 [narrator] The researchers believe this is evidence 223 00:13:23,469 --> 00:13:25,095 that our experience of beauty 224 00:13:25,179 --> 00:13:29,809 involves connecting our senses and emotions with something personal. 225 00:13:29,892 --> 00:13:31,393 Our sense of self. 226 00:13:31,477 --> 00:13:35,481 There's something about being moved by paintings 227 00:13:35,564 --> 00:13:38,442 that forces us to be self-reflective. 228 00:13:38,526 --> 00:13:40,528 That may be the biologic signature 229 00:13:40,611 --> 00:13:44,073 of what it means to feel moved by a painting. 230 00:13:44,156 --> 00:13:48,202 [narrator] Which could help explain why we're draw to and moved by 231 00:13:48,285 --> 00:13:52,581 the same kind of images, even as our memories slip away. 232 00:13:52,665 --> 00:13:55,835 There's been research that suggests that people with dementia 233 00:13:55,918 --> 00:13:58,254 continue to have the same taste in art 234 00:13:58,337 --> 00:14:00,923 as they had all their lives. 235 00:14:01,423 --> 00:14:03,592 In an experiment from 2008, 236 00:14:03,676 --> 00:14:07,972 20 people with Alzheimer's disease were shown a range of paintings. 237 00:14:08,055 --> 00:14:12,434 Some were representational, like "People in the Sun" by Edward Hopper. 238 00:14:12,518 --> 00:14:15,813 Some, less so, like Picasso's "Weeping Woman." 239 00:14:16,355 --> 00:14:20,484 And others were totally abstract, like "Composition" by Mondrian. 240 00:14:21,360 --> 00:14:25,114 The patients were asked to rank the paintings in order of preference. 241 00:14:25,614 --> 00:14:28,033 Two weeks later, they were given the same task. 242 00:14:28,534 --> 00:14:30,703 When asked to rank the original paintings, 243 00:14:30,786 --> 00:14:33,706 they put them in largely the same order as before. 244 00:14:37,334 --> 00:14:39,461 Our sense of beauty is deep. 245 00:14:39,545 --> 00:14:41,881 [woman] I thought that Randy's was beautiful. 246 00:14:41,964 --> 00:14:44,967 -[applause] -And she has a great sense of color. 247 00:14:45,467 --> 00:14:50,097 [narrator] And for people with dementia, making art can be powerful therapy. 248 00:14:50,180 --> 00:14:54,643 [woman] I find the color is the thing that sticks out the most for me. 249 00:14:54,727 --> 00:14:56,353 Then, the feeling of movement. 250 00:14:56,937 --> 00:14:58,939 I love movement in painting. 251 00:14:59,023 --> 00:15:00,691 What else do we see in here? 252 00:15:00,774 --> 00:15:02,526 [woman 2] I see the sun. 253 00:15:02,610 --> 00:15:04,486 I have Lewy body dementia. 254 00:15:05,029 --> 00:15:08,782 And for me, it was a big shock. I'm sure it is for everybody. 255 00:15:09,950 --> 00:15:12,119 We all suffer from memory loss. 256 00:15:12,786 --> 00:15:17,541 Different degrees depending on the person and how long they've suffered with this. 257 00:15:18,375 --> 00:15:23,589 I think that, to the extent we retain our preferences for certain kinds of art, 258 00:15:23,672 --> 00:15:25,090 or certain pieces of art, 259 00:15:25,591 --> 00:15:28,552 it means that those pieces speak to us in a deep way. 260 00:15:29,053 --> 00:15:32,389 To me, it's so wonderful to watch people painting. 261 00:15:32,473 --> 00:15:33,474 -[applause] -[woman] Whoo! 262 00:15:33,974 --> 00:15:36,352 [Mittelman] Look at their faces. They come alive. 263 00:15:37,394 --> 00:15:40,481 People with dementia, as well as the rest of us. 264 00:15:40,564 --> 00:15:45,736 Imagine a scenario where we were all wearing exactly the same clothes. 265 00:15:46,570 --> 00:15:48,197 Every meal had no taste. 266 00:15:48,989 --> 00:15:51,909 That our houses were all uniform. 267 00:15:51,992 --> 00:15:54,286 Is that a world anybody would want to live in? 268 00:15:54,370 --> 00:15:58,749 The absence of beauty, the absence of surrounding ourselves 269 00:15:58,832 --> 00:16:00,084 with aesthetic experiences, 270 00:16:00,167 --> 00:16:03,462 I think, just makes for a very impoverished life. 271 00:16:10,219 --> 00:16:11,053 Perfect. 272 00:16:11,136 --> 00:16:13,138 [theme music playing]